This very common statement and belief by some, I think was generally scoffed at by most people, myself included. There, typically will be factual, proper history accounts written by historians and filed away for those seeking truth to read. But I think that statement, as used, speaks more to what 'history' the masses will see and believe, and more specifically the communities targeted for such messaging, and it is the 'winners' who will generally control that.

And I don't think 'winners' in that sense necessarily means the person or group who won the specific event as much as it means who 'wins' the messaging campaign.

Trump may have lost the GE but he has won the messaging war with 70% of the GOP now thinking the election was not free and fair. He has rewritten the history successfully to the people he was targeting. I think that is what Bill Barr meant, when he said that. I think his follow up would be 'who cares what others may think'.

As you look broader at this question, Florida and Texas and other GOP states, are also writing another form of the history by being the 'winners' who won elections. The various book bannings/teacher silencing are a very specific tool to try and ensure generations to come, only have one world view of certain issues. You might say, that is not 'writing history necessarily' but you can see how a next Trump POTUS run, if he accomplishes his goal and dismantles many of the safe guards with a compliant SC, those type of book bans/teacher silencing will be applied by a federal gov't to ensure topics such as the insurrection and any of Trump grievances are never taught in schools or available in books.

Similarly China is writing history re the Uyghurs and other issues. OK, we outside China may see different history books but generations of CHinese are being conditioned to believe a certain 'other' narrative which may be impossible to win them over from. Similar to how many Russians were conditioned to believe Ukraine was a nazi state and it would near impossible to convince them otherwise.

So I have come to believe a statement I did not generally take to seriously has far more truth to it then I would have given it prior because I believe those who say it, only really care about their target audience and what they believe. Bill Barr would not care what Dem's and the rest of the world got to read and believe. He is saying 'if we win, our base will be GIVEN our written version of the history and that is what matters'.

Was Barr right, given the context I am seeing this in?
In a theoretical were Trump wins again and is able to impose his world view on he US, do you agree he would use the template to try and rewrite history from the Federal perspective in the way the GOp States are?

Of course history is written by the winners.

I have never heard this aphorism used in the way you are using it.

I don't think Barr was using the aphorism in the way you are using it.

The aphorism has never been entirely true.

It is less true now than it was 200 years ago.

But you are certainly correct that defining reality has political value, even if your persuasion and gaslighting only reaches a subset of the population.

Doesn't that need context though?

Are we saying I am unable today to see history books on aboriginals in NA that does not reflect the 'winners' (settler, conquerors) view?

We can. So in absolute sense it is wrong. As history is written by all sides, and the question is really about preponderance if we only go down that line of thought.

But what I am saying is that the 'statement', 'history is written by the winners' , maybe, as I read in Bill Barr's comment only really saying, 'we will write our history for our audience and it will be accepted and that is all we really care about'.

I think Bill Barr knew, no matter what the fuller and accurate history of the Trump era would be out their for 'OTHERS", but he was saying that is irrelevant. That 'if you are in power (the winner) you only need worry about the audience that keeps you in power and provide THEM the history you write'.

I would be curious to see you lay out the way you think it has been historically used and what meaning was inferred by it?

I suspect it will be more in line with my pre Bill Barr view, which has made me see a different context to the statement.

History is mostly written by losers. Have you met any historians? Bunch of dorks.

I don't think there is any mystery to the aphorism. It meant something like, "The winner of a conflict has the leverage to control the narrative." The subtext, I guess, is that you don't need to worry about how you are winning the conflict. If you win the conflict, everything else will take care of itself.

Sure but my point is I never really accepted that aphorism.

Sure the winner got the spoils, and to control the narrative to some degree, but there are no shortage of history books written by not just the losers (if still alive) but others.

So China may control the narrative a bit about the Uyghurs but we all know the truth, thus the aphorism is not accurate, in my prior view.

What I am saying, is looking at the Bill Barr statement I think those who say it mean it much more narrowly than the way I looked at it.

China is in fact 'writing the history books' even as the rest of the world publishes more books then they can, as China only cares about 'winning' with the audience that matters to them. To create generations of citizens who will largely reject any wrong was ever done the Uyghurs, as they were taught from cradle to grave that was true.


So when you view that thru Bill Barr and Trump and Co eyes, the Steal Never happened, as long as they can control the history books that get to their base. They don't care what history books American's who won't vote for them get.

Had Trump succeeded in over taking the election and declaring a National Emergency and seizing power, the rest of the world would know the true history as would about half of America, but Trump and Co would not care. Their history books, for their specific audience would be written by them and all other books would be banned in the way Florida/Texas are banning books.

I am saying I used to consider that aphorism more globally but now recognize it as a local comment really only meant as an exchange from the 'winner', handing his version of the history book to his very select audience.

Anything can be written by anyone.

Historical orthodoxy and narrative is 100% determined by the winners, which is totally influential. It doesn't matter if some dissident is barking at the moon in some newsletter only read by a small handful of crackpots, even if he's utterly correct and the mainstream narrative is built on bullshit.

"Democracy" is the art of a relatively small group of highly cunning people manipulating and influencing the opinions of the much dumber, more naïve and less informed masses. Freedom of speech can exist, so long as the mainstream narrative is under control. Those speaking unpopular truths will be mocked/marginalized under those conditions, while allowing to speak as they wish, which is even more effective than silencing them under authority of the state.

The further you go back in history the truer it is.

Sometimes only the winners even had writing.

There is probably an element of truth in that "winners write history", in the regard that the winner has a higher chance of having access to the things you need to write history down (infrastructure, people, educational institutions, paper / printing presses / computers) etc.

But on the flip-side of things, it is also true that historians make winners. A lot of the things we know from older history we know from written sources, and they didn't necessarily belong to the most successful civilization or society at the time, they merely belong to the civilization that had a system of writing, had access to the tools needed for writing, used a language we know how to translate and their writings survived later civilizations.

So our understanding of history can be skewed because we see this dominance of history as evidence of dominance of the period and of a more dominating legacy. There are enormous and likely successful empires we know very little of, because we haven't translated their language, their writings didn't survive later times or because they didn't rely as much on writing.

This also happens outside the historical scale, in that the records or stories we see or hear aren't necessarily the best or most accurate. Any person lives in a bubble of his or her understanding, and what passes into that bubble will likely strike us as more meaningful and genuine than what does not. I think that effect will be very impactful once we get to matters of ideology, because we want the things we agree with to be true.

Interested in examples of this.

In cases of older historical record, 'winners' wrote it simply because that's who had access to the infrastructure to write things down and disseminate information.

In contemporary history- with information (and its transmission) being so radically different from how it was even one single generation ago- it shifts the context of the saying a bit, since there's no longer a struggle to access 'writing' or 'publication'. Now, 'winners write history' is more about enforcing ideological orthodoxy, less about controlling the means of publication. Native Americans didn't have access to blogs on the Trail of Tears but if they had, they would've published things that directly conflicted with the orthodoxy that for a hundred years after, influenced American opinion about 'heroic settlers fighting the savages' that was so ingrained into American life, it was still seen in our mainstream cultural aesthetic as recently as the 1960s-70s.

Enforcing orthodoxy via curation of information is an exercise in controlling a population and influencing their behaviors and perceptions on things, usually in favor of the leadership in power. The news in North Korea looks quite different than the news in France, those broadcasting the news in North Korea don't care what people in France think of their information, as long as that's all North Koreans get to see.

If those in power have an interest in uplifting the image of their country (lets call this the political right), then their information stream is structured differently from their ideological counterparts on the political left whose interests are usually self-flagellation/guilt/"tearing down an oppressive society" on the left, so their information aesthetic is reflective of that. I don't think there's a single show on PBS where 'social grievance' isn't weaseled in, somewhere, in some form. Its not a coincidence. Conversely, when is Fox News not directly or indirectly thanking someone in authority for their service?

Yes.

There is a wikipedia element to history, as continued corrections and more broad perspectives creep in, as they become free of contemporary biases.

Today US kids are much more likely to get a much broader view of Indigenous people in America, then they would have 30 years ago and it will only continue to become more broad.

that is why States like Florida and Texas are trying to 'hold the line' and return to a more narrow view to provide for at least another generation of more biased kids growing into adults.


But recognizing that it is true that the 'History will purge itself largely of winner bias over a long period of time', that is why I am asking if maybe those who use the statement 'History is written by the Winners', as Bill Barr did are ONLY referring to recent or contemporary history.

I think Barr is stating, 'regardless of fact or truth, we will write our own history (version of events) and our base will buy it as long as we win and that is all we care about'.

Thus for Barr and those who think like him history is in fact 'written by the winners' in terms of what matters to him.

So long term view = False.
Short term view = more or less true

No one views Stalin in the same light as Hitler even though his regime was responsible for more deaths. Is it because he was a winner?

Looking forward to a response to the above from Victor, P&S's own resident Stalin-apologist.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is no new apologia under the sun.

human continuum. throughout all history making more history, claiming they all can see. but the evidence falters just short of my hand.