Because I was a revisionist historian at the
age of 16, back in 1958, I am more aware of the development of revisionist
history over the years than most people are. The fact that I received a Ph.D.
in history designates me as probably the oldest living Ph.D.-holding historian
who has always been a revisionist on America's entry into World War I and World
War II.
Revisionist historians are dismissed as conspiracy
historians. This is a popular designation. It was dreamed up in 1967 by the
Central Intelligence Agency. That, at least, is a good revisionist account of
the origins of the phrase. But maybe it is merely a conspiratorial account. In
either case, I'm willing to run with it.
As with any fringe group in American society, there are
various levels of commitment among those who are in some way associated with a
particular revisionist interpretation of history. Some people have read a great
deal. They may have written something. They may have a website that deals with
these issues. In other words, they are historians by avocation. They are
probably not employed as history professors because the historical Guild has
been screening out revisionist historians ever since the Rockefeller Foundation
put up the money for the Council on Foreign Relations to fund an
anti-revisionist version of America's entry into the war. That was in 1946. I
talk about this here.
In the summer of 1963, I was employed by a small think
tank with a libertarian outlook: the Center for American Studies. It was a
later incarnation of the old William Volker Fund. It no longer exists. The man
who occupied the office next to mine was a librarian. He had originally studied
to be a historian. He studied under the great revisionist historian, Charles C.
Tansill, there at Georgetown University. He told me that Tansill had come to
him and other grad students and warned them not to get doctorates in history.
He knew that they held his views on America's entry into World War II. He had
written a detailed book on this, Back Door to War (1952). As I recall, he
told me that Tansill had warned him in 1953. Tansill told him that he would
never be able to get tenure at a decent university if the department chairman
knew that he shared Tansill's views on America's entry into World War II. The man
switched his major to library science. He later supervised the creation of
Herbert Hoover's Presidential library in Iowa. His name was Thomas Thalkin.
There is a high price to pay for being a revisionist
historian. There is a basic law of economics: "When the price is high,
less is demanded." This is why, beginning in the early 1950's, revisionist
historians disappeared. The purge had begun in the late 1940's, and by the
1950's, it was in full swing. It was much more rigorous and systematic than the
purge of non-Keynesian economists. The screening process was rigorous. It was
assumed that virtually no undergraduate would have heard of revisionist
history. There were only three tiny publishing houses that publish such works,
and only a handful of conservatives knew about these companies: Devin-Adair,
Regnery, and Caxton.
In contrast to revisionist history, there is a conspiracy
history. Conspiracy history usually focuses on recent events. There is a
crossover: the Kennedy assassination. You have serious revisionist historians
studying this and other serious self-taught historians. You also have a lot of
conspiracy theorists who may have read a couple of books about it.
With the advent of the web, anybody can start a website.
This means that anybody can become a self-appointed expert of some historical
event. It doesn't take a lot of work to do this. It doesn't take any
familiarity with professional standards of evidence. These people have never
been trained in historical research. The price is low. Let's go back to the
other side of the rule that I quoted: "When the price is low, more is
demanded."
Conspiracy theories about mass shootings flourish like
dandelions in the spring. The sooner they flourish, the less reliable they are.
They are based on almost no evidence.
There are these characteristics of conspiracy theories
that are widely shared. You need to be aware of them.
I begin with the six standard questions that any good
reporter is supposed to ask, and any good historian is supposed to ask: what,
where, when, who, why, and how?
1. The conventional "what" is
denied. The most stunning example I have ever seen of this is a suggestion that
nobody was shot in Las Vegas. It was all faked.
2. "Where" is questioned. Probably the best
example in recent years is this one: where is the plane that supposedly crashed
in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11? I mean, it's legitimate to ask this
question. It would take a great deal of work to come up with an answer.
3. Then there is "when?" A good example here is
this: when did Osama bin Laden die? Conspiracy theorists say that he did not
die in Pakistan. He died a decade earlier.
4. Next is "who?" The most famous of all is Lee
Harvey Oswald. The conspiracy historian says it must have been somebody else. A
revisionist historian might make the suggestion that Oswald did not act alone.
We do not find detailed revisionist books on who exactly the other shooter or
shooters were. The same applies to the assassin or assassins of Martin Luther
King, Jr.
5. The question of "why" is always the most
difficult one to answer for all historians. It is difficult to get inside
people's minds. They usually do not leave written records. Why did Sirhan
Sirhan shoot Bobby Kennedy? Nobody seemed to figure out that one. It's not
clear who else may have done it.
6. In the era of online videos, the question of
"how" becomes more pressing. How did the supposed pilots of three of
the four airliners execute maneuvers to crash into the buildings, especially
the one who flew the plane that crashed into the Pentagon? Because this seems
impossible, some conspiracy historians have asserted that no plane crashed into
the Pentagon. But then what did -- a "what" question. Where did the
other plane go? Similarly, how did Building 7 collapse on 9/11? No plane hit
it. There are lots of "how" questions regarding the collapse of the
other two buildings.
A revisionist historian reads at least a dozen books, or
in the case of the Kennedy assassination, maybe a hundred books. He begins the
study of the Kennedy assassination with a detailed investigation of the Warren
Commission. He has to read everything connected with the Warren Commission and
then begin his questioning in response to those documents. A conspiracy
theorist has probably never read the Warren Commission report, let alone the
support volumes.
When somebody questions almost every official account of
everything, you know that he is not a revisionist historian. He is a conspiracy
historian. It takes too much work to study any major event in which there may have
been a cause that is completely different from the government's official
version.
Conspiracy historians can be useful in assembling
preliminary information that a revisionist historian may use later on. But the
conspiracy theorist should not be taken seriously without detailed
supplementary investigations.
The more radical the conspiracy thesis, the less likely
that anyone is going to take him seriously. The more radical the thesis, the
more likely the person is drifting into a world in which there are no
historical causes and effects. He doesn't acknowledge any of them. He only
tells you why the official version cannot be true, but he is not willing to
make the investment to find out what really did happen. He doesn't care what
really did happen. He knows that if he ever comes to a conclusion, there will
be other conspiracy theorists who write him off as an organ of the
establishment.
I think you have to ask all of the six questions. But
when it gets to a theory that the government is behind an event, I focus on the
issue of why. I want to know the motivation. If there is no motivation that is
sufficient to persuade a government bureaucrat, who is a safety oriented person
in his career, to launch a conspiracy that could see him executed if he is
discovered, then I am not going to believe it.
Why not? Because I am interested in human action. I am
interested in the differences between free market entrepreneurship and
bureaucratic management. I learned this distinction from Ludwig von Mises in
his marvelous little book, Bureaucracy (1944). The longer the
government has operated without any major resistance, the more likely that it
is run by bureaucrats. They are risk-averse. Risk-aversion is the fundamental
personal characteristic of a bureaucrat. Only under extreme circumstances can
he be fired. He will get automatic promotions. The ones who have reached the
top of the tenured pyramid have been screened in terms of their commitment to
not rocking the boat.
I want to know what kind of motivation would lead such a
person to risk being caught and convicted of organizing a mass murder or some
comparable event. I doubt that the motivation is money. It is probably not
power. Such a senior-level person already has power. Next: Who would persuade
such a person to take such a step? What is the motivation for that person to
get involved with the dark side of some Deep State bureaucracy? Next: Why would
the Deep State bureaucracy pay any attention to somebody outside the bureaucracy?
Why would the CIA risk exposure because somebody in some secret society for
some reason unknown would like to see a mass murder?
Of what benefit to the government would be such an event?
The budgets don't change. Promotion is still by bureaucratic means. The
government is gridlocked. This is all a question of motivation. It is a
question of human action. What are the costs, and what are the benefits? If the
costs are personally enormous and the benefits are vague, it is wise to look
for some other cause of a supposedly conspiratorial event.
The greatest revisionist historian was Murray Rothbard.
He was an economist. He looked for economic motivation. He followed the money.
He followed the publications. He followed the meetings. He named names. He did
his homework. Then he provided plausible arguments for causation. He did not
promote the idea of a single conspiracy. He showed how self-interested people
used state power to feather their nests. He did not accept official
explanations.
Rothbard understood a fundamental point: conspiracies
gain their leverage through political power. They have almost no leverage in a
competitive economy. This was also the view of R. J. Rushdoony. When we talk
about conspiracy views of history, we are always talking about clandestine
organizations that seek control through political power. Conspiracies that do
not seek control through political power are simply special interest groups.
There is a big difference between conspiracies and special interest groups.
This has to do with the means of gaining of power, and then the maintenance of
power over the long run. The representatives of a conspiracy have a hidden
agenda. There is a public defense of a program to gain power, but the public
defense is a sham. That is the essence of conspiracy. There is a separation
between public rhetoric and clandestine plans to achieve power for very
different purposes than those expressed in public rhetoric.
When it comes to explanations other than the official
explanation, I prefer to wait for a heavily footnoted book written by somebody
who has written a book on something else, and who has demonstrated in that book
his ability to research evidence and draw plausible conclusions from the
evidence. That is hard work. Somebody has to be dedicated to do this kind of
work. That screens out the crazies.
I recommend screening out the crazies.
The crazies live in a world of self-induced fantasy. They
do not accept the validity of historical cause and effect. They do not follow
the money, or the confession, or the media back to a source. They are unwilling
to make the commitment to any verifiable truth. They prefer to move on to a new
conspiracy. "When the going gets tough, conspiracy theorists get
going."
They are lazy. They refuse to do grunt work. They refuse
to follow a footnote in order to verify the interpretation being offered. They
have an aversion against documentation. They would never read a revisionist
book like James Billington's Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the
Revolutionary Faith (1980). It has way too many footnotes to documents in
far too many languages.
They are attracted to the bizarre. They are repulsed by
the plausible.
It is best to avoid them.