Is there a "right" side to history? Please give genuine

No. There are Winners if you can define victory terms though.

There are individual factoids we can all agree on maybe, but we will never agree on a single authoritative history.

Le war doesn't decide who's right, only who's left :^)

>>373975
Yes, bourgeois liberal historiography. It is noxious and vacuous.

if anything involve hurting people, physically or otherwise, it is the wrong side of history

>>374048
so most of history is on the wrong side of history?
I thought history was an objective, unbiased account of events. How can it have a right or wrong side?

>>373975
>Is there a "right" side to history?
Maybe. If one exists, it can only be determined long after the events are actually over. "I can do anything I want because I'm on the right side of history" is just "I can do anything I want because I'm on the side of God" repackaged.

>>373975
Depends which side you support

I don't think there's an objective 'right side of history', anyone who claims that is being partisan

File: 1365927088008.jpg (24KB, 534x443px) Image search: [Google]

24KB, 534x443px

>>374091
>Then
GOD WILLS IT
>Now
HISTORY WILLS IT

No, because by the time its history you're dead so who cares

Yes anyone who says otherwise is an idiot. There are cultural practices and beliefs that become engrained into society and never go away. We still use the Phoenician alphabet, we still use the roman political system, we never readopted human sacrifice after the romans outlawed it, most people pray to a Mesopotamian god we only briefly readopted slavery and only in the colonies after the christian church outlawed it in the early middle ages. Chances are two thousand years later people will be more obsessed with diversity and tolerance not less and will still call people nazis.

>>374052
>I thought history was an objective, unbiased account of events.
You thought fucking wrong. Read a textbook on historiography.

No linguistic product can be objective or unbiased. "Accounts of events" were abandoned long before Ranke.

>>373975
Anyone who claims to believe otherwise is either retarded ot lying. Everyone has an idea or two about the way they want the world to be, and those people who work towards that goal are on the right side.

"History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it"
"History is the past version of things that people have decided to agreed upon"

>>374252
But you should also realize whatever you personally want the world to be is severely affected by your personal life experiences, cognitive biases, etc. Of course I think the things I believe in are true, or else I wouldn't believe them. But that doesn't mean there is an external, "right" viewpoint that extends throughout history, and it especially doesn't mean it conforms nicely to my opinions.

>>374303
Why would it have to mean that there is an 'external' right viewpoint? What is an external point of view supposed to be, anyway? Doesn't the term 'point of view' already imply subjectivity?
Seriously, when you say something is wrong or right, can you ever take it to mean anything other than what you consider wrong or right?

>>374326
>Why would it have to mean that there is an 'external' right viewpoint?
Because that's how it's used in contemporary conversation.
>You must support [this specific position I believe in] unless you want to be on the wrong side of history.
The implication is that all historical events have progressed in a logical chain that has resulted in the speaker's personal opinions, and that the future will inevitable conform to them and them alone (since those who disagree with them are on the wrong, "backward" side of history.) It's not unlike the popular concept of the evolution of mankind, where in hindsight it seems like "man's ascent" was the inevitable end goal of evolution. In reality, the world is more complex than that.

>>373975
History is only what happened. History is about digging through all of the bullshit, and finding out what happened. All of the propaganda, all of the losers being the bad guys in war, that's not history, that's politicians attaching a bias to things that happened. History doesn't deal with morality, only with what happened.

>>374338
Ok look, when I say that people who I find morally reprehensible are on the wrong side of history, am I making a statement in the vein of some hegelian notion of history being the unfolding of spirit into its absolute form? Nope, all I'm saying is the following:
YOU FAGGOTS ARE INFLUENCING THE HISTORICAL PROCESSES UNFOLDING RIGHT NOW IN A WAY THAT IS MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE.
That's literally all it means, and there is zero reason to shoehorn some metaphysical notion into that, especially when no one today even gets those metaphysics.

>>374128
>muh liberal hivemind is the right hivemind

Literally kill yourself

>>374355
>YOU FAGGOTS ARE INFLUENCING THE HISTORICAL PROCESSES UNFOLDING RIGHT NOW IN A WAY THAT IS MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE.
That's not how it comes across. It comes across much more as the "we will bury you" comment, implying that communism's overtake of capitalism was a future inevitability of converging historical forces, and all the capitalists were doing was hanging on to old, "outdated" attitudes. The popular usage of the phrase seems to reflect this interpretation much more than your more benign explanation.

>>374375
>>374355
I just looked up the quote again to be sure, and it's interesting what I found.
>Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.
Khrushchev talked about the "sides" of history right then and there.

>>374375
Are you suggesting that everyone who uses the phrase is a communist? You're full of shit.
Also, what's wrong with some healthy optimism, why should you not want the side you consider moral to ultimately triumph?

>>374355
>morality

Oh boy

>>374389
No, I'm suggesting that people who use the phrase believed in the inevitability of historical forces supporting their particular opinions or position. Communism is an easy example because of how famous the quote is, to the extent that when I looked it up again it even mentions the "sides of history" concept. But it isn't the only example. I already mentioned the idea of "man's inevitable ascent" being similar. It's actually a pretty common way of thinking.

> healthy optimism
I would argue the optimism stops being healthy when you stop entertaining the positions of anyone who disagrees with you and assume ahead of time that all their objections are nothing more than a quirk of historical transitions.

>>373975
Sort of.

You can kinda see where trends are going, and get on the "winning" side, the side that will be judging the past in a generation.

They'll paint the past with their values, and then the generation after will consider them horrible and paint the past with THEIR values.

And so on and on.

>>373975
No, History is written by the victor.

How is this not a /his/ meme?

>>373975
What is this "right side of history" i keep hearing on shitboards. There are no sides of history, there are a bunch of interpretations which vary accordingly to political propaganda of current states, maybe future peoples will interpret same parts of history differently.

>>374410
Two things, most views of history contain a notion of progress that is, if not inevitable, at least inherently desirable. And when you consider such developments desirable, it is pretty obvious that you'll frown upon anyone who wants to put a halt to that progress.
Apart from that, note that reactionaries have a view of history that is symmetrical to the progressive one, and any flaws of the latter will also be inherent to the former.

>>374128
>We still use the Phoenician alphabet, we still use the roman political system
>most people pray to a Mesopotamian god we only briefly readopted slavery and only in the colonies after the christian church outlawed it in the early middle ages
How very eurocentric of you

>>374999
Views of linear progress are inherently eurocentric, as they must view colonialism as a necessary evil. Which it was.

>>373975
Is there a right/wrong side to anything?
Is there an objective good/bad?

I'd say no.

If you want to impose your own subjective concepts/beliefs of good and bad onto history, then by all means, go ahead, but beyond that, history is not, on it's own, good or bad.

>>374020
but it does Stalin killed more people than Hitler but since he won the war he isn't demonized as much