philechat

My knowledge of the Bible is not as extensive as the rest of you, and therefore this post is more upon the nature of propoganda passed on as history, as illustrated in my experience in Taiwan. The "history text" and the "geography text" I studied back then in my middle school were utter nonsense and falsehood, utilized by the Nationalist government to perpetuate Nationalist reign.

Like the initiations in churches and synagogues, the Nationalist Taiwanese government set up a system of examination for membership, in this case of high schools and colleges. Since school diploma is crucial to getting a good job the Taiwanese people were forced to remember a history of falsehood by heart, created ex nihilo by the Nationalists.

The myths were numerous--the Nationalists were great revisionists of modern Taiwanese history that now most Taiwanese people does not know their true history especially from year 1945 to year 1986. The geography book, which claimed possession of mainland China even after the Civil War, talked about a Nationalist China still owning Mongolia and divided into 35 provinces (as opposed to 22 in PRC system).

The Nationalists make even more aggressive revisionist attempts in terms of the Taiwanese history book. Not only is Taiwanese history suppressed in favor to the 4000-year history of China, the post-1945 history is completely falsified into a propoganda tract against the Communists and in favor of the Nationalists. The horrors of the 228 incident (which 30000+ Taiwanese were murdered and tortured to death by the Chiang Kai-Shek army) were unmentioned in textbooks until year 1990, and still the incident was condensed into a single paragraph without mentions of casualities. Another 100000 of so Taiwanese were murdered during the long reign of Chiang Kai-Shek from 1945-1979 for political reasons, an era now termed White Terror. Again these events remain unmentioned in textbooks.

Chiang Kai-Shek was praised as the National Hero of Taiwan in the history books, of which most Taiwanese knew by heart as the biggest lie. However many Chinese (those who came after 1945) continues to believe in the bag of lies for political reasons and try to suppress as best possible the horrors of Chiang Kai-Shek's dictatorship. A simple search in the history of my family shows that the White Terror existed.

After democracy was enforced these lies had been exposed to sunlight and the "national hero" myth of Chiang Kai-Shek was debunked. Yet, as a result of the Nationalist falsification, many Taiwanese people had no knowledge of their own history.

Just want to point to the "history" of Bible in similar light...Propoganda with its outright lies had been used as history and geography textbooks...Surely the Bible must be true and inerrant. Similarly, Chiang Kai-Shek is the greatest hero of our nation!

[ June 08, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

Vorkosigan

hao3 li4 hai4!

Good to meet you. I am living in Taichung right now.

Another good example is the origin of baseball, which was dreamed up by a Committee and attributed to Abner Doubleday, the civil war general. A complete fabrication, but now an enduring myth. But then there are so many good examples.....

Vorkosigan

philechat

This is just a very "modern" case of revisionist history for the usage of propoganda. I think if one looks at the history textbooks of Communist China or any other dictatorships we would find similar "false history" passed down as facts.

And therefore, I never trusted history textbooks unless verified by evidences (from actual documents and archeology). But again, the dictatorships may churn out numerous false documents for its political purpose, and a rigorous, hard-headed analysis from the part of the historians or anthropologists are needed.

And people believed in the Bible for the same reason as the Taiwanese people in Chiang Kai-Shek (though in recent times Chiang's lies were exposed to the public). Brain-washing, appeal to fear, blackmailing, political prisons, false history, etc. were all very useful tools for the revisionists to control the inhabitants.

[ June 09, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>