Fake History: Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped The World. By Otto English, Wellbeck, 2022
Anyone who has seen a big enough expanse of water will be able to see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon. The bizarre notion that pre-Colombian people thought the earth was flat was started by Washington Irving, author of Sleepy Hollow, the Rip Van Winkle stories and a biography of Columbus published in 1828. According to Irving, Columbus sailed west from Spain to prove that the Earth was spherical and ‘discovered’ America in the process. However, there is no evidence that Columbus had that intention and there were already, in 1492, some 60 million people living in America. The founding myth of America and many other states is that of ‘exceptionalism’, the belief that they are a special people and, by inference, that others are inferior.
Abraham Lincoln did not believe that all men were created equal. In 1861 Lincoln became the first Republican Party President. Shortly afterwards a Civil War began which killed an estimated 618,000 people (a greater number than British dead, military and civilian, in the Second World War). In his Gettysburg Address of 1863 Lincoln declared that the American nation was founded on the proposition that ‘all men are created equal’. What he meant was ‘all white men’. In a debate in 1858 Lincoln said that he was ‘not, nor have ever been, in favour of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races’. He was opposed to ‘mixed race’ marriages but he was strongly in favour of ‘repatriating’ black people to Africa. He didn’t believe black people should have the vote, though he did eventually agree to extending suffrage to black Americans who had served on the Union side in the Civil War. But not to other black Americans.
Queen Victoria married a German, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, in 1840. They continued with that family name, Saxe-Coburg Gotha, until the First World War with Germany, when overnight it became the House of Windsor. The insinuation has long been held that the royal family is German. This is rather like Donald Trump’s accusation that Barack Obama couldn’t be a ‘real American’ because he wasn’t born in America and his father was born in Kenya. Barack was born in America and his father was born in Kenya, but that didn’t matter to the racist meme. The arch-opponent of immigration Nigel Farage is the great-great grandson of German refugees in the 1860s. He may be a hypocrite, but it would be absurd to claim that he is really a German.
There was never a realistic prospect of Nazi Germany invading Britain during the Second World War. Although their air forces were more or less evenly matched, the Kriegsmarine was massively outgunned by the Royal Navy. That alone made invasion extremely unlikely. German General Alfred Jodl said that an invasion would be like ‘sending troops into a mincing machine’. And Field Marshal von Rundstedt later claimed that Hitler never had a serious plan to invade. But that doesn’t stop the relentless propaganda being pumped out that Britain could have lost the war if not for those who gave their lives in its defence.
Many falsehoods have been told by and about Churchill, some of which have been repeated by his biographer and wannabe Churchillian PM, Andrew Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Among the many things Churchill never actually said: ‘If you’re not a Liberal by 25 you don’t have a heart’ and that ‘if you’re not a Conservative by 35, you don’t have a brain’ (he was a Conservative MP at 25 and a Liberal MP at 35). Born into the ruling class, Churchill’s reputation was forged when he became Prime Minister of the wartime coalition in 1940. Like Abraham Lincoln, he has acquired a cult status, seemingly beyond criticism. But his defence of Empire is less well known. For instance, writing in the 1930s of aborigines in Australia: ‘I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place’. How much longer will his statue remain in Parliament Square? Upon hearing of a suggestion to remove the statue, Boris Johnson said that he would ‘fight with every breath in his body’ to keep the statue up. A more likely scenario would be — taking a cue from his hero — that he would give the order for others to do the fighting.
And there’s much more fake history exposed in this recommended book by Otto English. Some hostile reviewers have gleefully seized upon the fact that this name is fake. His real name is Andrew Scott, which is also the name of an actor. To avoid confusion, and possible legal consequences, he adopted a pen name. Nothing unusual about that for authors.
Lew Higgins
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