tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83647156753501877552024-03-14T10:27:27.014-07:00THE COUNTERFACTUAL HISTORY REVIEWNews, Analysis, and Commentary from the World of "What If?" Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.comBlogger267125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-62120787298342760342024-01-25T09:08:00.000-08:002024-01-25T09:08:04.344-08:00A Connecticut Yankee Counterfactual at Auschwitz: On Elon Musk's Holocaust "What Ifs"<p>I was happy to contribute some thoughts to Shira Li Bartov's new article in <i>The Forward, </i>"Could Social Media Really Have Stopped the Holocaust?" which addresses Elon Musk's use of counterfactuals to reflect on the legacy of the Holocaust. See article <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/577347/could-social-media-really-have-stopped-the-holocaust-scholars-say-elon-musks-fantasy-scenario-is-far-fetched/">LINK</a></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNp7qwQq_pKsHL1vmj5cIGyavFmGP9f0DbV37s0bcu4ZT2TSgvqxOnFUQoGMkXcXcnmlo7QQ4FWoSL3bNaJ1SgYaAWEPA-VycTRsqVi7DA7lFgy_CG-jmgq4ZuFm2GfdC0ZTBUOOyZgTPIuzbsGiCtX0RgpcYotONr1ki4Y8_fiBD0AhbjBzCmITUuy4/s2400/ee08817e-b55c-4c5d-a57a-7543e8daa0ff-2400x1350-1705955639.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="2400" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmNp7qwQq_pKsHL1vmj5cIGyavFmGP9f0DbV37s0bcu4ZT2TSgvqxOnFUQoGMkXcXcnmlo7QQ4FWoSL3bNaJ1SgYaAWEPA-VycTRsqVi7DA7lFgy_CG-jmgq4ZuFm2GfdC0ZTBUOOyZgTPIuzbsGiCtX0RgpcYotONr1ki4Y8_fiBD0AhbjBzCmITUuy4/w400-h225/ee08817e-b55c-4c5d-a57a-7543e8daa0ff-2400x1350-1705955639.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Here are my full comments, some of which appear verbatim in the article, which also quotes leading Holocaust scholars and Jewish historians like Christopher Browning, Doris Bergen, and David Myers.</p><p>When Musk visited Auschwitz the other day, he was <a href="Musk said that had there been social media at the time of World War II, the Holocaust “would have been impossible to hide” and lives could have been saved.">reported as saying</a> that "<b>[if] <span style="background-color: white; font-family: AP; font-size: 18px;">there [had] been social media at the time of World War II, the Holocaust 'would have been impossible to hide' and lives could have been saved."</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: AP;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 18px;">As I noted:</span></span></p><p>Musk’s comments are the latest examples of how people often use counterfactual claims about the past to justify various agendas in the present. By claiming the Holocaust might have been prevented – or its deadly effects mitigated – had social media existed in the 1930s and 1940s, Musk is floating a “fantasy scenario” – in which history turns out better thanks to an alteration of some key variable -- in this case, transporting present-day technology in to the past. (This is what I've called a “Connecticut Yankee Counterfactual). </p><p>This fantasy is a self-serving one. It enables him to switch the conversation away from his allowing rightwing antisemites to post freely on X – which have increasingly discredited his platform – by claiming it would have served a social good IF – and It’s a big if – it had existed 80 years ago. So his counterfactual is an example of deflection. Maybe he really believes it – in which case he’s not making the claim in bad faith – but it certainly diverts attention away from his actions in the real world of the present. </p><p>Finally, Musk’s claim has the advantage of being irrefutable, since it – like all counterfactuals – it is not subject to empirical critique. </p><p>There are countless examples of similar claims. Rightwing opponents of gun control have argued that if German Jews had only possessed firearms in Nazi Germany (and if the Nazis hadn’t “supported” gun control) they could have prevented their own persecution. <a href="https://thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/i-havent-yet-read-steven-halbrooks-new.html">See my blog post from 2013 debunking this claim</a>. See also Donald Trump’s <a href="https://thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.com/2017/05/donald-trumps-lazy-fast-forward.html">ridiculous claims</a> about Andrew Jackson being able to prevent the Civil War had he only been alive. See also Glenn Beck’s <a href="https://thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.com/2013/06/more-counterfactual-inanity.html">claim</a> (which reversed Musk’s claim that history would have been BETTER if modern technology had existed in the Nazi era) when he said in 2013 that history would have been WORSE (for the Jews) if Hitler had access to the surveillance technology possessed by Pres. Obama. </p><p>These kinds of claims often discredit counterfactual reasoning in the eyes of critics – though one should point out people on all wings of the political spectrum employ use it. Sometimes they do it to evade criticism; sometimes to advance criticism – as when <a href="https://thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-counterfactual-that-dares-not-speak.html">journalists attacked the Trump administration</a> for missing opportunities to combat COVID. </p><p>Interestingly, as a footnote, the Israel-Hamas War raises a different question about modern technology existing in the past. Given how popular opinion of the current war has been decisively shaped by video footage shot on personal devices, it’s likely that the Allied war against Nazi Germany would have been more difficult to prosecute had there been daily images of German civilian being incinerated in Allied bombing raids. (Some conservatives made this point already in the 1970s in decrying media coverage of the War in Vietnam). </p><p>Anyway, the examples are legion, but from my perspective, the key function of Musk’s counterfactual assertion is to rehabilitate his social media platform by investing it with hypothetical virtues – all the while deflecting attention away from its real world liabilities.</p><p></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-72593221434012144892023-10-17T11:09:00.002-07:002023-10-17T11:11:22.603-07:00What If Arthur Szyk Had Been Born 100 Years Later? <p><span style="font-family: arial;">The famous Polish-Jewish-American artist Arthur Szyk is experiencing something of a renaissance these days. Witness the important exhibit currently on view at Fairfield University's Thomas J. Walsh Gallery of Art, <em style="background-color: white; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/szyk/">In Real Times. Arthur Szyk: Artist and Soldier for Human Rights.</a></em></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5a1KZH5kg3gX7VZXGOybrIQFeYjBlRCCKK7fnsZGlP8hpOsF8aRpFX-UJfZ2YwbQ5p685yRvL8i4WS_gIUhE6-k2TEVZiVTYdGvx6XNBgzjuWBSZgUGKI8s_6M49kNsyZNahKtXjoDmIULz7-FGTeM9eeH082Oa9E3GoiLsF6OZVP7aKFIBJQE2SkZto/s1173/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-17%20at%202.06.59%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="1173" height="259" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5a1KZH5kg3gX7VZXGOybrIQFeYjBlRCCKK7fnsZGlP8hpOsF8aRpFX-UJfZ2YwbQ5p685yRvL8i4WS_gIUhE6-k2TEVZiVTYdGvx6XNBgzjuWBSZgUGKI8s_6M49kNsyZNahKtXjoDmIULz7-FGTeM9eeH082Oa9E3GoiLsF6OZVP7aKFIBJQE2SkZto/w400-h259/Screen%20Shot%202023-10-17%20at%202.06.59%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></span></div><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">On October 5th, an important symposium was held in conjunction with the exhibit, in which the following speakers presented:</span></span></p><ul style="background-color: rgba(251, 251, 251, 0.95); color: #282828; font-family: "Open Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><li>Jonathan Petropoulos, PhD, John V. Croul, Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College</li><li>Wendy Lower, PhD, the Director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights and the John K. Roth Professor of History & George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College</li><li>Glenn Dynner, PhD, Director, Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies, Fairfield University</li><li>Ori Z. Soltes, PhD, Teaching Professor, Center for Jewish Civilization, Georgetown University</li><li>Francesco Spagnolo, PhD, Curator, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Associate Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Music and Center for Jewish Studies UC Berkeley</li><li>Ellen M. Umansky, PhD, Professor Emerita of Judaic Studies, Fairfield University</li><li>Samuel Gruber, PhD, President, International Survey of Jewish Monuments; Part-time faculty in Jewish Studies and History of Art, Syracuse University</li></ul><div><span face="Open Sans, sans-serif" style="color: #282828; font-family: arial;">I myself delivered a talk that took a counterfactual approach to Szyk's life. Entitled "Born Late: A Soldier in Memes," the talk imagined how Szyk would have expressed his commitment to social justice had been born in 1994 instead of 1894.</span></div><div><span face="Open Sans, sans-serif" style="color: #282828; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span face="Open Sans, sans-serif" style="color: #282828; font-family: arial;">For a video recording of the talk, please click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=q8rfgmUYRGE">HERE</a> and see how I wondered "what if?"</span></div>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-250291798705494312023-09-23T08:38:00.003-07:002023-09-23T08:38:53.049-07:00Fascism in America is Out! Including "How Alternate a History?"<p>Now that my new co-edited volume, <i>Fascism in America</i>, is out, you can finally read my essay on recent alternate history shows that imagine the United States succumbing to Nazism. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmRFnpz-G2yVEm74aV5nUw18pIVLu5cRIuzkkC0nSMk-5h9i-6YUlSEiNNQ_CHO-j-IlciZKGDiIAlA6qxQGwgalFICUjAuSsXgq7hD-Ku_up4CWPg6J3_vDzL5Rr38fr4BV7FSM9qUYhcawO4ja8gpEC7Z1swNmzfmcPvpsMl6clBLAl2g4p3MMUK9M/s1168/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20at%2011.35.14%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1168" data-original-width="879" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmRFnpz-G2yVEm74aV5nUw18pIVLu5cRIuzkkC0nSMk-5h9i-6YUlSEiNNQ_CHO-j-IlciZKGDiIAlA6qxQGwgalFICUjAuSsXgq7hD-Ku_up4CWPg6J3_vDzL5Rr38fr4BV7FSM9qUYhcawO4ja8gpEC7Z1swNmzfmcPvpsMl6clBLAl2g4p3MMUK9M/w301-h400/Screenshot%202023-09-23%20at%2011.35.14%20AM.png" width="301" /></a></div><p>In the essay, I examine how <i>The Man in the High Castle</i> (2015-2019), <i>Hunters</i> (2019-2023), <i>Watchmen</i> (2019), and <i>The Plot Against America</i> (2020) represent the topics of collaboration, racism, and antisemitism. I also examine the degree to which alternate history has both anticipated the domestic turn toward fascism and offered a possible method of combating it by universalizing its significance.</p><p>To order your copy today, click <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fascism-America-Gavriel-D-Rosenfeld/dp/1009337432/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">HERE</a></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-64525228046098710182023-07-12T13:14:00.007-07:002023-07-12T13:19:43.182-07:00Keeping the Nazis from Winning World War II (Again): Counterfactuals in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"<p>Like reuniting with a long-lost friend, I was pleasantly [sic] surprised to see that the new film, <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i>, revives the familiar counterfactual premise of the Nazis winning World War II. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXmNSVQx2UKlGBdFZHq1eX2bMDyhWfDEeM414yyqSgAvmvMRVIho62Awztb_Lenh9eqemTqUf346X1hxk3Ag0Y_h1iC4MY1E1Q-75-oJn33oyY-Dn8i_USF4mksW6OsYSzh3FEJPdmMjxOIoEO9FYqlcVxme79PskiKZ9REAQky6kPeWUgXgB3deLcZAs/s903/Screenshot%202023-07-12%20at%204.14.17%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="903" data-original-width="604" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXmNSVQx2UKlGBdFZHq1eX2bMDyhWfDEeM414yyqSgAvmvMRVIho62Awztb_Lenh9eqemTqUf346X1hxk3Ag0Y_h1iC4MY1E1Q-75-oJn33oyY-Dn8i_USF4mksW6OsYSzh3FEJPdmMjxOIoEO9FYqlcVxme79PskiKZ9REAQky6kPeWUgXgB3deLcZAs/w268-h400/Screenshot%202023-07-12%20at%204.14.17%20PM.png" width="268" /></a></div><p>I’ve written a great deal over the years about this “what if” scenario – probably the most explored of all the premises in alternate history. But it’s been a few years since I’ve discussed it in essayistic form. </p><p>My last opportunity was with the Amazon.Prime streaming series, <i>The Man in the High Castle</i>, which I discuss in my essay, “Fascism in American Culture: How Alternate a History?” in my forthcoming co-edited book (with Janet Ward), <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/fascism-in-america/5FF1AA890B232C10BC8BF725BD5A3850"><i>Fascism in America: Past and Presen</i>t,</a> due out this September. </p><p>I wrote the bulk of that essay more than two years ago, however, so it’s been a while. </p><p>The other day, however, I saw my first film in a movie theater since COVID-19 erupted in March 2020, and enjoyed Harrison Ford not only battling Nazis in our own historical (albeit fictional) world, but in a counterfactual world as well. </p><p>Not surprisingly, the film’s plot reflects the current American liberal consensus on the topic of fascism. <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> expresses present-day fears that fascist tendencies are surging here at home and that – as in the 1930s – Hollywood films can potentially combat them. In a notable twist, however, the film presents its thesis in a counterfactual package. </p><p>Set in 1969, the film depicts the effort of an unrepentant Nazi rocket scientist named Juergen Voller to gain possession of an ancient Greek device designed by Archimedes, known as an Antikythera, to travel back in time. </p><p>His goal? To kill Adolf Hitler. </p><p>What? A Nazi wanting to kill Hitler? Unlike most explorations of this counterfactual premise, where killing Hitler is done by the “good guys” (Anglo-Americans usually) for the noble motive of destroying Nazism, Voller wants to kill Hitler because “Hitler made mistakes” and with his time machine, “I will correct them,” thereby enabling Germany to win World War II and attain global hegemony. </p><p>As he tells Indy in a crucial fight scene (inverting a famous Nazi line from the film, <i>Cabaret</i>), “Yesterday belongs to us.” </p><p>By showing Voller trying to kill Hitler, <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> continues the recent trend of films de-demonizing – and subtly normalizing -- the former Fuehrer by showing him to be something less than ultimate evil. After all, by depicting Voller wanting to kill Hitler because of the latter’s incompetence, the film elevates Voller into a more dangerous threat. The film also leads viewers to root against Hitler being killed – always a weird spot to find oneself occupying. </p><p>As in Stephen Fry’s novel, <i>Making History</i> (1998), where Hitler’s evil is exceeded by a fictional (and counterfactual) Fuehrer named Rudolf Gloder (and where readers once again awkwardly hope Hitler is not removed from history), the normalized depiction of Hitler in <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> shifts attention away from the Fuehrer’s demonic role in German history and places it more on the German people themselves. The possibility that a different Nazi dictator apart from Hitler might have risen to power besides Hitler reveals that fascism is more deeply rooted in German society. It confirms that fascism is hardly restricted to lone individuals. </p><p>More importantly, the film also blames the United States for fascism. While Voller is an unrepentant Nazi, that does not disqualify him from being recruited by the U. S. government as part of its postwar program known as "Operation Paper Clip" to work as a rocket scientist in the nation’s new space program. The film’s setting in 1969 at the time of the moon landing underscores this connection. (The film also thereby and reproduces a plot point in the recent Amazon.Prime series, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7456722/">Hunters</a></i>, featuring Al Pacino). Without U. S. political support, Voller never would have been in a position to go back in time and win World War II for the Nazis. As a result, the film blames the democratic U. S. for the postwar survival of Nazism. </p><p>Appearing in the era of Trumpism, <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> imparts the clear antifascist message that the U. S. cannot be too vigilant in keeping rightwing forces at bay – no matter how tempting it may appear to collaborate with them. It would be nice if the GOP establishment would pay attention. </p><p>All that said, the best parts of <i>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny</i> are when Voller and Indy actually go back in time – errantly, to the year 212 BCE during the Roman army’s siege of the Greek city state of Syracuse. It’s a bonkers segment depicting Roman legions launching metal spears at modern aircraft -- and it is utterly diverting. Indy actually gets to have a conversation (in Greek) with Archimedes! </p><p>This scene near the film’s conclusion shows some of the madcap potential for cinema to tackle alternate history scenarios straight on rather than tiptoe around them (or avoid depicting them entirely), as is so often the case. </p><p>Hopefully, other directors will realize this potential.</p><p></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-64605091321273043572023-05-20T15:21:00.003-07:002023-05-20T15:21:19.714-07:00Fascism in America: Previewing a Look at Recent Alternate HistoriesI've been AWOL from my blog for a few months now, but I have a good excuse. As you'll see below, I've been busy working diligently with my good friend and co-editor, Janet Ward (U. Oklahoma), to get our new edited volume ready for publication.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SFk-QImSF6t7ZBVnRhAM-3F2lmC1QGiGoZ_NmlgPmL48VmsWY8HnNkD63Ikf1ZTIP64wxCHhObSRqxeH4OfXf22IZQRZdCocyf57F3KgjXI4qrceqBD5-uAQVu3Vwb15RQri6OqDrmNZyBD4PNL9J2_zmuolo84Cz6JW0aiBCTQ9koAc9-x9G9oh/s1598/348433345_903031410773780_7502233629985703852_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1598" data-original-width="1085" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SFk-QImSF6t7ZBVnRhAM-3F2lmC1QGiGoZ_NmlgPmL48VmsWY8HnNkD63Ikf1ZTIP64wxCHhObSRqxeH4OfXf22IZQRZdCocyf57F3KgjXI4qrceqBD5-uAQVu3Vwb15RQri6OqDrmNZyBD4PNL9J2_zmuolo84Cz6JW0aiBCTQ9koAc9-x9G9oh/w271-h400/348433345_903031410773780_7502233629985703852_n.jpg" width="271" /></a></div><div><div><br /></div><div>The book is (unfortunately) about real history, not counterfactual history. But my contribution to the volume is, in fact, entirely about "what ifs." Entitled “Fascism in American Culture: How Alternate a History?” my chapter explores how works of alternate history have explored the United States’ fascist potential by examining how American history might have turned out differently. </div><div><br /></div><div>Here is how the introduction previews the essay:</div><div><br /></div><div>"Since the 1930s, many works of American culture – novels, films, television shows, and comic books – have explored the possibility that this country might one day embrace fascism. More recently, the era of Donald Trump has given rise to some of the most pessimistic and urgent counterfactual assessments to date of this country’s commitment to democracy: <i>The Man in the High Castle </i>(2015-2019), <i>Hunters</i> (2019-2023), <i>Watchmen</i> (2019), and <i>The Plot Against America</i> (2020). The essay examines these TV series’ respective representations of collaboration, racism, and antisemitism. It also examines the degree to which alternate history has both anticipated the domestic turn toward fascism and offered a possible method of combating it by universalizing its significance."</div><div><br /></div><div>The book will be out in late August or early September.</div><div><br /></div><div>Updates to follow!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-6718181825545435122023-03-07T04:20:00.008-08:002023-03-07T04:21:55.779-08:00New Jewish Counterfactuals: On Andrea D. Lobel's and Mark Shainblum’s anthology, "Other Covenants"<p>I’m grateful to Larry Yudelson at Ben Yehuda Press for sending me a copy of Andrea D. Lobel’s and Mark Shainblum’s new anthology of Jewish alternate histories, <i>Other Covenants. </i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRBhKf5V4I_cKqSS6em3meOmiHvF59UhyPaKFiIUBfrmCtFOiUmUkwOWJ4qPW33mM_w45ZMPwbk_ex4gnKnRdHpBOm_Vvo3EUnRq1gpTdyIuId7KNAPUjmwZ0dA-1Oulw7tbbYu5xq5DNZovVkwtX0ILVYMh8yiw-s_6E_j6QvtuV_AdgC3706n1M/s883/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-07%20at%207.15.16%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="883" data-original-width="602" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtRBhKf5V4I_cKqSS6em3meOmiHvF59UhyPaKFiIUBfrmCtFOiUmUkwOWJ4qPW33mM_w45ZMPwbk_ex4gnKnRdHpBOm_Vvo3EUnRq1gpTdyIuId7KNAPUjmwZ0dA-1Oulw7tbbYu5xq5DNZovVkwtX0ILVYMh8yiw-s_6E_j6QvtuV_AdgC3706n1M/w273-h400/Screen%20Shot%202023-03-07%20at%207.15.16%20AM.png" width="273" /></a></div><p>I’m halfway through the book and I can already see that it’s full of clever and entertaining tales. Of the two-dozen+ stories in the collection, more than half have been written especially for the volume (some older tales are included as well). </p><p></p><p>Among the stories that stuck out for me: </p><p>* Robert Silverberg’s short story, “To the Promised Land, leads off the volume by exploring the present-day travails of an Egyptian Jew who lives in a world where Pharaoh’s forces defeated the Israelites’ attempt to cross the Red Sea 2500 years earlier. </p><p>* Jack Dann’s haunting story, “The Mall,” describes a dystopian United States that has gone fascist and incarcerated American Jews in concentration camps converted from shopping malls. </p><p>* Alex Shvartsman’s “The Book of Raisa,” depicts a Russian Jewish neurosurgeon in 1969 performing brain surgery on an aged Joseph Stalin, who has survived his stroke of 1952 and deported Soviet Jewry to the USSR’s autonomous oblast of Birobidzhan. </p><p>* Patrick A. Beaulier’s “The Bat Mitzvah Problem” depicts a bat mitzvah girl in Indiana struggling to cope with the challenge of properly reciting the Saturday prayers to Asherah, Baal, and El Elyon. </p><p>* C. L. McDaniel’s “Ka Ka Ka” switches the historical experiences and contemporary situations of German Jews and African Americans, so that the former experience relentless police brutality in a world where they have escaped genocide, and the latter, despite having suffered mass death, enjoy a privileged existence in a country that has acknowledged its historic crimes. </p><p>There are plenty of other stories – about Anne Frank living as an elderly grandmother in Miami; shtetl Jews battling zombies in Tsarist Russia; and orthodox Jews shooting off into outer space. </p><p>There are even some counterfactual poems by Jane Yolen, James Goldberg, and Seymour Mayne. Mayne’s poem, “Another Son,” for example, points to the perils of poor parenting by depicting an aged Abraham casting his son Isaac out into the desert where he becomes a de facto Ishmael. </p><p>There is something for everyone in <i>Other Covenants</i>. Kol hakavod to Ben Yehuda Press, Andrea D. Lobel, and Mark Shainblum!</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-74937799778470729072023-01-07T10:04:00.005-08:002023-01-07T10:06:33.166-08:00Categorizing Counterfactuals: On the New Graphic Novel, "1/6"<p>Alternate history continues to have a bit of a PR problem. The publication of a new four-part graphic novel, <i>1/6, </i>by writer Alan Jenkins and artist Gan Golan on the topic “What If the Attack on the Capitol Succeeded?” is notable for receiving publicity in a new <i>Washington Post </i><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/01/06/graphic-novel-jan-6-alan-jenkins/">article</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7_jj1xYVnsULDkfLoRxggqJW2FYINDQpadohot-5XfQBLC-GA--WNkbZSaBrjj4pYVa-PBHkcgf8eNVmoIcBHgX7tyf9RG4xhTCFi10TfnkW1sfP6y4RdUWIXhZevCkylavtkRF1dipYjNY4V70-Nny9x-gfyOSKVLUvIHpoKHs8RpnPCDHyfd82/s993/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-07%20at%2012.38.08%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="993" data-original-width="643" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE7_jj1xYVnsULDkfLoRxggqJW2FYINDQpadohot-5XfQBLC-GA--WNkbZSaBrjj4pYVa-PBHkcgf8eNVmoIcBHgX7tyf9RG4xhTCFi10TfnkW1sfP6y4RdUWIXhZevCkylavtkRF1dipYjNY4V70-Nny9x-gfyOSKVLUvIHpoKHs8RpnPCDHyfd82/w259-h400/Screen%20Shot%202023-01-07%20at%2012.38.08%20PM.png" width="259" /></a></div><p>But it is notable that the author, Michael Cavna, declines to situate the graphic novel in its proper genre, alternate history. Cavna speaks instead of “alternative history,” while Jenkins and Golan have described themselves as writing in the vein of “dystopian speculative fiction" and <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/88qjyz/jan-6-comic-book-capitol-riot">“dystopian alternate reality.” </a></p><p>As a stand-alone genre of fiction, alternate history has been institutionalized since the 1990s. Counterfactual history has been equally canonized ever since that decade as well. The fact that neither term has appeared in press coverage of 1/6 suggests several things: 1) certain writers who have been drawn to “what ifs” don’t realize the extent of alternate history’s long existence; 2) alternate history still has a ways to go before becoming fully recognized by the general public. </p><p>At the same time, the problem of definition may reflect the timing of the <i>1/6’s</i> appearance. In the vein of “too soon?”, it is possible that the text’s topic makes it hard to categorize. Depending on what chronological span the text ends up covering (only the first issue has been produced), it may be best described as a “future history” – especially if it ends up covering events past 2023. It would then be akin to Geroge Orwell’s <i>1984</i>, which was published in 1948 as a “future history.” (Today, of course, from the vantage point of 2023, <i>1984</i> could be classified as a “retroactive alternate history).” </p><p>I don’t mean to split hairs with my critique of categorization here, but it’s a reminder that the aficionados of alternate and counterfactual history still have work to do to educate the public.</p><p>As for me, I very much look forward to reading Jenkins' and Golan's text.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-87446757849313914122022-12-24T05:50:00.004-08:002022-12-24T05:50:22.247-08:00More Capitol Counterfactuals: "What Ifs" in the Final January 6th Committee Report <p>The Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol is full of counterfactual claims that nicely illustrate the utility of counterfactual history. </p><p>As I have repeatedly noted, counterfactuals help us understanding history in terms of causality, morality, and memory. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmQ8nmtMEOxIbIFX6IhBVPJX1CPQqQoDJidjtI3pJyXbWg8Eub7UCEhvSCUDoIwgqLl9CgwXrUpZjUw0DSD8E6k_flFM0YK5X6k5BMiHsrmdgAF-ZQKriqUZHhCm3X3CjXQep2d0pyqD6nYMTgbYMwGmobp4Y1Jdgb7Vneqj7PT8rdyLaqe2P3y6Ni/s1287/Screenshot%202022-12-24%20at%208.29.08%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1287" data-original-width="847" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmQ8nmtMEOxIbIFX6IhBVPJX1CPQqQoDJidjtI3pJyXbWg8Eub7UCEhvSCUDoIwgqLl9CgwXrUpZjUw0DSD8E6k_flFM0YK5X6k5BMiHsrmdgAF-ZQKriqUZHhCm3X3CjXQep2d0pyqD6nYMTgbYMwGmobp4Y1Jdgb7Vneqj7PT8rdyLaqe2P3y6Ni/w264-h400/Screenshot%202022-12-24%20at%208.29.08%20AM.png" width="264" /></a></div><br />Consider the main takeaway from the foreword of the Final Report. The executive summary unambiguously declares the following: <p></p><p>“In the Committee’s hearings, we presented evidence of what ultimately became a multi-part plan to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. That evidence has led to an overriding and straight forward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. <b>None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.” </b></p><p>Whether or not historians will later place so much emphasis on “one man” – after all, they will surely want to address Trump’s many enablers and henchmen – one cannot imagine a clearer causal claim. Note, however, that the causal claim is framed counterfactually: “<b>None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him”</b> instead of, say, “The events of January 6th were the direct result of Donald Trump’s actions.” </p><p>Why does the Report frame the causal claim in this way? Because the counterfactual framing isolates the cause by imagining its ABSENCE preventing the event from occurring. </p><p>This is something that David Hume realized in the 18th century. In 1748, Hume explicitly employed counterfactual reasoning in presenting his theory of causality, writing that “we define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words, where, if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.” </p><p>As various scholars have argued, Hume initially limited his definition of causality to the first clause of the passage, thereby limiting causality to correlation -- that is to say, the regularity of succession. Yet, nearly a decade later, convinced that the definition did not suffice, he added the second clause, which he believed profitably supplemented the incomplete initial definition. As Judea Pearl has argued, it was important that Hume viewed the statement, “B would be false if not for A” as “an explication of “A caused B,” because it revealed we can “discern the truth of the former with greater certitude than that of the latter.” </p><p>There were many causes of January 6th – some long-term, others short-term. Some would say the event was overdetermined. But employing the counterfactual and imagining the consequences of subtracting Trump from the equation makes it clear that the event would not have happened. </p><p>There are other counterfactuals in the Report, many of which are classic “close call counterfactuals” that underscore the nightmares that almost came to pass. </p><p>Consider this observation: </p><p>“Trump’s mob came dangerously close to succeeding. Courageous law enforcement officers put their lives on the line for hours while Trump sat in the White House, refusing to tell the rioters to go home, while watching the assault on our republic unfold live on television. When it was clear the insurrection would fail, Trump finally called off the mob, telling them, “We love you.” Afterward, Congress was able to return to this Capitol Building and finish the job of counting the Electoral College votes and certifying the election. This is the key conclusion of the Select Committee, all nine of us, Republicans and Democrats alike.” <b>“But who knows what would have happened if Trump’s mob had succeeded in stopping us from doing our job? Who knows what sort of constitutional grey zone our country would have slid into? Who would have been left to correct that wrong?” </b> </p><p>And this observation: </p><p>“As you read this report, please consider this: Vice President Pence, along with many of the appointed officials who surrounded Donald Trump, worked to defeat many of the worst parts of Trump’s plan to overturn the election. This was not a certainty. It is comforting to assume that the institutions of our Republic will always withstand those who try to defeat our Constitution from within. But our institutions are only strong when those who hold office are faithful to our Constitution. <b>We do not know what would have happened if the leadership of the Department of Justice declared, as Donald Trump requested, that the election was “corrupt,” if Jeff Clark’s letters to State Legislatures had been sent, if Pat Cipollone, Jeff Rosen, Richard Donoghue, Steve Engel, and others were not serving as guardrails on Donald Trump’s abuses.” </b></p><p>Finally, there is this nightmare: </p><p>“Hundreds of Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers performedtheir duties bravely on January 6th, and America owes those individuals immense gratitude for their courage in the defense of Congress and our Constitution. <b>Without their bravery, January 6th would have been far worse.” </b> </p><p>All of these comments illustrate the analytical and rhetorical power of counterfactual history. </p><p>Perhaps someone should write a book tracing the history of this magnificent, but long under-appreciated, field.<br /><br /></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-90355531218408562552022-12-11T08:07:00.000-08:002022-12-11T08:07:09.504-08:00Chatting about ChatGPT: Some Thoughts on AI's Relevance for Counterfactual History<p>So I, too, have surrendered to curiosity and played around a bit with Open AI's new ChatGPT application that's been getting so much publicity this past week. </p><p>Needless to say, I wanted to see what its potential might be for counterfactual history. Can AI compete with the human imagination for speculating about how history might have been different?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPs73pWnaML4vWEw8yjV7JpVTVwnc3647qZNcSqtbsklPwd_SgOG0s-Sq7_hrmiM5Z7CGfRuWf3HrLP_yX8jKQRyNTk24eFW9IZ7ywInQO48Pb71oGG2wC5OpCdtbneQSwUS7hmGryKMKWxpb3rPd34vDILN9AcIYnL6SCqQqcYDvNcu6qusWzcMLZ/s788/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-11%20at%2011.04.31%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="483" data-original-width="788" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPs73pWnaML4vWEw8yjV7JpVTVwnc3647qZNcSqtbsklPwd_SgOG0s-Sq7_hrmiM5Z7CGfRuWf3HrLP_yX8jKQRyNTk24eFW9IZ7ywInQO48Pb71oGG2wC5OpCdtbneQSwUS7hmGryKMKWxpb3rPd34vDILN9AcIYnL6SCqQqcYDvNcu6qusWzcMLZ/w400-h245/Screen%20Shot%202022-12-11%20at%2011.04.31%20AM.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>As of this writing, I'm not that impressed with the results. To be fair, it's amazing that any online application can spit out instant answers to counterfactual questions. </p><p>When I typed "If the South won the Civil War, would slavery still exist?" I got the following:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJFhDff_ZjU4YjWlgtTU3XmqCJXSmrN1oiNI8eA-deC5GXfpGS3MjNELKhHeDCwOT9vjYuewi41eY0alTfajrInlZT6tKxq2VyYJZkpeTH8L-mmfPhKEAhmtRmRMb-Yi_SPTk5VXp62G0NmeBUm8nMV2CqIh5Cjf9KCBnDLc5vMR-RrWbuoiEtN2YX/s797/1%20cf.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="797" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJFhDff_ZjU4YjWlgtTU3XmqCJXSmrN1oiNI8eA-deC5GXfpGS3MjNELKhHeDCwOT9vjYuewi41eY0alTfajrInlZT6tKxq2VyYJZkpeTH8L-mmfPhKEAhmtRmRMb-Yi_SPTk5VXp62G0NmeBUm8nMV2CqIh5Cjf9KCBnDLc5vMR-RrWbuoiEtN2YX/w640-h288/1%20cf.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Not bad. I'm glad to see the disclaimer at the outset ("It's impossible to say....") so that there's' no finality about what follows about the "counterfactual situation." There's also a welcome degree of provisionality about the "possible" conclusion.</p><p>The answer to another question -- "write a counterfactual paragraph showing how history would have been different if Hitler had never been born" -- was less satisfactory.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdzx5FgW8WZ0290ilBg5EN3F0vDKuOQdI9nfKD8vxM8YUeX4Nd6DBTXYoCMxRe8VIjqHQYKx693q9F3VxC8k_RW890yZW9ey8sFXPcMmQGGpL-8cJ7SelTaCZkiEIEut2bp3u2jiX4fthQXImQPZOM0J_7j5IVGWmQlPMR2ukylFisYWXSUoIhfdH0/s629/2%20cf.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="629" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdzx5FgW8WZ0290ilBg5EN3F0vDKuOQdI9nfKD8vxM8YUeX4Nd6DBTXYoCMxRe8VIjqHQYKx693q9F3VxC8k_RW890yZW9ey8sFXPcMmQGGpL-8cJ7SelTaCZkiEIEut2bp3u2jiX4fthQXImQPZOM0J_7j5IVGWmQlPMR2ukylFisYWXSUoIhfdH0/w640-h270/2%20cf.png" width="640" /></a></div><p>Here the app spat out a simple negative effect counterfactual with the banal conclusion that "things would have been different." The AI's imagination was kept in strict limits.</p><p>In the effort to inspire more imagination, finally, I asked the app to "write me a counterfactual poem about the Nazis winning World War II." I got the following reply:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEEmfk3h55ElS0VZ2CaX0yRRK6NjyJEH5ifMU4YjRiT2xpqVKbjGjQsm9Bjq885vlMbRP3Sh4B17-QksR5KkRbiqq0s7V4K8L6JvfIjjFyQ1VFAhdzShebSlISsYmWivNKEMcfwcDPGXdmAP0KDLNFirPHqTpEE4RTe8fcQ68wGuSWHHEYKQLmbBci/s836/3cf.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="836" data-original-width="517" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEEmfk3h55ElS0VZ2CaX0yRRK6NjyJEH5ifMU4YjRiT2xpqVKbjGjQsm9Bjq885vlMbRP3Sh4B17-QksR5KkRbiqq0s7V4K8L6JvfIjjFyQ1VFAhdzShebSlISsYmWivNKEMcfwcDPGXdmAP0KDLNFirPHqTpEE4RTe8fcQ68wGuSWHHEYKQLmbBci/w396-h640/3cf.png" width="396" /></a></div><p>Please stifle your laughs about the poem's literary quality. It's pretty primitive -- though we should applaud its liberal sentiments and anti-Nazi orientation. </p><p>I imagine the counterfactual and alternate history communities will be experimenting along these lines in the very near future. Perhaps some writers may choose to use the app for "counter-fact checking" to gauge the plausibility of their ideas. (I stress the "perhaps"). </p><p>But since both communities gravitate to "what iffing" because they love the imaginative exercise, I doubt they will be outsourcing the work to AI.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-83567799215996242582022-11-09T03:44:00.002-08:002022-11-09T03:44:31.301-08:00When is a Win Not a Win? The Missing "Red Wave"<p><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">Like so many other Americans, I've been glued to the television since last night. And while many races remain undecided, it's clear the GOP has tallied some wins.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">But there's probably a lot of frustration in Republican ranks this morning, since they could have been much more successful, IF ONLY...</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">And this is where counterfactual history proves its value.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumSzM7w_hANEqCVXv4BsO1nC4IVoKAOABdUcZohCRG5VVWDWkRldjldxXyj60YS2A5Q9PJ6AnhaERB7AXU7rFhmlPlbep7cEBpbCB64WTVBngJf0E7sAHaWNBrkU9e_c4orWlrIjpMtTT6GzxEQMkolzuO2pZP_VrNQ74QD_PqiKC_EHgpbNtWVzV/s300/download.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumSzM7w_hANEqCVXv4BsO1nC4IVoKAOABdUcZohCRG5VVWDWkRldjldxXyj60YS2A5Q9PJ6AnhaERB7AXU7rFhmlPlbep7cEBpbCB64WTVBngJf0E7sAHaWNBrkU9e_c4orWlrIjpMtTT6GzxEQMkolzuO2pZP_VrNQ74QD_PqiKC_EHgpbNtWVzV/w400-h224/download.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;"><p><span style="color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">If the GOP leadership is remotely sane (and that's open to question) they will take some time today and reflect deeply on the many missed opportunities to register a more decisive triumph in the midterms. If they had only rejected election denialism, run more centrist candidates, separated themselves from Donald Trump's toxic brand -- if, if, if. The list goes on.</span></p></span><p></p><p>As I detail in my forthcoming book, <i>What Ifs and the West,</i> major historians, from Isaiah Berlin to Hugh Trevor-Roper, have explicitly noted that <span style="background-color: white;">we can only appreciate what happened in light of what MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-weight: inherit; white-space: inherit;">There's no clearer illustration of the importance of counterfactual history than t</span><span style="background-color: white;">he missing “red wave” in last night’s election.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-10588717955853262812022-10-29T12:32:00.005-07:002022-10-30T13:46:44.707-07:00A Counterfactual First? The Upcoming “Roads Not Taken” Exhibit in Berlin <p>In recent years, counterfactual history has found expression in historical monographs, journalistic op-eds, novels, short stories, films, television shows, radio programs, theatrical plays, graphic novels, works of art, and internet memes. </p><p>Can it also be the subject of a museum exhibit? </p><p>We’re about to find out in December, when the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum) in Berlin opens the exhibition, “<a href="https://www.dhm.de/en/exhibitions/preview/roads-not-taken-oder-es-haette-auch-anders-kommen-koennen/">Roads not Taken. Oder: Es hätte auch anders kommen können</a>” (It Could Have Turned Out Differently). </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMKMR05wWv_jqtT2q3CKjMbgUnUAmxbSUhBUN4NDa5SeC-S4q9E1TZANdV5BhmXHODyc4tXqNahtXNa54c0WjRc52kT2Oa19kFqcournGIGsLZHEFyprgir812g517E-0Kqn0WepLxIyHghkcQmO3swcegrwfQ0oaZfSwb0fXrwMNDkmhRUUP2jxun/s1409/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-29%20at%203.29.06%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="1409" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMKMR05wWv_jqtT2q3CKjMbgUnUAmxbSUhBUN4NDa5SeC-S4q9E1TZANdV5BhmXHODyc4tXqNahtXNa54c0WjRc52kT2Oa19kFqcournGIGsLZHEFyprgir812g517E-0Kqn0WepLxIyHghkcQmO3swcegrwfQ0oaZfSwb0fXrwMNDkmhRUUP2jxun/w400-h224/Screen%20Shot%202022-10-29%20at%203.29.06%20PM.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>Curated by historian Dan Diner with support from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, the exhibit – according to the DHM website -- will examine </p><p><b>“14 caesuras in German history from 1989 to 1848” and “set [them] against the backdrop of other options and other possible outcomes, laid out as a chain of pivotal and often dramatic turning points. This unusual speculative approach raises inextricable questions about underlying or even engrained patterns, but also the importance of key decision-makers and political figures and the role of chance in shaping the course of history. The exhibition’s primary goal is to help visitors see the familiar from a new angle and to sharpen an awareness that history is not ‘a closed book’ but essentially an open process.” </b></p><p>In pursuing these goals, the exhibit marks something of a milestone by making counterfactual history the explicit subject of a museum exhibit. To be sure, “what ifs” have been explored in exhibits on never-realized works of architecture and city planning schemes in cities like London, Amsterdam, Munich, New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D. C. (See “Never Built New York” (2017); “Never Built Los Angeles” (2013); “Unbuilt Washington” (2011); and München wie geplant” (2004). </p><p>But counterfactual history itself was less foregrounded in these exhibits. </p><p>Whether or not counterfactual history allows itself to be effectively depicted in artifacts, museum display cases, and textual captions remains to be seen. But it is an encouraging sign for the increasingly mainstream status of counterfactual history that curators have deemed historical speculation to be an appealing draw for the museum-going public.</p><p>I hope to make it to Berlin in the coming year and see for myself.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-10030379664389077902022-09-05T08:44:00.008-07:002022-09-05T08:50:09.724-07:00New Book Review: Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravélou, A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been.<p>Here is my long review of Quentin Deluermoz's and Pierre Singaravélou's new book, <i>A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been,</i> which recently appeared with Yale University Press. </p><p>My review appears in the new issue of <i><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14682303">History & Theory.</a> </i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4CoC-aSdXCsLDxG9tpDkDJcmcjUktoee42apHzHROMR-ca1s8tXcOu87LZMEEx2aZuQoOGSwiXj8CADPh0ZHy7FqVTyqBjD7JEO7Jb3l0Vnm0VY4Ov9tblAMj-Qeor2fFbgBORgqlp-Si3GsxE1oKU74rYRVnN6pGI5aZp3QtJR7wV4TCZTmjFouE/s620/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-05%20at%2011.36.53%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="406" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4CoC-aSdXCsLDxG9tpDkDJcmcjUktoee42apHzHROMR-ca1s8tXcOu87LZMEEx2aZuQoOGSwiXj8CADPh0ZHy7FqVTyqBjD7JEO7Jb3l0Vnm0VY4Ov9tblAMj-Qeor2fFbgBORgqlp-Si3GsxE1oKU74rYRVnN6pGI5aZp3QtJR7wV4TCZTmjFouE/w263-h400/Screen%20Shot%202022-09-05%20at%2011.36.53%20AM.png" width="263" /></a></div><p>The abstract is below and the essay can be found <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hith.12265">HERE.</a></p><p>"As wondering “what if?” about the past has become increasingly prominent in Western life, scholars have sought to historicize the phenomenon. The latest attempt to do so is Quentin Deluermoz and Pierre Singaravélou's <i>A Past of Possibilities: A History of What Could Have Been</i>. </p><p>A stimulating, if somewhat meandering, book of essayistic reflections on historical speculation, A Past of Possibilities highlights the challenges of, and continuing opportunities for, historicizing the field that today is called “counterfactual history.” </p><p>Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, historians have recognized the presence of “what-ifs” in historical scholarship, but they have disagreed about what to call them. For over a century, they have embraced a bewildering array of phrases, including “imaginary history,” “hypothetical history,” “subjunctive history,” “conjectural history,” “conditional history,” “probable history,” “iffy history,” “alternate history,” “allohistory,” “uchronia,” “historical might-have-beens,” and “historical ifs.” </p><p>Deluermoz and Singaravélou continue this tradition by employing many different terms for historical counterfactuals in their effort to explain their increasing prominence. This conceptual pluralism, which is rooted in an interdisciplinary methodology, enables the authors to arrive at important insights about the field of counterfactual history. </p><p>However, it also prevents them from generating a systematic argument that builds toward a larger conclusion. A Past of Possibilities is thus an important study that nevertheless highlights the need for further research."</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-74531750884717548172022-06-28T09:34:00.007-07:002022-06-28T09:34:45.438-07:00Hoax or Counterfactual? The Chinese Wikipedia Scandal<p>I don’t usually take the time on my blog to merely re-post news stories relating to counterfactual history, but when such stories threaten to discredit the field, I perk up. </p><p><a href="https://lithub.com/a-chinese-borges-wrote-millions-of-words-of-fake-russian-history-on-wikipedia-for-a-decade/">This latest story</a> on Literary Hub, “A ‘Chinese Borges’ Wrote Millions of Words of Fake Russian History on Wikipedia For a Decade,” caught my attention, as it promises to add ammunition to people who are already opposed to wondering “what if?” about the past. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAdRpyZvP7UX_hHDD9mjsO9ShmsvzRn1juT9RMscRvKliiYvnhZaY50zH-5oPgkcS1ThPIYR79z7_IXTzfy5IC6rYCnOiR5cTur9oxvOE-fzBY0rw1rdIxKHxDv78pW1KzTn2tyfB-wERYc_ZMcJ_Tsei9JcLsjXlAWIiSugJkvu_ulZ7zmAGfDlQ3/s900/zhemao-map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="900" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAdRpyZvP7UX_hHDD9mjsO9ShmsvzRn1juT9RMscRvKliiYvnhZaY50zH-5oPgkcS1ThPIYR79z7_IXTzfy5IC6rYCnOiR5cTur9oxvOE-fzBY0rw1rdIxKHxDv78pW1KzTn2tyfB-wERYc_ZMcJ_Tsei9JcLsjXlAWIiSugJkvu_ulZ7zmAGfDlQ3/w400-h235/zhemao-map.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>As the story’s author, Jonny Diamond, reports: </p><p><b>"For over a decade, a Chinese woman known as “Zhemao” created a massive, fantastical, and largely fictional alternate history of late Medieval Russia on Chinese Wikipedia, writing millions of words about entirely made-up political figures, massive (and fake) silver mines, and pivotal battles that never actually happened. She even went so far as to concoct details about things like currency and eating utensils…. </b></p><p><b>“Zhemao’s drama centered around an enormous silver mine known as Kashen, a flash point for political tensions between the “Princes of Tver” and the “Dukes of Moscow”—Kashen, though, never actually existed.” </b> </p><p>A million words on Wikipedia is remarkable enough. Now, apparently, they have all been deleted, leading Diamond to lament that “we are denied a chance to read the one, true, Great Internet Novel.” </p><p>Since I don’t read Chinese and since the words are gone anyway, it’s impossible to know whether the narrative was straight historical forgery or more playful alternate history. </p><p>But in our world of fake everything, critics may throw the baby out with the bathwater and blame the fabulism on counterfactualism more broadly. </p><p>The story may remain an internal Chinese matter, but readers of this blog will hopefully see its relevance for the western world’s ongoing debate about “what ifs.”</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-25792321743991884032022-06-27T07:38:00.002-07:002022-06-27T07:38:33.475-07:00Sneak Preview: Was the Nazi Seizure of Power Inevitable or Avoidable?<p>Just a quick shout-out to my friend, Thomas Weber, whose edited volume, <i>Als die Demokratie starb: Die Machtergreifung der Nationalsozialisten – Geschichte und Gegenwart </i>(<i>The Nazi Seizure of Power – Past and Present)</i> will be appearing later this year in advance of the 90th anniversary of the Nazis‘ rise to power in 1933. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDB1re7SoxtR5cGE83EfUkQE8SMJDEeMsuAEU4mFN5sPs_bwq7Ru4QmMuL5DPYXNxrhHDbS0CAfFqksnViWTES6S7hWsbcVelQqCmRFF7vCVCh0aDfA_l9CZUyvuBuBQIRAm8saLzv11yxNzS9aizBOznXwMgaq8fXXOjApe5pJlsa1UShPg3bxR7/s788/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-27%20at%2010.36.23%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="507" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDB1re7SoxtR5cGE83EfUkQE8SMJDEeMsuAEU4mFN5sPs_bwq7Ru4QmMuL5DPYXNxrhHDbS0CAfFqksnViWTES6S7hWsbcVelQqCmRFF7vCVCh0aDfA_l9CZUyvuBuBQIRAm8saLzv11yxNzS9aizBOznXwMgaq8fXXOjApe5pJlsa1UShPg3bxR7/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-27%20at%2010.36.23%20AM.png" width="206" /></a></div><p>I mention the volume as I have a counterfactually-oriented essay that appears in it, entitled “What Ifs” and 1933: Was the Machtergreifung Inevitable or Avoidable?” </p><p> The essay shows how historians in Germany and the English-speaking world have used counterfactuals to determine whether the Nazis’ rise to power could have been prevented in any meaningful way. It further argues that two schools of thought have long disagreed with one another: the “determinists” and “accidentalists.” Each approaches the question of historical causality differently and views the Nazi rise to power from radically different perspectives, rooted in both methodological and political differences. </p><p>The essay discusses the specific work of William Montgomery McGovern, Emil Ludwig, Friedrich Meinecke, Gerhard Ritter, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Thomas Nipperdey, and Heinrich August Winkler, among many others. </p><p>The essay will be appearing in German. But after the German edition’s publication, I’ll be happy to post an English language translation in PDF form.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-69171819975130089192022-04-21T08:21:00.014-07:002022-04-24T14:06:45.261-07:00 Authoritarian Speculation: How Counterfactuals Have Shaped Vladimir Putin’s Historical Worldview<p><span style="font-family: times;">Here you go everyone: </span></p><p><span style="font-family: times;">My <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/183038?fbclid=IwAR37-cdfEaB-2fV3zzWmDU3_duVghI9oXm-PtQQU66ih8YkdwbcQxZjLPno">essay</a> on how Vladimir Putin has used counterfactuals to make sense of the Russian/Soviet past is now officially out, courtesy of the <i>History News Network. </i>It's got a new title, "Understanding How Counterfactuals Shape Putin's Worldview and Historical Rhetoric," but is otherwise the same as before.</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7fPVywY2yVgxaxi3v9C9sHnVnhynLWyFgFUEpNLwDpWS4jijhXPTswp2uMvk6KhuIQE4DSM7lx2aZBnFsNXp6M6GfywDh1uLUUd4MhU4K38Y4_k8kvpZ72F6PxhcNaYDHYASzEE1uUOSdpsO74kvC59ioDVWNAOQ6Pxy-svrm455OUEu1-WZj5HFf/s1532/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-21%20at%2011.14.28%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1020" data-original-width="1532" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7fPVywY2yVgxaxi3v9C9sHnVnhynLWyFgFUEpNLwDpWS4jijhXPTswp2uMvk6KhuIQE4DSM7lx2aZBnFsNXp6M6GfywDh1uLUUd4MhU4K38Y4_k8kvpZ72F6PxhcNaYDHYASzEE1uUOSdpsO74kvC59ioDVWNAOQ6Pxy-svrm455OUEu1-WZj5HFf/w400-h266/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-21%20at%2011.14.28%20AM.png" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Here's the full text:</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has weaponized history to justify Russia’s “special military operation.” He has drawn</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speech-announcing-special-military-operation-in-ukraine/845714/" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">historical analogies</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">to World War II and claimed he is preventing Ukrainian “Nazis” from committing “genocide” against vulnerable Russians. He has used</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-burns-putin-rewrites-history-ncna1290827" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">historical revisionism</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">to whitewash the Soviet Union’s 20th century mistreatment of Ukraine. And he has practiced outright</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.prlib.ru/en/article-vladimir-putin-historical-unity-russians-and-ukrainians" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">historical denial</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">by rejecting the reality of Ukrainian nationhood. </span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Various commentators have tried to explain Putin’s tendentious approach to history by situating it within his broader historical worldview. They have argued that Putin is a skilled</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42896424" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">“manipulator of history”</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">who is obsessed with a range of historical concerns, including the desire to arrest Russia’s imperial</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/22/putin-speech-russia-empire-threat-ukraine-moscow" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">decline</a><span style="background-color: white;">, foster its national revival, restore</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26652058" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">unity</a><span style="background-color: white;">, and avenge instances of historical “</span><a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-02-24-putins-narrow-version-of-history-focuses-on-the-three-betrayals/" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">betrayal</a><span style="background-color: white;">.”</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">An important -- but thus far overlooked -- component of Putin’s historical worldview is his use of counterfactuals. Although often rejected as too speculative to be used in serious historical inquiry, counterfactuals offer profound insights into human psychology. As social science</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/bitstream/handle/document/28668/ssoar-hsr-2009-no_2__no_128-roese_et_al-the_psychology_of_counterfactual_thinking.pdf?sequence=1" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">research</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">has shown, speculating about the past channels a range of human emotions -- especially regret and relief. When people regret the course of history, they often create fantasies in which it turns out better. When people feel relief about how history actually turned out, they produce nightmares depicting how it might have been worse.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Doing a deep dive into Putin’s speeches, writings, and interviews over the past two decades reveal notable patterns of counterfactual thinking. These patterns, in turn, are key components of his historical orientation. Putin has regularly used nightmare counterfactuals to express regret about the course of 20th century Russian history. He has floated fantasies in which Russia avoids its 20th century tragedies. And he has used “what ifs” to justify his invasion of Ukraine as necessary for helping Russia preempt future calamity.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Like many before him, Putin has adopted an inconsistent position on speculating about the past. On the one hand, he has routinely touted the merit of historical objectivity, noting in his well-known</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><em>National Interest</em><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">essay</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">of 2020, that “it is crucial to rely exclusively on archival documents” and avoid any “politicized speculations” when studying the past. He has also often invoked the famous Russian</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://naviny.belsat.eu/en/news/endless-relishing-of-heroism-bad-for-nation-s-future-putin/" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">saying</a><span style="background-color: white;">, “history does not know the subjunctive mood” -- as he did in a</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/52201" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">speech</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">delivered in 2016 to the National Historical Assembly in Moscow. In very same breath, however – in fact, in the very next sentence of his speech -- Putin observed that “there is a place for…speculation” in historiography, adding “all aspects are of interest…both what happened and what could have happened.” </span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">To illustrate this point, Putin used his 2016 speech to address one of his preferred counterfactual scenarios: the nightmare of the Soviet Union losing World War II to Nazi Germany. Pointing ominously to what “Hitler had planned to do with the Russian people had he won,” Putin noted that they “would have ended up – far away in Siberia, essentially doomed to extinction.” Putin expanded on this point in a 2021</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66554" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">speech</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">to schoolchildren in Vladivostock, noting: “if the Nazis had won the war…there would have been no future for [the Russian people] whatsoever, because…[while] those who could work [were]…to be used as workforce, those who were not…were…to be relocated beyond the Urals…and some of them…killed in gas chambers.”</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">By using close call counterfactuals to explore this nightmare, Putin expressed relief for the actual course of history and valorized Russia’s contribution to it. As he</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/52201" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">explained</a><span style="background-color: white;">, the possibility of a Nazi victory threw into sharp relief how the world would have been different “if we had not achieved what we did,” adding that the Soviet “victory over Nazism is probably one of the most outstanding and significant events of the 20th century.”</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Putin also used counterfactuals to justify Joseph Stalin’s leadership of the USSR against the Nazis. In defending the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, Putin explained how the Soviets’ conquest of eastern Poland helped the USSR survive the Nazi invasion of June 22, 1941. Noting that “the old Soviet-Polish border ran only within a few tens of kilometers of Minsk,” Putin declared that “the USSR would [have] faced seriously increased risks” without the added buffer zone,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/2019-a-year-of-remarkable-anniversaries/" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">adding in 2019</a><span style="background-color: white;">, that “the onslaught of the Nazis would have been much more painful for the USSR…had it been launched even closer to the political, economic and military-industrial centers of the Soviet Union.”</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Putin also lamented missed opportunities involving Soviet history. When asked the counterfactual question in 2018 what occurrence he would have most like to have prevented, Putin</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/d36b368c6ad44bb2b8e883fc8d800514" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">responded</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">“the disintegration of the Soviet Union.” In his 2021 Vladivostock speech, Putin went even further by fantasizing about how much better Russian history would have been had “Russian statehood [not] disintegrated twice during the 20th century [in 1917 and 1991],” citing the claim of “specialists…that we should have had a population nearing 500 million people [today, instead of merely] 146 million.” This missing growth, he suggested, was a regrettable byproduct of Russia’s 20th century “tragedies.” </span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white;">Given these regrets about the past, Putin has predictably used “what ifs” to justify his invasions of Ukraine. Here, Putin has used predictive counterfactuals, speculating about how events might have unfolded</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><em>in the future</em><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">had he not undertaken immediate action in the present. In a</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26652058" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">speech</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">justifying his invasion of Crimea in 2014, for example, he cited the intolerable possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, declaring that the presence of “NATO’s navy…in [the port of Sebastopol]…would [have] create[d]…a perfectly real threat to the whole of southern Russia.” To justify his invasion of 2022, he outlandishly</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-putin-idCAKCN2LD1M7" style="color: #0563c1; outline: 0px; transition: all 0.2s linear 0s;">claimed</a><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><span style="background-color: white;">that “the Nazi regime in Kyiv could have got its hands on weapons of mass destruction, and its target, of course, would have been Russia.” Floating nightmares of how the future would have turned out in the absence of Russian aggression serves to justify it.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;">Putin is hardly the first national leader to use counterfactuals to justify his political reign. The western historical record is full of figures who behaved similarly: Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great – the list goes all the way back to Antiquity. The full story of how reimagining the past reflects attitudes about the present remains to be written. But the sooner we recognize how counterfactuals can shed light on how history is instrumentalized, the better we will be able to respond to contemporary challenges.</span></span></div></div>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-16873109361765730512022-04-11T16:07:00.001-07:002022-04-11T16:07:14.607-07:00"The Fourth Reich" is Now Available in Portuguese<p>Attention all Nazis still hiding out in Brazil: your time is up! </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9gzxwrSpNv5Ms12x9vCyk72My6Iq4RV_hEgCUvWw94DfcoFoc_3GBFtf6yvnyNbAR2X9VkkWntbkSiz8x6osuWM5pHEqVvSgV0Eiz3aqCcGoas3Y8OGYjBAkpBXLZdF7jO_zEs6Z-gMNI6r4mtZiCaOTShg0ybyk3OdIK8zUXYaj7wzrtYy51CRBH/s577/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-10%20at%205.06.10%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="417" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9gzxwrSpNv5Ms12x9vCyk72My6Iq4RV_hEgCUvWw94DfcoFoc_3GBFtf6yvnyNbAR2X9VkkWntbkSiz8x6osuWM5pHEqVvSgV0Eiz3aqCcGoas3Y8OGYjBAkpBXLZdF7jO_zEs6Z-gMNI6r4mtZiCaOTShg0ybyk3OdIK8zUXYaj7wzrtYy51CRBH/w289-h400/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-10%20at%205.06.10%20PM.png" width="289" /></a></div><p>Now that my book, <i>The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism Since World War II,</i> has just been published in Portuguese, there's no more hiding under the radar. </p><p>You can find the book on amazon's Brazilian page at this <a href="https://www.amazon.com.br/quarto-Reich-segunda-fantasma-autorit%C3%A1ria/dp/6557361481/ref=sr_1_8?__mk_pt_BR=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=7BI8BAIZQXBI&keywords=gavriel+rosenfeld&qid=1649718278&sprefix=gavriel+rosenfeld%2Caps%2C71&sr=8-8">LINK</a></p><p>This the first monograph of mine to have been translated into any language besides German. I'm grateful to any Portuguese speaking readers to find their way to the book.</p><p><br /></p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-10771404672694467412022-04-06T11:03:00.003-07:002022-04-07T05:43:02.737-07:00On the Danger of Polemical Counterfactuals: Tom Cotton’s Scurrilous Nazi Allegation Against Ketanji Brown Jackson <p>Ok – the Nazi comparisons are really getting gratuitous.</p><p>Yesterday, as various media outlets <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/cotton-says-scotus-nominee-brown-would-defend-nazis-gop-attack-2022-4">reported</a>, Oklahoma Senator Tom Cotton used a polemical transplant counterfactual to attack Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ), by alleging that she might have defended Nazis accused of war crimes had she lived in the early years after World War II.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEsVlcNOLiJEE0ZmGK1ELMjU_M5JV_o6odWofPUbuss8dj57USi4M92RPgMk6XgUodh-5LclnwmouyvaI3EH1NxQhl5jXskpExazmmAYui_qDZQ4VzYDAAOFPzu-GxCK1e1iAiDTdk7oI3mWGpC7gn_Zoqjvivimf7sDLubb3OMccjyFeMGtFXfLz/s1280/maxresdefault.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZEsVlcNOLiJEE0ZmGK1ELMjU_M5JV_o6odWofPUbuss8dj57USi4M92RPgMk6XgUodh-5LclnwmouyvaI3EH1NxQhl5jXskpExazmmAYui_qDZQ4VzYDAAOFPzu-GxCK1e1iAiDTdk7oI3mWGpC7gn_Zoqjvivimf7sDLubb3OMccjyFeMGtFXfLz/w400-h225/maxresdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Cotton cited the famous case of Judge Robert Jackson, who left his position on the U. S. Supreme Court in 1945 to lead the allies' prosecution of Nazi officials at the Nuremberg trials, to smear KBJ, declaring: "You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis….This Judge Jackson might've gone there to defend them." </p><p>As Barack Obama used to say: “C’mon man!” </p><p>This comparison is not only scurrilous, it is clunky. As if it weren’t bad enough that Marjorie Taylor Greene has accused GOP senators (and the entire Democratic wing of the Senate) of being predatory child-molesters, Cotton clunkily (and implausibly) transplanted KBJ back in time to allege she would have defended Nazis like she defended accused child molesters in her time as a Federal judge. </p><p>Because, you know, child molesters are identical to Nazis.</p><p>In truth, Cotton’s claim was probably motivated first and foremost by the linguistic coincidence of two the two judges sharing the same last name and the opportunity to make a snappy sound bite. It’s as if he thought: “Wow, two judges named Jackson. What a coincidence – and one was involved in prosecuting Nazis (mental gears churning….) I know! Let’s milk that to produce sensationalistic clickbait.” </p><p>To be sure, DNC chairman Jamie Harrison’s response wasn’t above diving into the mud either. He replied by saying that Cotton's conduct shows that "he doesn't deserve to be in the United States Senate" and that the Republic Party is "built on fraud, fear, and fascism.” </p><p>For his part, Harrison probably played the fascism card for similar linguistic reasons, thinking to himself “hmmmm…I need some alliteration, I need three bad things that begin with the letter “f,” one of which has to be “fascism.” </p><p>This escalating rhetoric is getting out of control and becoming potentially dangerous.</p><p>Given how the Russian government of Vladimir Putin has been demonizing the leaders and citizenry of Ukraine as “Nazis” to justify his brutal military assault, we should all be on our guard about how hateful rhetoric can pave the way for violence.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-8485439610647043522022-03-29T07:54:00.002-07:002022-03-29T07:54:54.231-07:00How Would Philip K. Dick Have Responded to “Cancel Culture?”<p>I’ve been re-reading Lawrence Sutin’s edited volume, <i>The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings </i>(1996) and came across some passages that prompted me to wonder how Dick would have responded to today’s culture wars, especially what has been called “cancel culture.” </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fbBAyjmTpfgI2uaCzDbpHIrFARw7iTPwQYtC4FcAzqYFK5y4DSUdzg4x5vtaoEm9niYgMg5ATXndyhowWeJonaLUhaO9OyBX0_YNTcw08eE-ZwNeTtlIB4kZvx0u0oxQ4PQyXajon1eUygzx0sFge7yxrKtaBJv-ZYCNKdgPweEOU17mJggmQdXJ/s1281/Screen%20Shot%202022-03-29%20at%209.22.19%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1281" data-original-width="848" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fbBAyjmTpfgI2uaCzDbpHIrFARw7iTPwQYtC4FcAzqYFK5y4DSUdzg4x5vtaoEm9niYgMg5ATXndyhowWeJonaLUhaO9OyBX0_YNTcw08eE-ZwNeTtlIB4kZvx0u0oxQ4PQyXajon1eUygzx0sFge7yxrKtaBJv-ZYCNKdgPweEOU17mJggmQdXJ/w265-h400/Screen%20Shot%202022-03-29%20at%209.22.19%20AM.png" width="265" /></a></div><p>In Sutin’s volume, one of the most interesting sections discusses how Dick viewed the Nazi legacy in the early 1960s – the time that he wrote <i>The Man in the High Castle.</i> Notably enough, Dick cited comments by the famed German pacifist (and co-founder of The Society for the Prevention of World War III), Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster about there being multiple “Germanies” and whether Nazism was “the absolute culmination, the logical fulfillment, of all that is German.” </p><p>Dick went on to argue that Germans were both responsible for, and the victims of, Nazism. While he noted that Germans voted for Hitler and displayed a “subrational...psychological” hatred of Jews, he also pointed out that Germans were also the first inmates in Nazi concentration camps. </p><p>Dick added that while Jews were obvious victims of the Nazis, they had their share of “nationalist fanatics” in Israel – for example, the person who broke a “Jewish violinist's hand [with]...a lead pipe because that violinist dared to play a Richard Strauss piece in concert in Israel.” (This was a reference to Jascha Heifetz being attacked in 1953). For Dick, the fact that “many Jews today won't ride in a VW, and some won't even listen to the music of Beethoven” was just “as neurotic and "sick" as...the nineteenth-century ideologies of blood, race, and land being taught by...Germans.” </p><p>These comments show how Dick embraced a universalized understanding of Nazism’s significance in the 1960s -- one that showed how all people, not just Germans, were susceptible to hateful behavior. </p><p>As he noted: </p><p>“We can no more hold a people responsible than we can hold any other mythical, semantic, nonactual entity responsible; German1 is not German2 and German2 is not German3, and so forth. Just as, in this country, you and I did not bomb those little Negro schoolchildren in that church Sunday school. . . you know goddamn well we did not, and if we, you and I, could catch the white bastards -- or rather just plain bastards -- who did it, we would work just as much and quick vengeance on them as any Negro mob would or could.) Dick then went on to assert his most important point – that only individuals, not groups, should be judged for their behavior. </p><p>As he put it (in terms that would resonate today): </p><p>“I am not a ‘white man.’ My German friends are not ‘Germans,’ nor my Jewish friends ‘Jews.’ I am a nominalist. To me, there are only individual entities, not group entities such as race, blood, people, etc. For example, I am an Anglo-Catholic; yet my views differ from those of my vicar, and his do -- enormously -- from the bishop of the diocese -- whose views I happen to agree with, Bishop Pike. And so forth. </p><p>“I will not walk out of a room when a German enters any more than I would have walked out of a room when a Jew entered. Nor will I allow myself to be a "gentile" -- i.e., a member of a race -- to my Jewish friends. If they don't like me, let them hit me, as an individual, one right in the eye; let's see them hit a race -- as the Nazis tried to do -- one right in the eye. It won't work; the Nazis failed: Israel exists, and Jews exist. And -- let us face it: Germany exists. Let's live in the present and for the future, not dwelling neurotically on the outrages of the past. Ludwig von Beethoven did not light the fires at Dachau. Leonard Bernstein did not hit that Jewish violinist on the hand with a piece of lead pipe. Okay? And salve, as the Romans used to say. Or, as we Anglo-Catholics say, may the peace and love of God be with you. Germans included. And, please, Jews, too.” </p><p>These comments, especially Dick’s observation that he was a nominalist -- which is to say, someone who philosophically believes that reality is made up of specific physical particularities, like individual human beings, rather than universal, abstract concepts or ideal types, such as “society” -- suggest to me that Dick would have hated the broad-based generalizations that are often embraced by certain advocates of “cancel culture.” </p><p>Whether or not such a thing actually exists as an organized phenomenon (and I leave it to others to litigate how the concept has been weaponized), there is little doubt that certain elements of the left and right (though not necessarily in equal measure) engage in sweeping generalizations about various groups. On the left we often hear: “all men are...,” “all white men are...,” and “all of American history is....” On the right we often hear: “all liberals are...,” “all socialists are...,” “all Democrats are....” These sweeping claims often provide the basis for subsequently “cancelling” individual members of such groups for their "innate" sins. </p><p>To be sure, Dick was comparing apples and oranges when he likened the hatred of Nazi-era Germans towards “the Jews” to the behavior of postwar Jews who boycotted VWs or Strauss compositions as “German.” But insofar as the latter gestures were early examples of what today is called “cancel culture,” Dick would likely have opposed its present-day versions. </p><p>Given this stance, Dick may well have been a target for “cancellation” himself. This is especially true given his penchant for embracing more than a few loopy views. I’d like to think he would have resisted drinking the QAnon Kool-Aid, but his later paranoia and flirtation with conspiracy theories makes me unsure. </p><p>Perhaps some work of fan fiction has already explored this premise....</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-25950764219866298732022-03-23T07:35:00.002-07:002022-03-23T07:37:07.243-07:00The Real Author Behind Randolph Robban's 1950 alternate history, Si l'Allemagne avait vaincu (If Germany Had Won).<p>From the department of "better late than never":</p><p>Today, I'm happy to offer a correction to a mistaken claim I made in my 2005 book, <i>The World Hitler Never Made</i>, about the pioneering postwar alternate history by Randolph Robban, <i>Si l'Allemagne avait vaincu </i>(<i>If Germany Had Won</i>).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-XTu3uUx4iJs8l9FldDlRtB6vs4mkPugYAeB9iixeHsYnJcsIZbPQzP0RjWSsIbliobZulTav49zU1lirkGgcaNvKt3vpH5gp_Ry_4bxEEDV6MpMjGewDCG987ERGBik1V7PgARjfhAkOVYzQchZoLRfqy39ljQVUX-XdUjVaCM15xOvtVaVN9qcz/s563/Screen%20Shot%202022-03-23%20at%2010.33.23%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="416" data-original-width="563" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-XTu3uUx4iJs8l9FldDlRtB6vs4mkPugYAeB9iixeHsYnJcsIZbPQzP0RjWSsIbliobZulTav49zU1lirkGgcaNvKt3vpH5gp_Ry_4bxEEDV6MpMjGewDCG987ERGBik1V7PgARjfhAkOVYzQchZoLRfqy39ljQVUX-XdUjVaCM15xOvtVaVN9qcz/w400-h295/Screen%20Shot%202022-03-23%20at%2010.33.23%20AM.png" width="400" /></a></div><p>When I originally wrote the book, I was well aware (and, in fact, noted) that "Robban" was the pen-name of an anonymous Hungarian writer. But I mistakenly assumed, based on an autobiographical blurb by the novel's fictional narrator describing himself as a French-based Hungarian diplomat, that Robban himself was in the same line of work. (I said he was a "former diplomat").</p><p>Today, however, in doing some online research, I learned who Robban really was -- namely, the Hungarian journalist and writer Miklós Ajtay. See his Wikipedia page <a href="https://hu-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Ajtay_Mikl%C3%B3s?_x_tr_sl=hu&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc">HERE</a>.</p><p>So to set the record straight, I'm pasting below the original paragraphs from my book, in which I analyze Robban's novel, which was one of the first postwar alternate histories on the topic of the Nazis winning World War II. I've added a correction highlighted in <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">YELLOW</span>. Anyone quoting the book from now on should use this corrected version.</p><p><b>Original paragraphs from <i>THE WORLD HITLER NEVER MADE, </i>pp. 187-90.</b></p><p>"One of the most interesting of these alternate histories was <i>Si l'Allemagne avait </i><i>vaincu</i><i>.</i> Published in 1950 by an anonymous Hungarian author writing under the pseudonym, Randolph Robban, the novel is narrated from the perspective of an anonymous diplomat from the fictional Eastern European nation of Sycambria, who is posted in France when the Second World War comes to an abrupt end. In the novel’s point of divergence, Germany ends up snatching victory from the jaws of defeat at the last minute in January of 1945, when it uses its newly developed atomic bombs to obliterate London and Chicago and force unconditional surrender. From this point on, Germany imposes a postwar order upon Europe and the U.S. that is the mirror image of the real historical order imposed upon Germany by the Allies. After occupying the United States, Germany enforces a strict policy of reeducation upon the defeated nation in order to Nazify its population and make it compliant with its new masters. The Germans further decide to punish their wartime foes by fashioning the new legal principle of “crimes against humanity,” which they employ at the high-profile war crimes trial held in Nuremberg. Before long however, Germany adopts a more lenient course of action towards the U.S. Growing tensions between Germany and Japan over the nature of the postwar order leads Hitler to rearm the U.S. with the intent of using the country as a potential bulwark against the Japanese. By the novel’s end, a conflict over Korea sparks a new war between the former Axis partners, which leads to their mutual nuclear devastation. In the book’s last lines, the narrator personally experiences the nuking of Berlin and concludes with the grim observation, “I will never again have the strength nor inclination to imagine what would have become of the world if the victors had somehow been transformed into the vanquished and the vanquished transformed into the victors.” </p><p><i>Si l'Allemagne avait </i><i>vaincu</i> was exceptional as an early postwar work of alternate history that criticized rather than vindicated the recent past. While at first glance, Robban’s novel resembled contemporaneous Anglo-American works by painting a grim portrait of a Nazi military victory, its thinly-veiled ironic tone revealed that its true target was not the vanquished Germans but the victorious Allies. By positing that the Nazis would have behaved more or less like the Allies had they won the war, Robban critiqued the real historical postwar order imposed by the Allies upon Europe. When the Sycambrian narrator condemns the Nazis’ war crimes trials of the Allies at Nuremberg for their retroactive legal character as well for the Nazi government’s hypocritical failure to regard its own wartime conduct as criminal, he clearly voiced Robban’s own disapproval of the Allied Nuremberg Trials. And when the narrator condemns the Nazis’ postwar exploitation of Sycambrian and other nations’ prisoners of war as forced laborers, he expressed Robban’s own criticism of Stalin’s similar behavior after 1945. Finally, the narrator’s depiction of the American people’s willingness to accommodate themselves to the new totalitarian order imposed upon them by the Germans reflected Robban’s cynical belief in the shallowness of American democracy and expressed his opposition to the central role that the U.S. was playing in the reconstruction of postwar Europe. </p><p>In essence, the anonymous narrator in <i>Si l'Allemagne avait </i><i>vaincu</i> was a fictional version of Robban’s own pseudonymous self. This becomes clear near the end of the novel, when the narrator reveals his decision, in the midst of a Nazi-ruled world, to write an alternate history novel entitled, And If They Had Won?, outlining what would have happened if the Allies had triumphed in the Second World War. In undertaking this project, the narrator takes the advice of colleagues who advise him not to use his own name, for fear he will suffer recriminations from the victorious authorities who will perceive his fictional scenario as a bitter satire on the present. In summarizing what he believed would have happened, the narrator in his novel essentially outlines a utopian vision of what Robban believed the Allies should have done (but did not do) in setting up the real historical European postwar order. This vision included refraining from exacting revenge on the Germans, abstaining from a principle of collective guilt, embracing swift economic reconstruction, and fostering reconciliation between collaborators and resisters through a blanket policy of amnesty and forgiveness. In short, both the narrator’s utopian vision of an Allied victory and his dystopian description of a Nazi triumph, expressed Robban’s pessimistic view towards the recent past. </p><p>In writing <i>Si l'Allemagne avait </i><i>vaincu</i>, Robban expressed the perspective of a Hungarian writer <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">(and a former diplomat -- [should now be deleted])</span> whose nation did not benefit in the same way as the Allied nations did from the outcome of the Second World War. The defeat of Nazism in 1945, after all, allowed Hungary to become swallowed up by Stalin’s bloc of Eastern European communist satellite states. From a Hungarian perspective, the Allied victory constituted a disaster. In writing his novel, Robban wanted to alert his largely Western audience to the fact that Nazism’s real historical defeat had brought about terrible unanticipated consequences for Eastern Europe; rather than bringing about liberation, it brought about a new form of oppression. To be sure, by likening the real historical postwar behavior of the Allies to the allohistorical postwar behavior of the Nazis, Robban stretched the bounds of both plausibility and taste to make his broader political point. Most likely for this reason, his book received little attention in the Anglo-American world. It did however receive praise in Germany, where reviewers eagerly supported its relativistic conclusions. Despite largely being ignored, however, the novel fulfilled a significant task. For in using the premise of a Nazi victory to criticize the recent past, <i>Si l'Allemagne avait </i><i>vaincu</i> served as a foil that further underscored the dominant early postwar trend of Anglo-American writers using alternate history to vindicate the course of real history."</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-73079029996779463122022-03-22T10:05:00.004-07:002022-03-22T10:05:40.965-07:00If the Concept of ‘Genocide’ had Existed in the 1930s, Hitler Would Have Used It to Justify the Quest for Lebensraum<p>Seeing how Vladimir Putin has cynically exploited the concept of “genocide” to justify his invasion of Ukraine made me wonder whether earlier tyrants like Hitler might have done the same. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQQ4Fy5-9djFbpg46raYSGvARTFbb_B8o3biN-NhY2-geAeWx4w1f3TvkUYyFB-MuymmY7jorU4GZJwgDDLX-OIT-wsR3mB-4aUsDZW3Nf9Qaw6UYlcIfT6jqzT1VhL5FTWSzju2qJUj1jKvLqQRUkna6Dfuct2jPja40RzvIPb2_Xrq-nbmrow8V/s650/vali9i6_putin-time-cover-650_625x300_28_February_22.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="650" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQQ4Fy5-9djFbpg46raYSGvARTFbb_B8o3biN-NhY2-geAeWx4w1f3TvkUYyFB-MuymmY7jorU4GZJwgDDLX-OIT-wsR3mB-4aUsDZW3Nf9Qaw6UYlcIfT6jqzT1VhL5FTWSzju2qJUj1jKvLqQRUkna6Dfuct2jPja40RzvIPb2_Xrq-nbmrow8V/w400-h246/vali9i6_putin-time-cover-650_625x300_28_February_22.webp" width="400" /></a></div><p>In his notorious February 24, 2022 <a href="https://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speech-announcing-special-military-operhttps://theprint.in/world/full-text-of-vladimir-putins-speech-announcing-special-military-operation-in-ukraine/845714/ation-in-ukraine/845714/">speech</a>, Putin declared his commitment to protecting the Russian population of the Donbas, noting: “The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. </p><p>Other Russian officials have made such claims, for instance, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who on February 18th alluded to crimes allegedly perpetrated by Ukrainians against Russians during the 2014 Maidan revolution in Kiev, noting "Kiev's crimes are swept under the rug by Washington and Brussels. We see no condemnations or investigations of [these] crimes against humanity. We are talking about the deaths of people during the 2014 coup d'etat, when the Trade Union House in Odessa was set ablaze and during the punitive operations in Donbass," he wrote on his Telegram channel. "If this is not genocide, then what is?" </p><p>One wonders whether Hitler would have fabricated claims about genocide being perpetrated against ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland or Poland in 1938-39, had the term existed. </p><p>Consider the following paragraph from historian Doris Bergen’s 2008 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/27668587.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Af1b62037c087b2f03122fd56a4492b39&ab_segments=&origin=">article</a>, Instrumentalization of "Volksdeutschen" in German Propaganda in 1939: Replacing/Erasing Poles, Jews, and Other Victims,” which describes Nazi claims that atrocities were being perpetrated against ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) in Poland in 1939. </p><p>“Even before Wehrmacht units began the assault on Poland, the German Foreign Office had started to prepare its propaganda offensive. It was ready with its White Book in September 1939…Its 549 pages included 482 documents, of which at least 300 dealt directly with the German minority in the days, months, and years preceding the invasion of Poland. Typical subject headings were "Maltreatment of minority Germans"; "Anti-German excesses in Pomerellen"; and "Serious anti-German excesses in Tomaschow." </p><p>The latter document, dated 15 May 1939, was a report from the German consul in Lodz to the Foreign Office. "Very grave excesses which may be designated as a German pogrom occurred last Saturday, May 13, and Sunday, May 14," he intoned. According to his description, a Polish mob, "in a wild fury," "destroyed nearly all German private property. The Germans, who were hunted like beasts, fled to the open country." The police, he added, "joined in the demonstrators' procession and did nothing to protect the life and property of the Germans." As a result, the consul continued, the Germans "are deciding in ever increasing numbers to leave the country and to sell their real estate, as they consider their livelihood in Poland endangered." Sixth months after Kristallnacht, the parallel implied to the situation of Jews in Germany -- wild mobs plundering homes and businesses while police stood by, forcing those targeted to flee the country, leaving their property behind -- must have been obvious enough to most readers to make the label "pogrom" superfluous.” With Nazi officials invoking the concept of “pogroms” against Germans, there’s little doubt in my mind, they would have invoked the concept of “genocide” as well. </p><p>This counterfactual reveals how Putin, like Hitler before him, engages in the familiar pattern of guilt inversion, whereby perpetrators recast themselves as victims by branding their victims as perpetrators. </p><p>This is not exclusively a “fascist” mode of behavior, as is shown by the fact that Southern Confederate slave owners often asserted that Northern Unionists were trying to “enslave” them in the lead-up to the Civil War. </p><p>But guilt inversion is certainly a technique used by people seeking to justify their plans for aggressive behavior.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-40378019309545210902022-03-14T12:20:00.006-07:002022-03-20T06:31:36.690-07:00"What Ifs" and the War in Ukraine: The Case for Counterfactuals <p><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm cross-posting <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/182638?fbclid=IwAR1JE0rKOHvOoTeOj8e9uZoNXr7TEcVYGB8qMz_vJsiemWAh2Aleuh_yciI">my latest op-ed,</a> entitled <span style="background-color: white; color: #414042; letter-spacing: 0.05em;">"What If": The Uses and Abuses of Counterfactuals about Ukraine," which appeared today on the website of the </span><i>History News Network</i> website. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjy2ZjpeXLFHNdnjuzNDqj2JNLqNey6URnfKdaMUSOcUI21160QA4ihWI1yMUNF3qaULph9nhBn1qq4jzXvMqnZWLUfRL4MDCHmBTSlmgQaGiS4wH1LngMpmEUYm3GLHRFQjreSiZ03nYKVZpk58YSs8ryo00_nNQkF-4_Jm2fmpU4a6SPgz5w654Co=s741" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="499" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjy2ZjpeXLFHNdnjuzNDqj2JNLqNey6URnfKdaMUSOcUI21160QA4ihWI1yMUNF3qaULph9nhBn1qq4jzXvMqnZWLUfRL4MDCHmBTSlmgQaGiS4wH1LngMpmEUYm3GLHRFQjreSiZ03nYKVZpk58YSs8ryo00_nNQkF-4_Jm2fmpU4a6SPgz5w654Co=w269-h400" width="269" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As commentators continue to weigh in on the war's origins, they will surely add new counterfactual arguments to the discussion. I will update this essay accordingly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">To mention merely one that I just spotted yesterday, Stephen Kotkin in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/stephen-kotkin-putin-russia-ukraine-stalin">conversation</a> with <i>The</i> <i>New Yorker'</i>s David Remnick, refuted John Mearsheimer's counterfactual claim that no NATO expansion would have made history better by saying it would have made it worse.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As Kotkin argued:</span></p><div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"<b>The problem with [this] argument is that it assumes that, had NATO not expanded, Russia wouldn’t be the same or very likely close to what it is today.</b> What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today."<br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2228;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"I would even go further. <b>I would say that NATO expansion has put us in a better place to deal with this historical pattern in Russia that we’re seeing again today. Where would we be now if Poland or the Baltic states were not in nato? They would be in the same limbo, in the same world that Ukraine is in. In fact, Poland’s membership in nato stiffened NATO's spine."</b></span></div><p> </p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-82926423464183770582022-03-12T05:12:00.004-08:002022-03-12T06:17:57.005-08:00A Counterfactual That Dares Not Speak Its Name: Zeynep Tufekci on Missed Opportunities and COVID-19 <p>I was struck by something missing from Zeynep Tufekci’s otherwise excellent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/opinion/covid-health-pandemic.html">essay</a>, “How Millions of Lives Might Have Been Saved From Covid-19,” in today’s <i>New York Times</i> opinion section – the word “counterfactual.” </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9B_NegDHaZodVqUXyVXjikYT9to5AFaVvdpu4GsnjbEy-_vBZXIH74pS7w4Niv5ZK4YNdAXmzkvZelmXg7qt9wASppP3MLEQRdG2szOeocQBWkduZar5Gi_rmpBwpaKaLdbq3m4yGEhrHpknxggMZ7v75zLSqlFZXC4J2Wemf6rFk09rNjPQ3aRhx=s988" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="980" data-original-width="988" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj9B_NegDHaZodVqUXyVXjikYT9to5AFaVvdpu4GsnjbEy-_vBZXIH74pS7w4Niv5ZK4YNdAXmzkvZelmXg7qt9wASppP3MLEQRdG2szOeocQBWkduZar5Gi_rmpBwpaKaLdbq3m4yGEhrHpknxggMZ7v75zLSqlFZXC4J2Wemf6rFk09rNjPQ3aRhx=s320" width="320" /></a></div><p>Tufekci’s essay is massive – over three thousand words – many of them defined by conditional statements of the “what if?” variety. </p><p>Consider the essay’s opening lines: </p><p><b>“As the pandemic enters its third year, we must consider those moments when...nations made choices that affected thousands, millions, of lives. </b></p><p><b>What if China had been open and honest in December 2019? What if the world had reacted as quickly and aggressively in January 2020 as Taiwan did? What if the United States had put appropriate protective measures in place in February 2020, as South Korea did? </b></p><p><b>To examine these questions is to uncover a brutal truth: Much suffering was avoidable, again and again, if different choices that were available and plausible had been made at crucial turning points. By looking at them, and understanding what went wrong, we can hope to avoid similar mistakes in the future.” </b> </p><p>The remainder of the essay contrasts the many things that actually “happened” with those many things that “could have happened.” </p><p>For instance: </p><p><b>"What happened in the first weeks: China covered up the outbreak....What could have happened: China tells the world the truth and the pandemic is avoided."</b></p><p>and </p><p><b>"What happened after China covered up: The world failed to heed warnings and take action....What could have happened: The world sees through China’s deception and takes action."</b></p><p>Tufekci, in short, invites her readers to engage in something this blog has long been promoting – counterfactual reasoning. </p><p>But for some reason, she never uses the word "counterfactual" in her essay. </p><p>Why not? </p><p>It's not as if the word is so newfangled.</p><p>The term counterfactual was first coined in 1947 by Nelson Goodman, but only came into limited usage in the 1960s and 70’s, in the context of the “New Economic History” (sometimes called cliometrics). The term gained more universal cachet around the turn of the millennium and has been with us ever since as a signifier for historical inquiry that engages in speculative hypotheticals. </p><p>So why does Tufekci avoid the term? </p><p>I can think of several possibilities: </p><p>1) she believes that counterfactuals are so commonplace and accepted in today’s world that there is no need to direct attention to them with an explicit reference. </p><p>2) she believes they remain stigmatized as a subjective, unverifiable, and un-empirical mode of reasoning and wants to avoid being accused of engaging in it. </p><p>3) she is unaware of the existence (and long history) of counterfactuals and simply fails to mention the word out of ignorance. </p><p>I have no way of knowing what the answer is. But I would love to find out. </p><p>I suppose the reason I’m so intrigued by Tufekci’s omission is that our present-day world is becoming increasingly self-reflexive about how we use counterfactuals. For her to write a 3000-word essay ENTIRELY DEVOTED TO COUNTERFACTUAL REFLECTION without calling attention to that very fact seems odd. </p><p>This blog post seeks to provide a helpful editorial service to Tufekci by speaking the word – COUNTERFACTUAL – that, for whatever reason dares not be spoken about in her essay.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-12159586956785835282022-02-23T07:43:00.006-08:002022-02-23T07:45:45.278-08:00From the Archives: A Confused Counterfactual about the American Revolution, “Suddenly an Eagle” (1976) <p>Some of the source material I've been looking at for my history of counterfactual history will regrettably, but inevitably, end up on the cutting room floor. For any number of reasons, the material just doesn’t fit into the chapter it was originally intended. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOBS9tLwOh3EXt_I_4IJOIKbxH8ZWMlOZZKZ9_PAf_-aYYgNsN8HQwn34246EZJdC7UhJxNTXAZwhFCLuwopr8qJ-emeFFTDHdqztmRcS8ZJ1MQjkSPqHjj0QPj-Iw1Jg-ICpVjRIwRFYqNmsb0qrQeFRuIuk2Qp8UCuZMxbVSG-nriC_VfZs4eT4Z=s763" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="540" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOBS9tLwOh3EXt_I_4IJOIKbxH8ZWMlOZZKZ9_PAf_-aYYgNsN8HQwn34246EZJdC7UhJxNTXAZwhFCLuwopr8qJ-emeFFTDHdqztmRcS8ZJ1MQjkSPqHjj0QPj-Iw1Jg-ICpVjRIwRFYqNmsb0qrQeFRuIuk2Qp8UCuZMxbVSG-nriC_VfZs4eT4Z=w283-h400" width="283" /></a></div><p>One example is an advertisement I ran across the other day for an ABC television documentary called "Suddenly an Eagle" that was broadcast in 1976 during the hoopla surrounding the Bicentennial. (I was in third grade at the time and recall making a papier maché puppet of George Washington for my favorite elementary school teacher, Mrs. Bustillo). </p><p>Anyway, the advertisement sought to capitalize on the many “what ifs?” that were floated in the American media at the time: “What if the French had not supported the revolution?” “What if the revolution had failed?” “What if George Washington had been captured by the British?” “What if he had become a King instead of a president?” </p><p>Unfortunately, the documentary's writers and producers were unclear on how the counterfactual game is played. </p><p>On the one hand, the advertisement embraced the reality of contingency, declaring that “if not for mistakes, misunderstandings, and a single, errant gunshot there might not have been an American Revolution.” </p><p>Fine so far…. </p><p>But then the advertisement concludes with the deterministic assertion that “the bloodshed at Lexington was inevitable.” </p><p>What gives? Simple ignorance? A bait and switch? </p><p>I haven’t seen the broadcast, but the cognitive dissonance visible in the promotional material may explain why the show’s ratings were apparently dismal.</p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-22061697376412709772022-01-28T04:04:00.003-08:002022-01-28T04:04:21.623-08:00H. L. Mencken on the South Winning the Civil War and "Wowserism"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back due to popular demand! It's the counterfactual sentence of the day (again, from the archives).</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's always a pleasure to preview some of the choice remarks offered by counterfactually minded writers that will be appearing in my (one-of-these-days-to-be-completed) book. Here's a fun one:</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an essay, entitled "The Calamity of Appomattox" (1930), H. L. Mencken wished that the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Complaining about how Southern aristocrats had been displace by "white trash" as the region's leaders, he wrote:</span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbLOTYV_eDX_ZlxqgNaO1hrzUW0P-utbHmMzmHcr4kXIDbBRiGQScvwhMURN7FN3BnIgJAMz0HoQXEyqSJ2XfHkocE1RqCDBV6-CkvsXo-PC7tO7r9t58dy92Y_jnK_B2kJgmWK_ltpBtIsvGoMvMS8OI_xRZoGkpTIueAazoI0lPgTUC4DmrNfVrB=s805" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="805" data-original-width="526" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjbLOTYV_eDX_ZlxqgNaO1hrzUW0P-utbHmMzmHcr4kXIDbBRiGQScvwhMURN7FN3BnIgJAMz0HoQXEyqSJ2XfHkocE1RqCDBV6-CkvsXo-PC7tO7r9t58dy92Y_jnK_B2kJgmWK_ltpBtIsvGoMvMS8OI_xRZoGkpTIueAazoI0lPgTUC4DmrNfVrB=w261-h400" width="261" /></a></div><p></p><div class="cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql o9v6fnle ii04i59q" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>"If the war had gone with the Confederates, no such vermin would be in the saddle, nor would there be any sign below the Potomac of their chief contributions to American Kultur—Ku Kluxry, political ecclesiasticism, n----r-baiting, and the more homicidal variety of wowserism."</b></span></div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Wowserism, it turns out, is "moral crusading against alcohol, gambling, pornography, etc." </span></div><div dir="auto" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">Who knew?</span><span> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apparently it's a common term in Australia.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">I suppose the Aussies knew.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;">The essay is full of other counterfactual ruminations, including this common refrain:</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="color: #050505;"><br /></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;"><b>"No doubt the Confederates, victorious, would have abolished slavery by the middle of the 80s. They were headed that way before the war, and the more sagacious of them were all in favor of it. But they were in favor of it on sound economic grounds, and not on the brummagem moral grounds which persuaded the North. The difference here is immense. In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished. The triumph of sin in 1865 would have stimulated and helped to civilize both sides."</b></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;">The essay is short and definitely worth a read.</span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto"><span style="color: #050505; font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div></div>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8364715675350187755.post-71424020956893464492022-01-12T11:06:00.006-08:002022-01-12T18:58:55.988-08:00A Hybrid Alternate History? Hanya Yanagihara’s Novel, To Paradise <p>The latest high profile counterfactual novel has just been published -- Hanya Yanagihara’s <i>To Paradise</i> -- and early reviews raise interesting questions about how to classify it within the genre of alternate history. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitFWfG7mq3Qox8VVMYUHwVwf_9kULXaO6CoCSqcXNJtGLBIfwEeXP_ITQMxlq7XURLkQd6h3cFAYfofNj1vfB0tpq8N_YfFVdkRW1bvfPhzNiLdPgjSmgDtsJJyRY6ZtcyZrpg931I3sxKRetmd4ZDN-k2JNtobj5lTz1D8ugoTPoTw4UMcZlWyt7l=s1097" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1097" data-original-width="734" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEitFWfG7mq3Qox8VVMYUHwVwf_9kULXaO6CoCSqcXNJtGLBIfwEeXP_ITQMxlq7XURLkQd6h3cFAYfofNj1vfB0tpq8N_YfFVdkRW1bvfPhzNiLdPgjSmgDtsJJyRY6ZtcyZrpg931I3sxKRetmd4ZDN-k2JNtobj5lTz1D8ugoTPoTw4UMcZlWyt7l=w268-h400" width="268" /></a></div><p>I haven’t yet read the novel yet, but why should that stop me from commenting on it? (For what it’s worth, a few years ago, Pierre Bayard wrote a whole book, entitled <i>How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read</i> – but, of course, I haven’t yet read that book either). </p><p><i>To Paradise</i> is divided into three sections: one set in 1893, one in 1993, and one in 2093. The first is framed as an alternate history of the U. S. where gay marriage has been legal since the 18th century. </p><p>As a recent critic, Erin Somers, put it in a recent <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/hanya-yanagihara-latest-epic-paradise-140000209.html">review</a> , “Section one, set in 1893, follows a young banking heir named David Bingham, who must choose between his dull, nouveau riche suitor, Charles Griffith, and a con man, Edward, who has beguiled him with dreams of the West. The Northeast is its own country called the Free States, where gay people may marry. The West is a separate territory. The South is called the Colonies and has lost the war “but seceded anyway, sinking further into poverty and degradation by the year.” </p><p>At first glance, this premise seems highly implausible. But perhaps Yanagihara is able to fashion as set of events to make it semi-convincing. If not, the novel’s effectiveness (at least in the first section) may be compromised. </p><p>Somers does flag one glaring problem that raises further questions about plausibility: somehow in this alternate world, “Marriages are arranged, even between men, to accumulate property” but “hatred of Black people is total” – a hatred that, Somers notes, “seems to exist in a vacuum” insofar as it endures “even in a culture where homophobia and xenophobia [towards]... (white) immigrant children have been eradicated.” Perhaps this odd contradiction is adequately explained. I'll have to get the book and see.</p><p>Apart from plausibility, the larger question is whether the novel’s first section alone should qualify <i>To Paradise</i> as an alternate history. This is because section two seems to take place in our own world (real not alternate), particularly in New York City during the AIDS epidemic. </p><p>Meanwhile, section three takes place in a dystopian future. According Somers’ review: “By book three, the New York of 2093 has plunged into totalitarianism in the face of catastrophic climate change and endless, rolling pandemics. Washington Square Park has become a tent city and is later razed altogether. Tragically, the townhouse has been divvied up into eight apartments. Charles Griffith, a monstrous doctor in the mold of Mengele, tries to save humanity by instituting death camps, while wrangling with his rebellious son, David Bingham. One of the pandemics has killed a generation of children and so, to promote procreation, marriage between men and women has been made compulsory."</p><p>Echoes of Katherine Burdekin’s 1937 feminist, anti-Nazi novel, <i>Swastika Night,</i> anyone? </p><p><i>To Paradise</i> is over 700 pages long, and only the first third is an alternate history. So does the novel qualify as an alternate history? </p><p>Perhaps a hybrid alternate history. </p><p>Admittedly, this term is somewhat redundant. Since its inception in the 19th century, alternate history has itself been a hybrid form of literature, combining elements of historical fiction, realism, science fiction, and fantasy, along with various genre tropes (detective yarns, old westerns, time travel sagas, parallel world tales, and the like). </p><p>In all of these narratives, the common element has been a point of divergence that alters the course of historical events that are then followed to some kind of conclusion. </p><p>Strictly defined, alternate history narratives have to be set in a time frame that lies in a bygone period of time, relative to the author. If the narrative strays into the future, the text is more properly classified as a “future history.” </p><p>There are certainly precedents for alternate histories straying into the future. Keith Roberts’s novel, <i>Pavane</i>, was published in 1966 but set its plot in the year 1968. Nat Schachner’s famous short story, "Ancestral Voices,” was published in 1933, with a plot line initially set in the year 1935 (that then moves backwards to Rome in the 5th century C. E.). Both tales are considered alternate histories. Future settings should therefore not disqualify a narrative out of hand from inclusion. </p><p>Like these narratives, Yanagihara’s novel occupies both past and future spaces (probably because, as a recent New Yorker <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/17/hanya-yanagiharas-audience-of-one">article</a> made clear, she combined several novels into a single narrative). <i>To Paradise</i>, therefore, should probably qualify as an alternate history. </p><p>But if 2/3 of the novel dispenses with allohistorical framing, what then? </p><p>There’s no need to provide a definitive answer to this question. But <i>To Paradise</i> does raise questions about where critics should set the boundaries for alternate history as a genre. </p>Gavriel Rosenfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08741350896436813537noreply@blogger.com0