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The Forum > Article Comments > Windschuttle, history warriors and real historians > Comments

Windschuttle, history warriors and real historians : Comments

By Dirk Moses, published 11/4/2005

Dirk Moses offers a riposte to Keith Windschuttle's essay 'Tutorials in Terrorism'.

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The quaint idea seems to be circulating that, because Mr. Windschuttle found a few errors in the work of two historians, the entire edifice of Aboriginal History comes crumbling down. Some people choose to believe what they want to believe, it appears, and no amount of evidence one adduces will change their minds. Those open to reason may be intersted in the insightful analysis of the 'history wars' by Martin Crotty, an historian at the University of Queensland: http://www.brisinst.org.au/resources/brisbane_institute_crotty_history.html
He answers this quaint idea very well there.
Dirk Moses
Posted by Dirk Moses, Friday, 15 April 2005 9:50:12 AM
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Dirk Moses implies that, contrary to Keith Windschuttle’s claims, orthodox historians don’t exaggerate “claims of genocide and Holocaust in Australia”, and he cites as evidence Windschuttle’s omission of an article of his. But Windschuttle didn’t mention Moses in his book at all. Because it doesn’t purport to cover every historian who ever wrote an article; rather it analyses those historians whose books made history. Where they implied that genocide took place Windschuttle says so, where they denied genocide, he says that too.

But if, contrary to his slurs, Moses agrees with Windschuttle that claims of genocide in Tasmania are fabrications, why did his essay in "Whitewash; on Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History" concoct an elaborate ad hominem “denialist syndrome” to try and tag Windschuttle as a “denialist” akin to David Irving (who denies the holocaust)?

The academics condemn Windschuttle for presenting too many facts, too few, too pitilessly, or anything they can think of, and so box themselves in to defend their indefensible colleagues. This “entire edifice“ comes “crashing down” as soon as anyone checks the facts.

Windschuttle discovered that Lyndall Ryan’s claim of “a conscious policy of Genocide” in Tasmania was totally fictitious. A few erroneous footnotes as Moses twists it, is actually habitual falsification. For example, Ryan implies that Robinson's diaries recorded 1400 Aborigines shot, whereas they report about 188 shot – a “minor point” that has not been addressed by any academic to this date.

We are not talking about a "few errors" of two historians here as Moses turns it but dozens of errors made by Reynolds and Ryan and many more made by many more orthodox historians. And the “mistakes” nearly all overstate British violence, which suggests ideologically driven fabrication.

A score of academics wrote Whitewash, a book full of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing. Anyone who thinks it makes a case should check out the facts, because they dig the academics deeper into their mire of malice, misrepresentation and malpractice.

Whitewash is analysed chapter by chapter in my book: Washout, on the academic response to Aboriginal history. http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/washout.html

John Dawson
Posted by John Dawson, Friday, 15 April 2005 7:40:40 PM
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Dirk – A few errors? Very quaint indeed. By “those open to reason” I take it you mean those who already support your view. But I agree that everyone should read Crotty’s analysis. If read with an open mind it’s not quite the insightful demolition job you think it is. It’s so full of holes it wouldn’t flap in a cyclone.

I also think people who are interested should obtain Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History, the academic compilation Whitewash, and John Dawson’s Washout and read all three in conjunction with one another.

Dirk, have a read of some of the comments on this thread. People really believe that a systematic attempt was made in this country to wipe out an entire race of people, and that this attempt was supported and condoned by government and society in general. People believe that organized “turkey shoots” of Aboriginal people were common place and normal. In essence they believe that every Aboriginal death and every Aboriginal child removed from a family was an act of genocide. Why would people have these views when they are clearly and demonstrably incorrect?

More and more Australians are rejecting this exaggerated and totally bleak view of our history and ourselves. Maybe some credibility can be restored if more historians stopped using history to push their politics. We need people like Keith Windschuttle and John Dawson, more now than ever.
Posted by bozzie, Saturday, 16 April 2005 1:00:35 PM
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Bozzie it seems as if you a patronising me and suggesting that I haven't looked into Windschuttles arguments and find that his point of view does not stand up to analysis.

I do believe that there was an effort to wipe out the Indigenous people. However, not all settlers were involved but the communications from some who objected to the practice clearly shows that it was happening.

Why would it not happen when they were not regarded by many of the settlers as human? If you see black people as a sub-human species, (as Hitler saw the Jews) then there is no reason why you would not exterminate them when they are causing you problems and stealing your property. It was the same as shooting feral dogs.

It amazes me that you are able to maintain that it didn't happen.

You think that to admit it happened is a bleak view of our history. I don't see it that way at all. It does not make our settlers any worse than any other human group through out history but to deny their behaviour and the general attitude of the times, present them as a group of superiour humans, which is quite absurd.
Posted by Mollydukes, Saturday, 16 April 2005 2:28:06 PM
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Molydukes says that "there was an effort to wipe out the Indigenous people”. How does she know this? She leaned it from: teachers, professors, journalists, museums, high court judges, Governor General's, etc. How do the teachers etc. know this? They learned it from historians like Reynolds and Ryan.

But historians like Reynolds and Ryan did not prove “that there was an effort to wipe out the indigenous people”, they faked it. How do I know this? As far as Tasmania is concerned, I know this because Windschuttle presented case after case after case where their references were bogus, their arguments fallacious, their narrative fictitious. When you subtract their furphies, they have no case left.

How do I know that it is not Windschuttle who fakes it? By reading the academics' official answer in “Whitewash”, and investigating the attacks of dozens of academics, and discovering that they do not dent Windschuttle’s thesis. In fact they prove it by their inability to answer his charges, and the disreputable means they employ to try to blur the issues, slur Windschuttle, and intimidate anyone who is convinced by him.

Molydukes claims that because some settlers objected to the Aborigines being wiped out, that “clearly shows that it was happening”. By that reasoning, the fact that some people today object to paedophilia, means that future historians will be able to condemn us as a paedophile society.

Molydukes claims that Aborigines “were not regarded by many of the settlers as human?”. No doubt a few settlers thought this, as a few think it today, but the vast majority, and certainly the cultural leaders, were of the enlightenment view that all men of all races were brothers. That is why settlers educated Aborigines, traded with them, converted, adopted, employed them – not the way you would treat sub-humans.

Molydukes is amazed that we are able to maintain that genocidal behaviour didn't happen. We go by the evidence. In Tasmania 120 Aborigines were killed, maybe a few more, mainly in self-defence or retaliation. A claim of genocide requires valid evidence. None has been presented.

John Dawson
http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/washout.html
Posted by John Dawson, Saturday, 16 April 2005 5:33:06 PM
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Mollydukes,
You are now officially a victim of an attack by history warriors. By daring to tell the truth contained in a library of books and articles on Australian history, they pin you against a wall and hiss "where is the proof?!" How are you supposed to do that in an internet forum? And how are you expected to convince the likes of Dawson who is precritically committed to Windschuttle? Let's recall that Windschuttle wrote the foreword to Dawson's book and published it in his vanity press. These are the type of people who think that academic historians are politically motivated but Windschuttle is not!

Note their tactic. Rather than rise to the challenge I made to them in my article here -- which entails reading my book and others like Tony Roberts' -- the pack has rounded on Lyndall Ryan (who, incidentally, did not make the claims attributed to her here) and Henry Reynolds. They simply ignore evidence and arguments that are not congenial to their dogmatically held beliefs. Note, too, that Windschuttle has been unable to contest any of my points in my article. He's hoping that people won't notice; judging by the some of the comments here, he's succeeded with some.

Don't lose heart. Their invectives don't count as scholarship among academic historians (from a broad range of convictions -- not just 'the left'). It it true that the history warriors have powerful friends in the media and government. For that reason, it's all the more important that you post the comments you do so that readers are assured that there is resistance to the trend evident in France, where a law has been passed mandating that only positive stories of its colonial past be told (see Sydney Morning Herald, 16/17 April, p. 24).
Posted by Dirk Moses, Sunday, 17 April 2005 9:33:19 AM
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