By: Ethan Chan
In Plato’s Republic, he said that in the ideal society it would be necessary for leaders to use deception or useful falsehoods to rule. He believed that most people were ignorant and needed to be ruled by wise philosopher kings who would take the best course of action even at the expense of the truth. As an example, truth would be ignored in favour of lies and inaccuracies in order to unify a community through the creation of a common identityWhatever that common identity's relationship to the truth, for societies to form and bond it is evident that origin myths—which are often fabrications—are necessary to form a broader societal consciousness. Historical actors have always made use of lies and obfuscated the truth, and they too did so for ostensibly good reasons. Roosevelt lied and was deceptive about a German submarine that torpedoed an American ship to attempt to go to war with Germany. Based on the examples above, one might decide to argue that dishonest renderings of history are useful. That such renderings might diminish conflicts within groups or could otherwise be done with good intentions with positive results. I would argue the opposite. Deception and dishonesty about the historical record often creates or aggravates conflicts within communities and between communities and can have disastrous consequences. Deception and dishonesty in history is more likely to be pursued with bad intentions and have negative results than honesty; they are, then, morally wrong.
In the past, historians often used half and partial truths to construct narratives aimed at providing some kind of instruction. These narratives consisted of truths and facts that were nonetheless warped; details that supported the conclusions the historian wanted were emphasized while details that disproved the conclusions the historian wanted were ignored. For example, the public discussion of Israel and Palestine involves both groups citing long lists of injuries inflicted by one party on the other. At the same time, they will downplay, ignore, or deny that the party they support is responsible for causing any injuries themselves. These half‐truths about national, ethnic, religious, and political conflicts are particularly harmful and destructive as they feed into narratives and interpretations that actively deny the complexity of these situations. That denial, in turn, makes it increasingly difficult for any sort of solution to be found and so the problems continue and the injuries grow. Historians are obligated to be truthful and accurate; it would not just be inappropriate for them to embrace dishonesty and inaccuracy, it would also violate the trust the public places in them and degrade the authority of the historical profession.
Here are some infamous examples both of historians lying and of what lying about history can cause:
The German "stab-in-the-back” myth.Following the First World War, General Erich Ludendorff published a book that claimed that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield and had only lost the war due to subversive elements causing civil strife at the German homefront. These subversive elements included, but were not limited to, bankers, Jews, socialists and workers who performed strikes, and the politicians who desired negotiations. Many of those politicians would become the first generation of statesmen in the Weimar Republic and were involved in the Treaty of Versailles; many of them would also be murdered for their alleged betrayal of Germany. More disastrously, the myth spurred on German revanchism and was incorporated into the anti-Semitic ideology of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.
The American "lost cause" myth. The Daughters of the Confederacy rewrote the history of the American Civil War through the glorification of the Confederacy alongside the KKK. They denied that the Civil War had been the result of contentions over slavery and claimed that it had instead been fought over states' rights and constitutional liberties; these became the Confederacy's "lost cause." These sentiments are still expressed today and continue to negatively impact the lives of Americans.
Walter Duranty. Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports he wrote about the Soviet Union; those reports contained falsified information and claimed that the reports of famine in the Soviet Union were inaccurate. Duranty's reports contributed to the widely inaccurate view of Stalin's regime held by those who were politically left-wing.
Vichy Syndrome. In the Second World War, France did not simply surrender and become entirely occupied; in southern France, the Vichy collaborationist government was formed. This government operated in line with Nazi policies and its leadership was, following France's liberation, harshly treated. Despite the existence of Vichy France, however, many French nationalists promote a narrative in which French collaborators are minimized in favour of over-exaggerating the prevalence of the French resistance.
Contrary to the claim that lying about history can help to unify a people, it can be seen that lying about history can often generate and aggravate the hatreds and conflicts that exist between peoples and nations.Lying about your own past crimes in order to minimize conflict is transparently self-serving and will, in all likelihood, just intensify conflict. Japan and Turkey, for example, continue to propagate dishonest accounts of history by downplaying their respective atrocities. Despite their dishonesty, Japan remains strongly resented in Asia and tension from their dishonesty flares up regularly while the Turkish government just as often enters into conflict with other governments whenever recognition of the Armenian genocide gets brought up.
In sum, one must differentiate between expectations and responsibilities between politicians and historians. The politician is the defender of a nation state. They need to tell half-truths to continue a nation’s collective past. They cannot provide counter evidence against shared history. The historian must tell the truth, they are not in the same position as the politician. Although some consider all of history to be narrative, post-modernists will argue that not all facts are lies; they just consider all of history as ambiguous and in need of revising. Postmodernists do not claim an event never happened, they just debate what the significance of the event is today.
Works Cited
Carson, Thomas L., 'Honesty, Conflicts, and the Telling of History: More Case Studies',
Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Sept. 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199577415.003.0014, accessed 11 Feb. 2023.
Carson, Thomas L. Lying and Deception Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010.