Thread by @HistoricHive

A collective groan, the predictable 'why do you even care?'—and then memory-holed within a week.

Why do they keep doing this, and what should the response be?

Short 🧵

History enthusiasts will scoff, but this is of little concern to streaming platforms, who cater to a large, impressionable audience.

This audience, mostly unfamiliar with Cleopatra's Ptolemaic lineage, the ethnic composition of London in 1940, etc. are treated to 'docuseries'.

Here, intriguing yet mostly inconsequential figures are playfully reimagined as black, in a format often resembling a drama...

But the viewer is allowed, and indeed persuaded, to believe that what they see is accurate.

An array of 'historians', with credentials to match, provide compelling testimony to Cleopatra's blackness:

(That this was included in the trailer is entirely intentional.)

Occasionally, a figure of great renown is begrudgingly covered. Unable to deceive the viewer in appearance, the protagonist is reduced in other ways:

Napoleon: abusive, petulant cuckold
Alexander: part-time conqueror, full-time homosexual
Caesar: compared to Trump (?) ⬇️

In Britain, such media is complemented by a wider state-funded effort to assure the public that black people have not only 'been here from the start', but indeed built Britain.

⬇️ Aired on CBBC, the British government's channel for children.

The indoctrination continues through to higher education...

Terms like 'Anglo-Saxon', which dare to suggest the existence of an English ethnicity, are bravely dismantled...

The ambiguous “Early Medieval English” is the preferred alternative.

So what is the goal?

To assuage the head-spinning changes to the ethnic composition of Europe & America?

Or to instil in ethnic minorities the sense that they have a greater stake in their host nations?

Perhaps more importantly, what is the appropriate response to the deliberately subversion of your history?

Few comparative examples exist. In 20th century Germany & Russia, the perceived subversive forces were purged.

History is being reimagined as truth to shore up legitimacy of the real world status quo, but the distortion of facts has consequences.

A younger generation, inquisitive in thought and independent in the search of truth, will not forget the subversion of their heritage.