Yes, I Am A Historian Who Cares About the Truth
Phil Leigh, a Civil War author and blogger who I’ve never heard of or interacted with before, criticizes me in a recent blog post about the Confederate flag on his website. The issue begins with an essay by Andy Hall. Noticing that a popular photo-shopped image of a World War II Marine in the Pacific with a Confederate flag was going viral on social media, Hall did some quick research and clearly demonstrated that the photo was a fake. I re-blogged the essay here because I appreciated Hall’s detective work and efforts to correct misinformation on the internet. By sharing it on this blog, however, I seemed to have fallen into Leigh’s bad graces.
Leigh argues that both Hall and I ignore tangible evidence that some white southern soldiers flew the Confederate flag during WWII and that they flew it as a genuine expression of southern pride. He also points to a different post of his where he shares nine real images of WWII soldiers with Confederate flags.
Okay, great, but that wasn’t the point of Hall’s post or why I shared it here. Neither Hall nor I deny the existence of Confederate flags among WWII soldiers, and Hall did not write the post with the intention of providing an overview of the flag’s use during the war. The point of the post was to highlight a deliberate attempt to falsify history for the purpose of promoting a contemporary political position and a preferred version of history. The post also highlights how quickly misinformation spreads on social media. If you want to use images of WWII soliders flying Confederate flags, share the real pictures, plain and simple. Why distort the past to promote Confederate heritage today? It’s lazy and dishonest.
Leigh is not finished with me, however. In a detour of his critique of Hall, he also criticizes my recent essay for the Journal of the Civil War Eraabout Civil War gift shops and concludes that “[Sacco] sees no reason why items displaying the Confederate flag should be sold in Civil War museum gifts shops.” Again, that was not the point of the essay. My argument is that memory scholars and public historians need to undertake a more critical analysis of the items that are sold in these spaces. What do those items say about the ways people remember the Civil War? What are the values of a given historic site, and how do gift shop items reinforce or detract from those larger values and mission of a site? That is not the same as saying all Confederate flags must go, and I even concluded the essay by saying that a “one-size-fits-all solution” to the questions I raise does not exist. If Civil War gift shops want to continue selling Confederate merchandise, great. I think it is more than fair, however, to put that merchandise under a critical lens and push museums to think about gift shops as an extension of their mission. My point is not to engage in “political correctness” or an outright ban on selling Confederate flags, which Leigh and his commenters suggest.
On top of these critiques, Leigh feels the need to point out my employment status to his readers, although he does not do the same for Hall. One wonders why he feels the need to do that other than to suggest that my employer creates a bias that prevents me from practicing honest history, or that I have some sort of alternate motive for writing about history besides seeking truth and understanding. Perhaps there’s a different way to interpret Leigh’s mention of my employment status, but I do find the action very odd regardless.
Let’s get to the bottom of this strange discussion and put it to rest: altering historic photos for the purpose of promoting a contemporary political cause or a preferred version of history is wrong. Sharing these photos online is doubly wrong, and the image in question that Hall exposed as being photo-shopped has unfortunately gone viral. Hall was right to correct it, as he’s done with a lot of bad history over the years on his blog. Why does Leigh feel the need to criticize Hall instead of the people who create and share false history? Furthermore, it’s rather pretentious for someone who does not know me to title their post “Which Historian Cares About the Truth?” and then subtly suggest that I (and Andy Hall) don’t. You’ll have to forgive me if I find such an approach obnoxious and bothersome. It’s one thing to say “I disagree with your conclusions,” but another thing entirely to say that I don’t care about the truth.
I welcome comments of the former variety, but not of the latter. Mr. Leigh suggests readers view both of our essays and draw their own conclusions, and I encourage the same.
Cheers
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