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Henry IV - Blog Posts

10 months ago

Propaganda Machine

One thing I think about all the time is the sheer scale of propaganda out in the world right now.

Consider for a moment, Henry IV of Castille. He was the brother of Isabella of Castille, who became Queen after his death, and it was because of her that Christopher Columbus set out on his voyage for India. We know SO MUCH about Isabella and Ferdinand and the conquest of the Americas but we know so little about Henry IV. And yes, that's in part because he didn't do as much and wasn't as significant, but it's also because during his rule, his position as monarch was tenuous. He had a lot of detractors and people vying for his throne. These detractors put out huge amounts of propaganda, about him and his daughter, and because there's so much nonsense to wade through to pick out even a sliver of truth, we know barely anything about his reign.

If Historians can be largely clueless as to what happened 500 years ago, in a time where there was no social media or internet, and there were highly limited mediums through which to spread propaganda and misinformation, how screwed does that make us now?

Surely it'll be hundreds of times more difficult to ascertain what happened when there are thousands of contradicting tweets, videos and articles surrounding every issue. It's unspeakably horrible to imagine that 600 years from now, Historians might look back and believe the words of Anti-Vaxxers, or take everything Trump and his supporters say as gospel. I'm not saying they will, because Historians are super smart, and a big part of the discipline is taking sources with a grain of salt, but I think it's a legitimate concern, that we're going to lose the lessons we could've learnt from our present, because it's so bogged down in bullshit.


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