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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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Difficult to argue the whole ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ thing here and pointless, as Dump Hux, points out because you blokes (making an assumption that John and Bozzie are blokes) already know the truth.

I am not maligning the colonists. Read my earlier posts without feeling so angry at the position I take, you might be able to see that.

I do not ‘know’ that ‘truth cannot be known’. I am convinced by the rationality of the argument, by the evidence from neuroscience and psychology that explains how the brain functions. My background is psychology, if you do not believe that is a science, fine. Research psychologists do see themselves as scientists and the limitations on human objectivity are well accepted by these scientists.

I am not declaring that you do some reading. I ask you to critically and as objectively as is possible consider your own responses. Understand where your emotion comes from, what assumptions you make about the world and the judgements you make about the types of people involved in settlement.

You ask for references. You could find them for yourself if you are motivated to understand why this idea is so widespread in Universities.

Surely it is more rational to believe that the view is compelling and makes sense, rather than to imagine that academics have lost the plot? Do you have a convincing rational argument as to why so many supposedly intelligent people have been so easily fooled by a dud idea?

Bozzie History should be non-fiction but what is a ‘fact’ and what is not, is not as easy to determine as you seem to assume. If it was there would be no argument. David Irving is wrong because there is convincing evidence that he is wrong. There is not the same level of convincing evidence for this argument and will not be, because of the circumstances of settlement
Posted by Mollydukes, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 10:45:36 AM
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Dump Hux, the only “information vacume” here is yours. You ignore what doesn’t fit your preconceptions, so you have an information hole until you hear something familiar – are you a student of Moses?

People play with words, at the UN they do it all the time (bloody dictators are champions of freedom and Western democracies commit genocide). But as Bozzie says, in our context genocide means deliberate “race killing”.

I don’t know the Negri case, but as far as Tasmanian history is concerned I have investigated all of the accusations made against Windschuttle and (with a very few very insignificant exceptions) Windschuttle is right and the academics demonstrably wrong.

If you read the above posts, you will see the pattern. Bozzie gives the example of Ryan saying historians make up figures, I give the example of her falsifying Robinson’s diaries, Moses says she didn’t. We produce the evidence, he ignores it, emotes insults, says he has read more books so he must be right, and moves on. This is what they do all the time. And they accuse everyone else of doing exactly what they are doing – it is practically pathological.

I first assumed Windschuttle’s book must be at least partly mistaken. It wasn’t until I investigated all the academics “answers”, that I knew Windschuttle was right. The evidence is there, you don’t need a PhD to work it out – in fact, given the humanities standards, you need that like a hole in the head – literally.

http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/washout.html
Posted by John Dawson, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 11:59:21 AM
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So John go back to the beginning of the forum, add up the nasty words and you will see that you win hands down and that the first insult was by Windschuttle.

The next example of abuse is from someone who objects to Moses’s argument. There does not appear to be any abuse from anyone on the black arm-band side or is this a ’truth’ that I can’t see? Dirk does resort to sarcasm but it is not in the same league as John’s invective.

Bozzie is not particularly abusive but refuses to see that he is missing the point Moses is making about the use of the word ‘genocide’.

Also Bozzie exaggerates what ordinary Australians believe. As Enay says the numbers or proportions don’t matter, we just know that some settlers did indiscriminately kill Indigenous people and we call that genocide. The word genocide is used because it is convenient and because the meaning has become ‘debased’ if you like.

You say that is the only thing you object to and I say you are exaggerating the whole issue of the correct use of words. But are you sure that is the only thing you object to?

Because later you state that Aboriginals were “not exterminated, nor were they killed just because they were Aboriginals” but none of the rebuttals that you or anyone has offered here convinces me of that ‘fact’.

There are other books (and sources) apart from those written by black-armband historians in which I have read descriptions of turkey shoots and attitudes toward black people.

Motive is important because I think it is the motives 'genocide deniers' attribute to 'black-arm-banders' that gets you so emotional and irrational about the whole issue. Now that is a ‘truth’ that you cannot or will not see.

Bozzie says that historians need to stop pushing their politics. Hello! that is exactly what Windschuttle and you blokes are doing. We cannot help but base our arguments on our world-view (not our politics as politics also are based on world views).
Posted by Mollydukes, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 3:01:28 PM
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Dump Hux – thanks for your high-browed summation of the debate. Your insightful commentary is breathtaking in its scope.

Mollydukes – I don’t feel angry at the position you take. Unlike Dirk and Dump Trux I want to know other people’s position on things. I’m interested in the opinions of others and I’m interested in how they’ve arrived at these opinions. I try never to close my mind to anything,that doesn't mean that I can't hold certain convictions. I agree with John Dawson when he asserts that motivations don't matter, as long as the scholarship can be honestly backed up with facts.

I imagine that the early settlers were people much like ourselves. I think that their lives were somewhat harder than ours today, with no social safety-nets to fall back on. I think they found themselves in a totally alien environment in harsh conditions, with no other means of long term survival other than their own labour and resources. I don't think that they were anymore prone to commit murder than we are today. They were a product of their times.

I agree with you Mollydukes that the study of history is not always as black and white as we would like. That shouldn’t be a license for shoddy scholarship. If some of the "Whitewash" crowd were detectives investigating a crime, they’d be on trial for fabricating evidence and perjury.

My interest here is the understanding of our history. I believe, and ample evidence exists, that this history has been abused to bring about political results. It is this debasing of scholarship that true academics should be attacking, not defending.
Posted by bozzie, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 3:37:38 PM
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I’m glad I win “hands down”, but if she checks I think Mollydukes will find my words are descriptive rather than nasty – and backed up. She won’t find words like “hiss”, “fatuous”, “puerile” and “smarty-pants” amongst them. If she doesn’t think such words are abusive, then yes, that is a truth she doesn’t seem to see.

Mollydukes says “there are other books … in which I have read descriptions of turkey shoots and attitudes toward black people.” No one is denying there were violent white people, either justifiably in self defence, or unjustly initiating force (not all Aborigines were nice either). But we are discussing whether there was anything like genocide.

Windschuttle argues that: “conflict was sporadic rather than systematic. Some mass killings were committed by both sides but they were rare and isolated events where the numbers of dead were in the tens rather than the hundreds. The notion of sustained ‘frontier warfare’ is fictional.” The first volume of Fabrication has proved this in spades for Tasmania. Volumes 2 and 3 will make his case for the mainland.

Academia, and the 600 strong Australian Historical Association, have been out to get Windschuttle by any means. If he were wrong, don’t you think someone would have found something Moses could have used here to back up all his ad hominem? I challenged him to give us the page numbers in “Whitewash” where we may find evidence that would contradict Windschuttle’s death toll. Did he come up with anything? He just evades the challenge by misrepresenting it then demands that we read more of the academics' books. When we do that, and investigate, and find them to be as fallacious as Whitewash, he’ll have a dozen more books to demand we read (if we "dare"). The academics can keep this up indefinitely - at your (taxed) expense. In the meantime Windschuttle has to fight at his own expense. But he’s winning because he has a huge advantage. He can focus on digging up the truth, whereas the academics have to keep coming up with ways to obscure it.

http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/books/washout.html
Posted by John Dawson, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 7:45:56 PM
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Bozzie You claim that Dirk doesn’t want to know other people’s opinion. Why did you say that? It is inaccurate and illustrates your bias attitude. Clearly, he spat the dummy over the ‘abuse’ not over the opinions.

Did you notice your misrepresentation, or do you honestly believe it is ‘true’?

Anyway, I am happy to get rational and not say nasty things.

Lets talk about whether there was ‘anything like genocide’. I say there was something very like genocide.

But if you define genocide in the way that you want to define it then there was nothing like genocide – no death camps, no deliberate government policy of extermination. Discussion finished.

But..the point is that not many of us – academics or otherwise believe that that definition is the 'truth'. Not many of us are interested in counting the numbers. Do you understand that?

You do not seem to understand that for a lot of people the ‘truth’ is more than the black and white history war that you characterise it to be. We have not been hoodwinked by the schools, by Dirk and his ilk.

A more complete and accurate understanding of the ‘truth’ of settlement dynamics and whether there was anything like ‘genocide’ requires that one thinks about ‘genocide’ in a broader sense.

When Bozzie says that he imagines (note that Bozzie you do use your imagination) that the early settlers were much like ourselves, that is where he goes wrong.

They were the product of their time and their time was very different from ours. Think about what life was like in 19th Century England
Posted by Mollydukes, Thursday, 21 April 2005 6:36:28 PM
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