Transcript SS 20 Intro Lecture

Why Study History?
• To find out who is lying to us:
•
“The broad mass of the nation … will more easily fall victim
to a big lie than to a small one.” — Adolf Hitler, in his 1925
book Mein Kampf.
•
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people
will eventually come to believe it.” — Nazi Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels.[5]
•
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to
the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do
is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the
pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same in any country.” — Nazi Reich
•
“Political language is designed to make
lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance
of solidity and pureness” George Orwell - “Politics
and the English Language”
History For Power
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History?
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George Orwell
•
•
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“To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing
in them, to forget any fact that has become
inconvenient, and then when it becomes
necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion
for just so long as it is needed…” (Page 223)
"The past was erased, the erasure was
forgotten, the lie became truth." (Page 78)
"And if all others accepted the lie which the
party imposed-if all records told the same talethen the lie passed into history and became the
truth." (Page 37)
Why European
History?
What is Western
Civilization?
•American culture, materialism, industrialism, capitalism, commercialism,
hedonism, imperialism, modernism
History of Western
Civilization
• Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, musical, and philosophical
principles which set it apart from other great civilizations.
Church and State
Revolution Continued
• “Democracy is the offspring of literacy
and ballistics” - Harpers, Dec./06
• “The rifle on the wall of the working class
flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our
job to see that it stays there” - George
Orwell