“He who controls the past controls the future… He who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell. “History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren’t there.” — George Santayana.

History as Propaganda

It is commonly understood that Propaganda is usually employed to garner citizens’ support for current political objectives. But, these need to be placed in the proper context, in order to make them appear justified within the greater scheme of things.

This fact has long been recognized, and therefore, since the 18th century, there has been a concerted effort to consolidate the media, in order to ensure a perception of reality that was commensurate with the objectives of the powers that be.

Part of this agenda has been the re-writing of history, to nurture patriotic devotion to the collective consisting of the nations of Europe and America as “Western Civilization”, to be pitted in opposition with some specific “other”. In our case, the “East”.

The wholesale reorganization of history was undertaken at the beginning of the 19th century by the leading Robber Barrons.

After the Civil War, the US government handed over huge tracks of land to specific individuals, who then used that land as collateral to build the railroads. The leading Robber Barrons were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, who in turn were acting on behalf of the powerful Rothschilds in London.

Apparently, there is some controversy as to whether or not these capitalists should be referred to instead as “captains of industry”, which excuses their exploitive methods, by claiming that they built up the industry of the US, and that towards the end of their careers, committed their funds increasingly to charitable foundations. What is not explained, however, is that these “charitable” foundations were founded to advance their objectives, and forge the nation in the direction they chose.

With the colossal wealth they amassed in the decades prior to World War I, two boards of trustees were created, the General Education Fund (GEB), by Rockefeller, and the Carnegie Endowment for Advanced Education (CFAT).

Through a massive infusion of funds, they entirely reorganized the American university system, dismissing undesirable professors, and erecting facilities to concentrate on research into the physical and social sciences.

Scientific research has been largely exploited to build up the military-industrial-complex, while social science has served to study human behavior, with the aim of discovering methods of coercion, and to discern and address subversive tendencies.

As noted by McIlhanny, in The Tax-Exempt Foundations, as discovered in minutes from their meetings, these foundations asked themselves the following:

“is there any means known to man more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?”

They could not find one, and so helped to precipitate WWI. Following the Great War, however, recognizing the need to maintain the control they had achieved over the “diplomatic machinery” of the US, the foundations recognized “they must control education“.

Together, as William McIlhany described, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations “decided the key to it is the teaching of American history and they must change that. So they then approached the most prominent of what we might call American historians at that time with the idea of getting them to alter the manner in which they presented the subject.”

They recognized the success of their efforts in not only consolidating their control over higher education, but over the government as well, and decided that if they were to maintain such control, that it would be necessary to re-write history.

Primarily, the foundations strategy was to use the guise of the US Board of Education, by fronting as “advisers”. These produced several teacher’s leaflefts, which were distributed to educators during WWI.

The first of these leaflets carefully recommended that outright lies or false information was a “mistaken view of patriotic duty”, that was likely to be counterproductive in the long run. The recommendations went on to provide detailed suggestions on what to teach, and how to teach history “properly”. Because,

…history, properly studied or taught, is constantly reminding the individual of the larger life of the community… This common life and the ideals which guide it have been built up through the sacrifice of individuals in the past, and it is only by such sacrifices in the present that this generation can do its part in the continuing life of the local community, the State, and the Nation.

The Myth of Western Civilization

And as such, the myth of “Western Civilization” was born. Through their influence, the entire American educational system was coordinated to serve a centralized command, to further specific areas of scientific research, and to inculcate a proper “interpretation” of history. In Universities and the Capitalist State, Clyde Barrow commented that:

The full-scale rewriting of history under state supervision not only facilitated a short-term justification of American participation in the war, but also helped to institutionalize a much broader and more permanent ideological conception of the United States in the social sciences and humanities.

Initially, the notion of “Western Civilization” was created to foster a sense of identity among the Allied Powers, as members of a single civilization, pitted against the East, in the case of World War I, Germany.

However, the development of this idea can be dated back to the early 19th century, with Hegel. As demonstrated by Glenn Magee, in Hegel and the Hermetic tradition, Hegel’s ideas were based on the occult. Borrowing from the Jewish Kabbalah, he developed the idea of history as progress of God coming to know himself through the intellectual evolution of man. In Hegel’s terms, this mean man’s evolution towards what he called “freedom”. This “freedom” was when man discovered that he is God.

This idea was in the service of secret societies, most notably the Illuminati, whose goal was the eradication of Christianity, and its replacement with secular rule. Therefore, “liberty”, represented “freedom” from religion. A traditional interpretation of history according to the Bible was replaced by a version that proposed that humanity has been evolving towards secularism.

Prior to Hegel, it was common for European historians to acknowledge the persistent influence of the East, but Hegel de-emphasized its contribution, in favour of celebrating the exclusive “genius” of the Greeks.

As such, to foster sympathy for their objectives among the common citizenry, it was argued that secularism began among the Greeks, who were the first to question the validity of myth, and that the West steadily progressed away from “superstition”.

The first great advances were with the Renaissance, which developed the philosophy of “Humanism”, which culminated in the triumph of the American and French revolutions, and the creation of “democracy”.