Oh dear... - eviltoast
  • FlightSimEnjoyer@lemmygrad.ml
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    1 year ago

    ???

    The sources are linked in lemmygrad, but they are from outside lemmygrad.

    Also, there is no neutral information in the world, all information has parts omitted (for many possible reasons), has parts that may be distorted because of the bias of the primary sources, or has other biases that you must take into account when reading it.

    If you only read information from one side you will only get the biases of that side, and won’t be able to understand reality. Most principled communists who study history do not use only pro-communist sources, they actually use mostly anti-communist sources (because, guess what, most historians with resources to do research are american or western european, and literally can’t publish pro-soviet or pro-chinese books in well-acclaimed presses) and then they filter out most of the biases (but not all, because that is literally impossible) by using primary sources or translations of primary sources, in case the primary sources aren’t in a language they know.

    I’m not saying you must read literal nazi books and take their word for it, for example. What I am saying is that if you want to research 19th century India, for example, you must read from at least most of the different perspectives, always questioning yourself about the sources like this:

    1. Which biases does this source have?
    2. How can these biases affect the information I am reading?
    3. Which other perspectives can I use to understand this information?
    4. Is this source reliable? (have they been caught lying?)

    If you can’t even do this, you really won’t understand history.

    Also, what is considered “neutral” at any point in time is what the ruling classes consider to be beneficial to them. If you could talk to the average white person of mid 19th century southern USA about slavery, they would tell you that news articles criticizing abolitionists and promoting slavery were “neutral”. The same applies to current times.