Revisionist History vs. Conspiracy History

Because I was a revisionist historian at the age of 16, back in 1958, I am more aware of the development of revisionist history over the years than most people are. The fact that I received a Ph.D. in history designates me as probably the oldest living Ph.D.-holding historian who has always been a revisionist on America's entry into World War I and World War II.

Revisionist historians are dismissed as conspiracy historians. This is a popular designation. It was dreamed up in 1967 by the Central Intelligence Agency. That, at least, is a good revisionist account of the origins of the phrase. But maybe it is merely a conspiratorial account. In either case, I'm willing to run with it.

As with any fringe group in American society, there are various levels of commitment among those who are in some way associated with a particular revisionist interpretation of history. Some people have read a great deal. They may have written something. They may have a website that deals with these issues. In other words, they are historians by avocation. They are probably not employed as history professors because the historical Guild has been screening out revisionist historians ever since the Rockefeller Foundation put up the money for the Council on Foreign Relations to fund an anti-revisionist version of America's entry into the war. That was in 1946. I talk about this here.

In the summer of 1963, I was employed by a small think tank with a libertarian outlook: the Center for American Studies. It was a later incarnation of the old William Volker Fund. It no longer exists. The man who occupied the office next to mine was a librarian. He had originally studied to be a historian. He studied under the great revisionist historian, Charles C. Tansill, there at Georgetown University. He told me that Tansill had come to him and other grad students and warned them not to get doctorates in history. He knew that they held his views on America's entry into World War II. He had written a detailed book on this, Back Door to War (1952). As I recall, he told me that Tansill had warned him in 1953. Tansill told him that he would never be able to get tenure at a decent university if the department chairman knew that he shared Tansill's views on America's entry into World War II. The man switched his major to library science. He later supervised the creation of Herbert Hoover's Presidential library in Iowa. His name was Thomas Thalkin.

There is a high price to pay for being a revisionist historian. There is a basic law of economics: "When the price is high, less is demanded." This is why, beginning in the early 1950's, revisionist historians disappeared. The purge had begun in the late 1940's, and by the 1950's, it was in full swing. It was much more rigorous and systematic than the purge of non-Keynesian economists. The screening process was rigorous. It was assumed that virtually no undergraduate would have heard of revisionist history. There were only three tiny publishing houses that publish such works, and only a handful of conservatives knew about these companies: Devin-Adair, Regnery, and Caxton.

In contrast to revisionist history, there is a conspiracy history. Conspiracy history usually focuses on recent events. There is a crossover: the Kennedy assassination. You have serious revisionist historians studying this and other serious self-taught historians. You also have a lot of conspiracy theorists who may have read a couple of books about it.

With the advent of the web, anybody can start a website. This means that anybody can become a self-appointed expert of some historical event. It doesn't take a lot of work to do this. It doesn't take any familiarity with professional standards of evidence. These people have never been trained in historical research. The price is low. Let's go back to the other side of the rule that I quoted: "When the price is low, more is demanded."

Conspiracy theories about mass shootings flourish like dandelions in the spring. The sooner they flourish, the less reliable they are. They are based on almost no evidence.

There are these characteristics of conspiracy theories that are widely shared. You need to be aware of them.

I begin with the six standard questions that any good reporter is supposed to ask, and any good historian is supposed to ask: what, where, when, who, why, and how?

1. The conventional "what" is denied. The most stunning example I have ever seen of this is a suggestion that nobody was shot in Las Vegas. It was all faked. 2. "Where" is questioned. Probably the best example in recent years is this one: where is the plane that supposedly crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on 9/11? I mean, it's legitimate to ask this question. It would take a great deal of work to come up with an answer. 3. Then there is "when?" A good example here is this: when did Osama bin Laden die? Conspiracy theorists say that he did not die in Pakistan. He died a decade earlier. 4. Next is "who?" The most famous of all is Lee Harvey Oswald. The conspiracy historian says it must have been somebody else. A revisionist historian might make the suggestion that Oswald did not act alone. We do not find detailed revisionist books on who exactly the other shooter or shooters were. The same applies to the assassin or assassins of Martin Luther King, Jr. 5. The question of "why" is always the most difficult one to answer for all historians. It is difficult to get inside people's minds. They usually do not leave written records. Why did Sirhan Sirhan shoot Bobby Kennedy? Nobody seemed to figure out that one. It's not clear who else may have done it. 6. In the era of online videos, the question of "how" becomes more pressing. How did the supposed pilots of three of the four airliners execute maneuvers to crash into the buildings, especially the one who flew the plane that crashed into the Pentagon? Because this seems impossible, some conspiracy historians have asserted that no plane crashed into the Pentagon. But then what did -- a "what" question. Where did the other plane go? Similarly, how did Building 7 collapse on 9/11? No plane hit it. There are lots of "how" questions regarding the collapse of the other two buildings.

A revisionist historian reads at least a dozen books, or in the case of the Kennedy assassination, maybe a hundred books. He begins the study of the Kennedy assassination with a detailed investigation of the Warren Commission. He has to read everything connected with the Warren Commission and then begin his questioning in response to those documents. A conspiracy theorist has probably never read the Warren Commission report, let alone the support volumes.

When somebody questions almost every official account of everything, you know that he is not a revisionist historian. He is a conspiracy historian. It takes too much work to study any major event in which there may have been a cause that is completely different from the government's official version.

Conspiracy historians can be useful in assembling preliminary information that a revisionist historian may use later on. But the conspiracy theorist should not be taken seriously without detailed supplementary investigations.

The more radical the conspiracy thesis, the less likely that anyone is going to take him seriously. The more radical the thesis, the more likely the person is drifting into a world in which there are no historical causes and effects. He doesn't acknowledge any of them. He only tells you why the official version cannot be true, but he is not willing to make the investment to find out what really did happen. He doesn't care what really did happen. He knows that if he ever comes to a conclusion, there will be other conspiracy theorists who write him off as an organ of the establishment.

I think you have to ask all of the six questions. But when it gets to a theory that the government is behind an event, I focus on the issue of why. I want to know the motivation. If there is no motivation that is sufficient to persuade a government bureaucrat, who is a safety oriented person in his career, to launch a conspiracy that could see him executed if he is discovered, then I am not going to believe it.

Why not? Because I am interested in human action. I am interested in the differences between free market entrepreneurship and bureaucratic management. I learned this distinction from Ludwig von Mises in his marvelous little book, Bureaucracy (1944). The longer the government has operated without any major resistance, the more likely that it is run by bureaucrats. They are risk-averse. Risk-aversion is the fundamental personal characteristic of a bureaucrat. Only under extreme circumstances can he be fired. He will get automatic promotions. The ones who have reached the top of the tenured pyramid have been screened in terms of their commitment to not rocking the boat.

I want to know what kind of motivation would lead such a person to risk being caught and convicted of organizing a mass murder or some comparable event. I doubt that the motivation is money. It is probably not power. Such a senior-level person already has power. Next: Who would persuade such a person to take such a step? What is the motivation for that person to get involved with the dark side of some Deep State bureaucracy? Next: Why would the Deep State bureaucracy pay any attention to somebody outside the bureaucracy? Why would the CIA risk exposure because somebody in some secret society for some reason unknown would like to see a mass murder?

Of what benefit to the government would be such an event? The budgets don't change. Promotion is still by bureaucratic means. The government is gridlocked. This is all a question of motivation. It is a question of human action. What are the costs, and what are the benefits? If the costs are personally enormous and the benefits are vague, it is wise to look for some other cause of a supposedly conspiratorial event.

The greatest revisionist historian was Murray Rothbard. He was an economist. He looked for economic motivation. He followed the money. He followed the publications. He followed the meetings. He named names. He did his homework. Then he provided plausible arguments for causation. He did not promote the idea of a single conspiracy. He showed how self-interested people used state power to feather their nests. He did not accept official explanations.

Rothbard understood a fundamental point: conspiracies gain their leverage through political power. They have almost no leverage in a competitive economy. This was also the view of R. J. Rushdoony. When we talk about conspiracy views of history, we are always talking about clandestine organizations that seek control through political power. Conspiracies that do not seek control through political power are simply special interest groups. There is a big difference between conspiracies and special interest groups. This has to do with the means of gaining of power, and then the maintenance of power over the long run. The representatives of a conspiracy have a hidden agenda. There is a public defense of a program to gain power, but the public defense is a sham. That is the essence of conspiracy. There is a separation between public rhetoric and clandestine plans to achieve power for very different purposes than those expressed in public rhetoric.

When it comes to explanations other than the official explanation, I prefer to wait for a heavily footnoted book written by somebody who has written a book on something else, and who has demonstrated in that book his ability to research evidence and draw plausible conclusions from the evidence. That is hard work. Somebody has to be dedicated to do this kind of work. That screens out the crazies.

I recommend screening out the crazies.

The crazies live in a world of self-induced fantasy. They do not accept the validity of historical cause and effect. They do not follow the money, or the confession, or the media back to a source. They are unwilling to make the commitment to any verifiable truth. They prefer to move on to a new conspiracy. "When the going gets tough, conspiracy theorists get going."

They are lazy. They refuse to do grunt work. They refuse to follow a footnote in order to verify the interpretation being offered. They have an aversion against documentation. They would never read a revisionist book like James Billington's Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (1980). It has way too many footnotes to documents in far too many languages.

They are attracted to the bizarre. They are repulsed by the plausible.

It is best to avoid them.