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Photo Illustration by Jordan Tichenor/The Advocate
History 101 – What you thought
you knew and what you need to know
The Advocate
History is filled with lies. Since we were young, we’ve been force-fed pure BS by some of those teaching us. Were they purposely misleading us? Probably not, but there are a few things that history books and other sources have remarkably skewed to make people — especially those with some prominence — appear better or worse than they really were. Here are a few people who have gotten better press (or worse, in one case) than they probably deserve, and the truth behind their notable actions.
1. Jimmy Carter: President Carter’s own words were that human rights are supposed to be “the soul of or foreign policy.” His image as a diplomat who has done work all over the world has made his reputation quite good since leaving office, but I’d have a hard time believing anyone could shake his hand without coming away with a handful of blood. Carter was inaugurated 13 months after Indonesia’s December 1975 invasion of East Timor, and the president promptly provided military aid to the Jarkarta regime while they continued to massacre Timorese civilians. When Carter left office, death tolls hovered around 200,000. James Petras, an author and sociology professor at Binghamton University in New York, said in a 2001 interview, “Every time Carter intervenes, the outcomes are always heavily skewed against political forces that want change. In each case, he had a political agenda – to support very conservative solutions that were compatible with elite interests.”
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In 1990, Carter ignored voter fraud in the Dominican Republic that resulted in a narrow victory for incumbent president Joaquin Balaguer. Carter supported the victory, and used his prestige to deem the election legit. This set the stage for another victory for Balaguer in 1994 – again fraudulent – but this time Balaguer was removed from office after two years. After finding out nearly 200,000 votes had been removed, he was not placed on the 1996 ballot. Speaking of elections, during Haiti’s 1990 presidential election, Carter continuously pressured candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide to concede defeat; Aristide ended up winning the election and picked up 67 percent of the vote.
2. Martin Luther King Jr.: Considering the previous paragraphs, a reader might be expecting some frank nastiness about the most popular civil rights leader of all time. On the contrary, King was on the precipice of another great movement: poor people’s rights. Between the years of 1965 and 1968 (when King was killed), the man was actively campaigning against capitalism, Vietnam, and the treatment of poor human beings by the American people. King wanted “radical changes in the structure of our society” in regard to distribution of wealth and power. “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar,” King said.
King called the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” during the Vietnam War. He repeatedly said that the U.S. was on “the wrong side of revolutions,” and that the U.S. was suppressing the revolutions of Third World countries. Most media corporations said King had lost his credibility, and became a threat of insurrection upon the Capitol. Most people don’t know any of this, and most history teachers won’t provide that information because the media didn’t care for King’s actions.
3. Christopher Columbus: Considering the greed that runs rampant today (bankers, lobbyists, religions, politicians, tycoons), it’s no surprise the man that “discovered” America was at the forefront of this madness in 1492. Upon discovering the New World, Columbus said of the indigenous: “They are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it . . . they would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”
And this is what Columbus and his men did. They built 340 gallows by the year 1500, and ordered the indigenous people to find gold. If they did not meet their quota, their arms were hacked off, they were hung, they were stabbed; in all cases, they were maimed or murdered. All this in the name of gold. Not God, although Columbus was a fierce Christian; in this time period the ultimate Christian aim was to acquire gold. If Columbus were alive now, surely he would work on Wall Street.
4. George Washington: I’ll be castrated for this one: President Washington was a piss-poor general. He lost six of nine major military engagements during the Revolutionary War, and was lucky to be alive after several. After the Continental Congress appointed him commander of the Continental Army, Washington continually tried to attack British forces, despite the fact that his men were best suited for defensive stands. Instead of waging successful aggressive, attack-based battles that he wanted to, he was forced to adapt using tactics he was unfamiliar with.
Unable to secure the flanks of his positions, he was forced to withdraw from several battles. He was nearly fired until his counterattack on the Delaware River finally produced a strong victory. The reason he was chosen as commander-in-chief in the first place was due to a lack of other strong candidates with military experience. With such a poor tactician in charge, how is America not under British control today? Washington improved his leadership skills, and we pretty much lucked out.
Information used was found in “Jimmy Carter and Human Rights” and “The Martin Luther King You Don’t See On TV” by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon, “Columbus and Western Civilization” by Howard Zinn, and www.colonialwars.suite101.com.
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