Matthew Barlow

We tend to live in ideological echo chambers these days.  This is as true of the left as it is of the right and of the centre.  But something has shifted in recent months that I find rather interesting.  Until 2015, liberals and lefties could, and did, say with smug superiority that they dealt in facts and reality and too many people on the other did not (the latter is proved by the ‘alternative facts,’ or lies, that come out of Whitehall in London and the White House in DC, for example).

But since the autumn of 2016, I have been harangued on Twitter by leftists who trade in alternative facts and lies themselves.  In October, I found myself in the cross-hairs of the anti-Hillary Clinton left.  I had been having a discussion with one of my tweeps about President Bill Clinton’s attempts to introduce universal health care coverage in the United States in 1992-94.  This push was led, to a large degree, by Hillary Clinton.  It failed for a multitude of reasons, but the simple fact of the matter is that Mrs. Clinton and her husband attempted to introduce universal health care to the US.

During this discussion, I got attacked, in increasingly vicious language, by two leftists who apparently believed that Mrs. Clinton is the face of evil incarnate.  They accused me of lying, and, of course, being a Clinton apologist, amongst other things.  Not all that interested in this argument, I posted a link to the Wikipedia page explaining this (note that ‘Hillarycare’ also redirects to this page).  Sure, it’s Wikipedia, but it gives a general idea of what happened.  Not good enough for one of my accusers.  She pointed out Wikipedia is ‘not a primary source.’  No, it’s not.  But there is a whole bibliography leading to such sources.  So, instead, she sent me links to heavily redacted documents and heavily edited YouTube videos of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches on the matter, including one video that showed her in four different outfits.  None of this changes historical fact.

In December, it was British leftists who insisted that white people had been slaves in the United States.  This isn’t really anything new, the Irish have been claiming they were brought here as ‘slaves,’ but now this was expanded to include the Scots, English, and Welsh.  And they did not mean what people usually get confused, which is indentured servitude.  They meant that white people were chattel slaves like Africans.  In this case, though, they provided no sources, just their beliefs.  And, as one pointed out to me, she was entitled to her opinion.  Sure. She is. But she’s still wrong.  And I have the realities of history behind me on that one.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, the subject was the Civil War in the US.  The Republican Party tweeted a Happy Birthday to the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, claiming that Lincoln united the country.  Whatever one thinks of Lincoln as president, and I consider him one of the best presidents all-time (and it’s not just me, as my new favourite Wikipedia page shows), he did not unite the country.  Lincoln’s election was the excuse used for Southern secession.  So, in the midst of a conversation with a tweep, also an historian on this matter, I got harangued by a lefty.

He insisted that slave owners ‘were killing in the name of slavery from 1856 on.’ He wasn’t wrong.  And I could point to events such as Bleeding Kansas in 1854.  But, that doesn’t change the simple historical fact that Secession began with Lincoln’s election.

In all three cases, my credentials as an historian were challenged.  I have been called a ‘Professor of Bullshit,’ a ‘Doctor of Horseshit.’ I have been called a fascist, and a genocidal apologist (of what genocide, I’m not sure, I’m presuming she meant the genocide of white people sold as slaves in the 18th and 19th century).  In all three cases, lefties have based ‘arguments’ on ‘alternative facts,’ or, what I would call bullshit.  But all the weight of historical reality meant nothing to them.  They didn’t like the facts, so they decided they weren’t true.

This is deeply disturbing.