Ian H
Legendary Member
A new book about Churchill, reviewed here.
View: https://twitter.com/TariqAli_News/status/1516810665977159680
View: https://twitter.com/TariqAli_News/status/1516810665977159680
Johnson's hero
- Thread starter Ian H
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OP
OP
Ian H
Legendary Member
No, Johnson's inept hagiography is merely mentioned.
Here's a better link: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/winston-churchill-imperial-monstrosity
matticus
Guru
That looks like a balanced, objective view. Let's see ...
Like so many bad ideas, it has its roots with Margaret Thatcher. ...
OP
OP
Ian H
Legendary Member
What would you consider 'balance' to require? Like all histories, it's written from a particular perspective. I'd say that venerating Churchill as a near-saint is unbalanced.
slowmotion
Active Member
I don't think anybody could pretend that Churchill was a saint. The only thing that matters is what he managed to do in the five years when faced with The Other Guy.
Fab Foodie
Legendary Member
All that mattered was getting-on with delivering what the people wanted...
PaulB
Active Member
Illuminating stuff there.
dutchguylivingintheuk
Veteran
So if they write a book saying that Adolf Hitler was actually a great guy you say the same? it's the same one sided focus right?
You can't have balance if you say you concentrate on his ''imperial'' past or something, if you want balance you write a bigger book with both his good and bad points. but that doesn't sell these days, if it's about our past hero's you got to put them in the racist,imperial, slave killers corner, whether facts back it up or provide context or not. de trend is remove all facts and concentrate on the most negative output you can find.
mudsticks
Squire
There's been enough big books written only bigging up wartime 'hero' Churchill.
And films, and column inches etc etc.
Writing a medium sized book that redresses the balance , and discusses the other known facts of what Churchill did, or allowed or encouraged in other parts of the world, some of which was deeply racist and imperialist seems perfectly reasonable.
And no it wasn't 'just of the time' many people objected to his actions at the time he was implementing them.
The fact that some people don't like their one dimensional 'hero' talked about in that way only displays the immaturity of the reader.
It doesn't change any evidenced facts.
newfhouse
pleb
My heroes are none of those things.
matticus
Guru
The point is I was quoting from the review - which Ian linked* to - not the book. The reviewer wrote:
"Like so many bad ideas, it has its roots with Margaret Thatcher. In his opening chapters, Ali draws on ..."
(the book may well be a balanced analysis of Winston's life, warts and all.)
I'm saying that sort of thing detracts from the credibility of the reviewer - is this a review of a history book, or a wannabe-Alexei-Sayle rant?
*https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/winston-churchill-imperial-monstrosity
dutchguylivingintheuk
Veteran
you can't ''redress'' the balance, it's just an book claiming the same bullshit as the original just the other way round. two wrongs never makes one right.
history should be boring and full of hard facts either side, we allowed it to become a tool to reach certain goals, that 's wrong.
Cherry picking in someone's past to make this person look differently isn't redressing the balance, if you want to redress the balance you got to go back to the core first, identify when it happened, who started it, how long it continued, and who stopped it and who might have needed to stop it but didn't and so further and so forth. But that doesn't really make nice headlines or sells quickly..
Mine neither, but that's wasn't the point at all. The point is it's trying to change how some poeple out our history that our commonly seen as hero's or important persons from that time as something else by taking one point out, magnifying that and removing all context, without decent knowledge what could possibly go wrong?
oh, ok my bad didn't see that. agree with your assement of the credibility of said reviewer.
