Sorry to sound hysterical, but as an actual history buff I hate these fucking memes. The only reason you’d prefer “history as a hobby” is if you’re trying to prove some vague point through cherrypicking historical fact.

Maybe I’m jaded because I know way too many people (I was one of them) who claimed to be “into history” but all they ever wanted to talk about was a few random factoids about World War 2 battles.

  • Comrade leo@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    History is not taught to educate peaple about the past and the actions, decisions that led us to our present. Moreoften in capitalist society its just in school to feed the young masses the capitalist lies. History as a hobby(in online discussion) more often than not nose dive into random obscure facts and battles or rome\nazi german shit

  • Anarcho-Bolshevik@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    It was not until after I moved away from mainstream education that history switched from being my weakest subject to my strongest. I agree with the others here: this is, in all likelihood, an image that’s right for the wrong reasons. History as presented by mainstream educators usually is boring for reasons that James W. Loewen and Michael Parenti outlined in Lies My Teacher Told Me and History as Mystery, respectively. That said, our disinterest has little in common with that of petty bourgeois students, who must think that even the dumbed down McHistory that neoliberals present still isn’t anticommunist enough.

    Personally, I do prefer to specify that I refer to modern history when I talk about my excellence in the subject, but sometimes understanding modern history requires me to understand premodern history as well. Mediaeval Europe’s anti‐Judaism helped facilitate Fascist antisemitism, so sometimes I make efforts to study the former to supplement my understanding of the latter. Carl Sagan once said that in order to understand the present, you have to understand the past, so it helps to look for relevance to the present when studying history.

  • novibe
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    6 months ago

    I mean, history in school (as in not college, middle and high school) was completely shit tho no? Pure propaganda, no material analysis etc. I had it better than most westerners because I’m from a periphery country and had some (lib) lefty teachers. But still, I much preferred studying history “as a hobby” than what we had to study in school.

    If I wanted to know the real history of oppressed peoples, their history of struggle, revolution and successes, I had to learn that on my own.

    Otherwise all I’d know about history was that some aristocratic people fucked off to some place, genocided the natives and enslaved a whole continent to compensate for the lack of workers. And that is all done and dusted and has no impact on modern life.

    Ah and a couple of “interesting” cases of revolts that ended in nothing and were crushed. With a mixed bag of them actually being revolts of oppressors and not oppressed.

  • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    Nah, I don’t think you are “hysterical”. Nobody ever wants to talk about knights and landsknechte or something, it’s always muh panther! Muh rommel!

  • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    POV: you are looking at the meme that the “Sabaton taught me more history than high school did” kid from your class made.

  • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    I’d be more ok with WWII and Roman history if it was taught with the context or explanation that Nazi Germany modeled its laws and general idea of conquering the east on what the United States had done in its west (and country as a whole). Or that many of the founding fathers were super into Rome and what that means beyond “Rome had a republic!” It was also a fully militarized colonization machine even in its republic time. I mean, Caesar took power after going on a campaign of pure conquest across the entirety of Europe

    I guess my point is if they want to focus on those two topics in the US they should also focus on why the US is generally obsessed with them. If they want to teach about Rome, ok, but talk about more than its ideals and more about its martial nature and how it failed to live up to any sort of democratic ideals.

    Also the amount of dipshit Americans who think the US was the le epic destroyer of the Nazis and winner of WWII when it was objectively the Soviets is too damn high. Maybe they should teach more WWII history and literally only talk about the eastern front. One because it would enrage the hogs and libs alike, but two because the western front has been talked about ad nauseam. I don’t want to downplay events there, but Jesus Christ, the hell that was unleashed in Eastern Europe by the Nazis is nearly erased from the American memory because it’s brushed over in the history and there’s few media depictions of it. Certainly no Band of Brothers style stuff for the Soviets. (I would love to see that, btw, if it already exists and I’m unaware.) Perhaps a show about the Chinese communists fighting and defeating warlords and fascists in their country. There’s so much media potential purely from a capitalist money making mindset and no one has bothered, to my knowledge. I don’t trust Westerners to do it justice, but it’s basically just ignored and thus forgotten to media obsessed Americans.

  • OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    To give my perspective to the other commenters: Where I grew up we had a pretty good history curriculum.

    It focused a lot on material analysis. In class 1 the first things we learned was to ignore the excuses for wars (like these people went to fight these other people because of an insult) and find the actual material causes (like these people lived on land that was more fertile than the other people’s lands). The second thing we learned was how social classes define governing policy. This was a theme throughout every year. Looking back, that was pretty surprising considering how anticommunist many people are in my country, and how right-wing governments had been ruling for like 30 years straight at that point.

    One year we devoted to deeply studying Thucidides’ Peloponessian War, which is basically the first materialistic analysis of historical events.

    There were some negative aspects, like teachers usually being ultranationalists who disregarded the curriculum and went straight for propagandizing us. Or some “incovenient times” being covered very shortly and shittily. Or too much emphasis on analyzing art in the ancient world (after the first week, it’s hard to get excited about people deciding to stop painting animals on walls and instead use triangles and circles). The worst part was that the curriculum stopped just before WW1. Our books had chapters on modern history but we never covered them (again those “inconvenient times” coming up).

    But overall it was fun and stimulating. A big reason I became a Marxist was that when I was reading Marx, his analysis was already making sense for me. I didn’t have to deconstruct any lies I learned in school (thankfully those ultranationalist teachers were transparent enough to pick up on their bullshit). Class struggle drives history? Yeah, I already learned that. Material analysis? Yeah, I already know how to do that. It was easy to see that Marx’s observations were astute and his conclusions solid.

  • olgas_husband@lemmygrad.ml
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    6 months ago

    by hobby I’m pretty sure it means no scientific rigor whatsoever to find wacky ways to idealize things like roman empire, feudalism, cruzades, colonization, nazi germany and etc. also this all things connected meme has a faint smell of international jew to me, coming from a crypto bro.

  • blakeus12 [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    given the fact that this acct is called “Crypto Max” i doubt it but in America many people feel this way because our history curriculums are entirely fucking garbage fire great man oversimplified-ass nothingburgers that we are fed like slop in an effort to make us hate communism.