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Originally Posted by someone123
I don't know the details of this case but it's become more common to see activism or advocacy masked as history and there's often less research from primary sources. Some people say there aren't primary sources and we can't know what happened when there's a pretty rich record. You also sometimes see people lowering the bar if a story comes from an oppressed minority group but I'm not sure that does anybody any favours in the long run; it tends to make all past grievances seem folkloric when some truly are like that and some are more objective and deserve different treatment.
Typically people fought for incremental improvements in their day and if you don't understand the context it looks bad by today's standard. Of course, there are bad people in every era and as you go back culture becomes increasingly ignorant in some ways, although maybe we are sliding backward in others. Our media today is full of spectacular BS even by historical standards. We are not on the whole significantly more intelligent or moral than people who lived a few generations ago.
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I think that’s well parsed out and indicates that there should be concern by anybody who values history and considers it to be an important part of our society.
Additionally I wonder what will happen with the accuracy of our accepted and broadcasted history once AI has inserted its influence and includes much of the activist/revisionist history into its new accounts of history that it will create and that people will consume in the future. I feel that context will probably be tossed out of the window for the majority, with the exception of those who actually care to spend time researching on their own. However combined with society’s tendency to disregard anything that it perceives to be “authority” of late, the days of accepted, accurate history might actually become “history” itself…
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