The Ugliness To History

The oppressors can write up the history, but it doesn’t change the facts. Often the truth is discovered simply by following the money.

We need to tell the truth about the ugliness to history. We don't honor our forefathers if we don't learn from their mistakes. —Radical Jesus, post on X

The Ugliness To History

by C.A. Matthews

I had an dream about what to call what I wanted to write about this week. My original title idea was along the lines of “The Truth of the Matter.” But then I came across Radical Jesus’ awesome post and thought it summed up what I wanted to say nicely (so I borrowed it with permission).

All of human history is ugly. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. You will know what you’re reading is the truth if the author doesn’t varnish over the nasty, disgusting, horrific bits that happened in the past. You’ll know what you’re reading is the truth if the past isn’t painted in uniform, glowing colors and all the actors therein portrayed as decent folks “just doing their best during tough times.”

Because if everyone is just doing their “best” why do things still suck nowadays? How did so much evil come into the world if our ancestors were “doing their best” for all of humankind? Doesn’t voting for the “lesser evil” bring about good eventually? (If you read this piece, you’d know that’s impossible.) Let’s be absolutely honest with ourselves: Human beings all lie, and they have done (and still do) some rather selfishly shitty things to each other and our planet.

There. I said it. I confessed humanity’s deepest sin. We are all liars. We are all manipulators of our own history in order to make ourselves look like decent, non-shitty actors on this stage called life. Countries and corporations are no different. In fact, they’re worse—way worse.

You and I may lie to get out of washing the dishes or protecting your significant other’s feelings when asked, “Do I look fat in this outfit?” But countries and corporations lie because it’s profitable for them to do so. They make money by being dishonest, by not telling the truth, by manipulating others to behave in a certain way in order to make the most profit no matter the consequences to those manipulated people. My mom used to call this sort of behavior as “acting ugly.”

So you can see why I was attracted to Radical Jesus’ quote. There’s an ugliness in history because when we talk about history (even very recent history) we are usually describing the lies and manipulations that occurred and who did what to whom. Who was the “profiteer” and who was the “screwed over” element in the equation, you could say.

The saddest thing of all is that the “winner” or profiteer is the one who usually writes the history books and paints themselves in glowing images of heroism and bravery. The screwed over people are often left out of the history books altogether or are painted in a poor light. Sometimes they’re even described as “sub-humans” or “worthy of extermination.” This is the case especially if the screwed over people eventually lose everything, including their lands, their lives, and their culture.

Indie journalist Caitlin Johnstone voices some disturbing thoughts on this matter:

We are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale from childhood on, our minds continually shaped by people who use their wealth to dominate our shared narratives about how things are going, what’s happening in the world, and what should be done about it. We are taught about our world by deeply indoctrinated parents and deeply indoctrinated teachers who grew up in the same status quo-enforcing information environment as us, and our indoctrination continues through all the screens in our lives until our dying breath.

You can fix everything else that’s wrong with your political system, but unless you also take away the ability of the capitalist class to psychologically manipulate the public into supporting a political status quo that has been artificially shaped by the powerful for the benefit of the powerful, nothing meaningful will change. The wars will continue, the oligarchy will continue, the inequality and injustice will continue, the exploitation and extraction will continue, the ecocide will continue. —From When The Powerful Control Public Opinion, Elections Aren't Real

Chilling but truthful words. Caitlin doesn’t hold back on revealing the ugliness of how things have been and how they are currently. She shows us how manipulations of our opinions are part and parcel of the corrupt political systems in which Westerners currently live. The wealthy and powerful control the narrative. The powerless must accept it.

Some folks label those who are powerless in the game of life as the “oppressed” and those who profit off of others’ misery as the “oppressors.” The oppressed are usually taken advantage of by the oppressors exploiting their labor or by stealing their land, homes, and/or natural resources. How one assumes the role of the oppressor or oppressed varies from time to time throughout history, but there are some patterns that seem to repeat themselves over and over again.

For example, if you have a boss who takes numerous vacations a year, knocks off each day at 2 PM after taking a three hour lunch, and drives a Maserati while you have to walk, bike, or take public transportation to work and slave 8 to 12 hours a day with never a paid day off, then you understand all about being exploited labor. If you are a small or poor country or people without any way to effectively protect yourselves from “bully countries and corporations” who lust after your land and natural resources (including cheap labor), then you certainly understand what it means to be oppressed.

One oppressed group that has been in the news for the past 250+ days are the Palestinians. They are the indigenous people of the land known as Palestine and have been for thousands of years. Until they weren’t.

(Read these excellent articles about the myths Israel is built upon to learn more details in case you’re in the dark. An excellent documentary to watch is 1948: Creation and Catastrophe available free on Kanopy. Learn more about how oppression happens to others because it could be you and yours next.)

The Western mainstream media that Caitlin Johnstone writes about so well have taken it upon themselves to paint the oppressed Palestinians as “terrorists” in recent history. This includes babies in incubators, toddlers, teens, pregnant persons, and the elderly in wheel chairs. In that way, if anything terrible happens to a Palestinian person—such as a US provided bomb falls on top of their tent while they’re sleeping or American personnel come into their refugee camp in what appears to be food aid trucks but are instead full of heavily armed soldiers who shoot at them indiscriminately—you are to think, “Who cares about dead terrorists?” and promptly forget all about that piece of ugly recent history.

You’ll notice the oppressors get to choose the terminology that we are to think about the oppressed, not the other way around. The oppressed can call their oppressors “bullies” or “murderers”, but it makes no difference. As Caitlin points out so well in her article, those with money and power get to call the shots. They are free to manipulate our attitudes toward the oppressed so much so that we won’t believe that they’re being ethnically cleansed even when we see live video of human beings being bombed into rubble. We won’t even believe when an international justice body, such as the United Nations, the ICJ, or the ICC calls what the oppressors are doing to the oppressed a “plausible genocide” based on international laws and treaties agreed upon decades ago.

That’s some pretty powerful ugly history manipulation right there, don’t you think?

One example of the oppressor manipulating the narrative of a recent event is the raid on the refugee camp that resulted in 274 Palestinians killed in order to return four Israeli captives. You’ll notice how the mainstream media won’t mention that the Israelis killed three other of their hostages, because that might caused people to ask questions about the IDF’s Hannibal Directive that states all their hostages are essentially disposable.

You’re manipulated by the mainstream narrative not to understand it was never about recovering hostages for the Israelis; it’s all about committing genocide. You’re manipulated not to worry about the lost of life of innocent refugees in the tent camp where they were driven to by Israeli bombing Gaza because, remember, the oppressed don’t get to write their own history. Those dead children were terrorists, after all.

Another good example of manipulating and twisting the facts can be seen in the conflict in Ukraine. In a rare burst of honesty, Senator Lindsay Graham blurted out the real reasons that the US and NATO countries are pouring so many armaments into that beleaguered area of the world: mineral wealth. Trillions of dollars worth of lithium and iron ore and other desirable metals are located there.

Sorry to break it to you, but no, we’re not preserving “freedom and democracy” in Ukraine as the mainstream media has posited for the past two years. We’re allowing a dictator—which is what Zelensky is now since his presidential term expired and he didn’t step down because he canceled the elections—to continue to accept more arms. The same armaments that have been sold on the black market for a profit, ending up recently in the hands of drug dealing criminals in Ireland. Oops.

The oppressors can write up the history, but it doesn’t change the facts, which eventually leak out. Sooner or later, the public hears about the black market sales of arms from Ukraine for instance. Sooner or later, the public realizes how many thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians are dead in both Palestine and Ukraine. But the oppressors—those who profit from the military-industrial complex, along with the petrochemical and mining industries—will be rolling in big mountains of dough by then.

Keep in mind the oppressors always make profits without a care as to the consequences of their actions. Any journalist who downplays those ugly facts is a liar and shouldn’t be believed. That’s one way of knowing who is telling the truth in the media. Those who easily lie and manipulate to cover up ugly recent history in order to make profits for themselves or get ahead in their careers are not to be trusted.

My advice is to get into the ugly details yourself and determine who really are the oppressor and the oppressed in any recent event. Don’t readily accept what the writer of an article or producer of a video tells you who the oppressor and oppressed are without doing some further research. Find a variety of sources and read or view each one with a discerning eye. You might want to research what sorts of land, resources, and other valuables the oppressed people possess that the oppressors want to get their hands on. Often the truth is discovered simply by “following the money.”

For instance, does it make a difference to you to know that the Gazans have oil and natural gas reserves just off their Mediterranean Sea coast? (I wrote about the Gazans’ oil and gas last year.) Does it make more sense to you now why their oppressors would what to exterminate them and drive them off their land in order to get to their coast and oil and gas reserves? Yeah, I know that racism is a big thing with Zionists, but Israel, the US and other Western countries wouldn’t mind getting their hands on those Palestinian oil and gas reserves. The Nordstream Pipeline (which mysteriously blew up!) no longer provides Western Europe with cheap heating fuel, so that ugly fact could go a long ways to explain why billions of dollars in bombs and armaments are being sent to Israel to commit a genocide.

It’s how white settler-colonizers have always worked. Just ask a Native American.

The oppressors get the oil. The racists get the land. The oppressed get painted in a bad light. And the oppressors nowadays don’t really care if we know they’re not the heroes they make themselves out to be as long as their bank accounts get fatter.

To put things further into perspective:

“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10757424-we-know-that-they-are-lying-they-know-that-they)

That’s the true ugliness to history, what has happened and what is happening. It becomes readily apparent when we keep this quote in mind. That’s the truth of the matter.

Related Articles and Other Interesting Links

Israel was Built on Myth, and Now it’s Busted

Israel Was Built on Myth, Part II: Modern Hebrew is a Made-Up Language https://euroyankee.substack.com/p/israel-was-built-on-myth-part-ii

We've Seen This "Antisemitism Crisis On The Left" Script Before https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/weve-seen-this-antisemitism-crisis

A mass demonstration on July 24 in Washington D.C. to protest the Congressional invitation for Netanyahu https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/10/nunh-j10.htm

American Perfidy https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/american-perfidy

UN finds more evidence of sexual violence committed by the IDF against men, women and children in Gaza https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/un-finds-more-evidence-of-sexual

Active-Duty US Service Members Issue Appeal to Congress to Stop Funding Genocide https://truthout.org/articles/active-duty-us-service-members-issue-appeal-to-congress-to-stop-funding-genocide/

The Gaza Pier: A public relations stunt doomed from the start https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/war-on-gaza-pier-public-relations-stunt-doomed-start

94% of Americans Want to End Ukraine War, but US Rejects China Peace Deal, Opposes Talks With Russia https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/11/94-of-americans-want-to-end-ukraine-war-but-us-rejects-china-peace-deal-opposes-talks-with-russia/

IF YOU WORK FOR A LIVING: Zionist Billionaire Lobbyists Are Targeting You https://mark192.substack.com/p/if-you-work-for-a-living-zionist

Investigation: Where was the Israeli military on October 7th? https://archive.ph/QRMKD

How Daniel Ellsberg's Moral Power Remains Alive https://tomdispatch.com/the-absence-and-presence-of-daniel-ellsberg/

Don't Fall for the Two-Party Trap – Vote for Real Change https://www.citizenschronicle.org/p/dont-fall-for-the-two-party-trap

When The Powerful Control Public Opinion, Elections Aren't Real https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/when-the-powerful-control-public

Jill Stein speaks at the Red Line Rally youtu.be/pOp0tb_BNlg?si=BzMYiYW3X7HR3v3c

For the xenophobes... https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/national/

BREAKING: Saudi Arabia Ends The Deal!! (The end of the petrodollar) www.youtube.com/live/WUse31qo_JM

Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier https://responsiblestatecraft.org/how-much-aid-gaza-pier/

Unpacking Blinken’s lies on the Gaza ceasefire negotiations https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/6/14/unpacking-blinkens-lies-on-the-gaza-ceasefire-negotiations

YOUR KIDS ARE HEADING TO WAR: America Gears Up For Global War By Reigniting The Military Draft For 18-26 Year Olds https://mark192.substack.com/p/your-kids-are-heading-to-war-america

Palestinian Scholar Detained by Israeli Police for Alleged Incitement to Terrorism https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/13/palestinian-scholar-detained-by-israeli-police-for-alleged-incitement-to-terrorism/

Spreading The Fiction Of An Antisemitism Epidemic On The Left https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/spreading-the-fiction-of-an-antisemitism

Behold The World Gently https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/behold-the-world-gently

US senator says Ukraine is 'gold mine' with $12 trillion of minerals 'we can't afford to lose' https://geopoliticaleconomy.substack.com/p/ukraine-12-trillion-minerals-west-china-russia

It’s clear Israel ‘rescuing hostages’ is mainly cover for more genocide https://www.thecanary.co/global/world-analysis/2024/06/10/israel-hostages/

No Way Out in Nuseirat: the Great Hostage Rescue Massacre https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/16/no-way-out-in-nuseirat-the-great-hostage-rescue-massacre/

Cornel West adapts to far-right in interview on Musk-boosted X program https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/06/11/ackj-j11.html

1948: Creation and Catastrophe (documentary) https://www.kanopy.com/en/product/5293726

It seems Israel is bombing Lebanon to drag the US into a regional war https://www.councilestatemedia.uk/p/it-seems-israel-is-bombing-lebanon

US Spent $98,000 Per Minute on Nuclear Weapons in 2023, New Report Says https://truthout.org/articles/us-spent-98000-per-minute-on-nuclear-weapons-in-2023-new-report-says/

50,000 Children in Gaza Need to Be Treated for Acute Malnutrition, UNRWA Says https://truthout.org/articles/50000-children-in-gaza-need-to-be-treated-for-acute-malnutrition-unrwa-says/

How America is WINNING in Ukraine https://euroyankee.substack.com/p/how-america-is-winning-in-ukraine

Chris Hedges: Nero’s Guests https://scheerpost.com/2024/06/16/chris-hedges-neros-guests/

"I Ain't Reading All That; Free Palestine"