Rest in piece, Mr. Howard Zinn

[Queequeg]

Maybe the fact that Hans made no mention of Chomsky's work in linguistics?

He has previously (Oex and I ended up arguing with him, before Hans gave up), and I took the entirety of his comment to be inclusive of both Zinn and Chomsky. 

"Conservative White-Wash Express??"

Conservatives have a way of editing history to fit their narriative.  One of the many things they have in common with Cylons.  They've already warped the memory of the Founding Fathers, and greatly simplified Einstien's views on Religion, not to mention the hitjob they are trying on Darwin's supposed Racism. 

[Admiral Yi]

Conservatives have a way of editing history to fit their narriative.  One of the many things they have in common with Cylons. 

One of the many things they have in common with liberals.

How has the Conservative White-Wash Express streamrolled Chomsky?

[Queequeg]

Conservatives have a way of editing history to fit their narriative.  One of the many things they have in common with Cylons. 

One of the many things they have in common with liberals.

How has the Conservative White-Wash Express streamrolled Chomsky?

Hans has attempted to comment on his Linguistics work, saying that he is a hack there.  Chomsky is a far more complex figure than that.  I was implying that Chomsky's politics will either be warped by the Conservatives in to NAZI-SOVIET-LOVER-HACK-LINGUIST or in to some kind of Conservative.  Einstein went through the second, Darwin and Zinn the first. 

One of the many things they have in common with liberals.

Conservatives tend to go out of their way to create alternatives to well-established institutions with the excuse that they are "liberally biased".  Look at Conservapedia or Fox News, though MSNBC is moving towards becoming FNC's Liberal foil. 

[Admiral Yi]

Hans has attempted to comment on his Linguistics work, saying that he is a hack there.  Chomsky is a far more complex figure than that.  I was implying that Chomsky's politics will either be warped by the Conservatives in to NAZI-SOVIET-LOVER-HACK-LINGUIST or in to some kind of Conservative.  Einstein went through the second, Darwin and Zinn the first. 

You mean Hans saying Chomsky is a hack linguist is the Conservative White-Wash Express steamrolling Chomsky? 

Conservatives tend to go out of their way to create alternatives to well-established institutions with the excuse that they are "liberally biased".  Look at Conservapedia or Fox News, though MSNBC is moving towards becoming FNC's Liberal foil.

And leftist write histories to "set the record straight" from "establishment propaganda."

[LaCroix]

One of the many things they have in common with Cylons.

 

[Queequeg]

You mean Hans saying Chomsky is a hack linguist is the Conservative White-Wash Express steamrolling Chomsky?

How about Conservative White-Wash/Black-Wash machine? 

And leftist write histories to "set the record straight" from "establishment propaganda."

This seems fair, in retrospect, though Zinn had something different in mind.

[Admiral Yi]

I see.  So Hans is the Conservative White-Wash/Black-Wash Express, and the only thing preventing Hans from steamrolling Chomsky's reputation as a linguist is the fact that he is still alive and able to fight back. 

Has he actually fought back against Hans to defend his reputation, or is it simply his ability to do so that has prevented the steamrolling?  The moment he dies will that ability be lost, and will Hans instantly steamroll him?

[Hansmeister]

I see.  So Hans is the Conservative White-Wash/Black-Wash Express, and the only thing preventing Hans from steamrolling Chomsky's reputation as a linguist is the fact that he is still alive and able to fight back. 

Has he actually fought back against Hans to defend his reputation, or is it simply his ability to do so that has prevented the steamrolling?  The moment he dies will that ability be lost, and will Hans instantly steamroll him?

Hence my happiness everytime one of the anti-american left dies.

Chomsky was of course a very outspoken supporter of Pol Pot and for two decades denied the holocaust occured in Cambodia ( at which point it became too silly to deny so he instead blamed the "real culprit" the USA).  Of course Chomsky has also been a denier of the holocaust that occured during WWII (I guess he just lacks the imagination necessary to pin the blame for it on the US).

[grumbler]

I cant believe I put "piece" 

Yeah, you left off the "s" at the end.

[Valmy]

I assume you mean "contempt"? 

Yes

[Sheilbh]

And leftist write histories to "set the record straight" from "establishment propaganda."

I think there's an element to that which explains the stridency of some 'left-wing history'.  It depends how you define conservative history, though.  My own definition would probably include most histories until the mid-twentieth century - with a few notable exceptions (Buckhardt springs to mind) - most history was focused on the acts of great men even with Thucydidean cause-and-effect.  It is the history of an elite and, in Marxist terms, it is the ideology that underpins the economic system - it's the myth we tell ourselves and are told.  Part of this it should be said is inevitable and academia helped to undermine in the sense that for most of our history histories have either been official documents prepared for and preserved by an elite, or they have been written by gentlemen.  The late 19th century professionalisation of history started to change that because what had been a narrative was suddenly disrupted and to an extent exploded into a myriad of little bits of history that contributed to our understanding of history but also undermined our narrative sense.  My understanding is that German historians' work on, for example, family and aristocracy in the Roman Republic revolutionised the study of Ancient History. 

I think the stridency of 'left-wing history' comes from a desire to set the record straight.  For example social history did not exist, for the most part, didn't really start until the 20th century, neither did cultural history, neither really did economic history.  There was a great deal of pushback against all of those trends by traditional conservative historians and I think many of the early works proclaimed themselves with a great degree of certainty and theoretical weight to establish their presence.  But the truth is that now even a conservative, narrative history will take cognisance of the economy, of general social structure, of cultural norms, of the position of minority groups within a society.  The extreme is micro-history, such as Ginzburg's wonderful 'The Cheese and the Worms' or Duffy's 'The Voices of Morebath'.  These histories depict one village and sometimes one man, but enlighten things that we've not really known anything about: the effects of literacy and books in 16th century Europe/Italy/Friuli and the popular reaction to the English Reformation.  But because they're so localised they both damage the traditional received narrative - Duffy's work on the English Reformation is a great example of this revisionism in general.

I think 'left-wing' history in the 60s and the 70s was over the top and strident precisely because they were setting the record straight but that their goal has now been integrated into every mainstream history.  We read them now and they seem a bit ridiculous they put things so strongly but that's because we're used to their argument and what they're doing whereas in the 60s and 70s it was very new indeed. 

Edit:  And here's E.H. Carr in 'What is History? about bias:
'Study the historian before you begin to study the facts. This is, after all, not very abstruse. It is what is already done by the intelligent undergraduate who, when recommended to read a work by that great scholar Jones of St. Jude's, goes round to a friend at St. Jude's to ask what sort of chap Jones is, and what bees he has in his bonnet. When you read a work of history, always listen out for the buzzing. If you can detect none, either you are tone deaf or your historian is a dull dog. The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use - these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation. Indeed, if, standing Sir George Clark on his head, I were to call history "a hard core of interpretation surrounded by a pulp of disputable facts," my statement would, no doubt, be one-sided and misleading, but no more so, I venture to think, than the original dictum.'

[PDH]

I liked Carr when I first got to read him in my undergrad historiography class.  "The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger's slab."