Here is what drives me around the bend. You want to argue that the Maccabees weren’t very nice by modern standards? Fine. Next, I’d like you to explain to me who or what in all of ancient or even very recent history meets your standards. I mean *anyone.* 1/
I think about this a great deal as a historian. People in the past believe and behave appallingly by our standards. That's a given. If you don't know that already, you are undereducated. I'm not trying to be cynical, but pointing out that "judging" the past like this is stupid.2/
People, today and in the past, are products of their circumstances. Some very unusual people have moral clarity, and some people try to excuse what they know is inexcusable. Some people make the inexcusable worse. 3/
For example, white supremacy was evil, but most white Americans in the 19th century believed in it very strongly. We can be appalled by this, but just being appalled doesn't to help understand why this was so. /4
Virtually every religious or political movement of the past was characterized by some degree of violence, intolerance, and cruelty. And virtually any figure you can look at will fall short by our standards. They succeeded in part because they made concessions to their time. /5
If you are upset about the Maccabees, I have some very unpleasant things to tell you about: the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the Civil War, not to mention every other religion you can name. If you haven't thought about this before... well, ignorance is bliss. /6
By all historical sources the Maccabee rebellion was touched off by state-sanctioned slaughter of innocent people with the goal of ending their religious identity. We normally call that "imperialism" today, although in many places it was just... the way things were. /7
Did the Maccabees respond with what we would now call "terrorism"? Yes. They killed people who seemed to sympathize with the oppressor. You and I might wish they hadn't, but that is the historical norm, whether we are talking about Haiti, Nat Turner, or Spartacus. /8
The people who created Hanukkah lived with the bitter irony that the freedom struggle had gone very, very badly. That the Hasmoneans were as bad as the Greeks, and that they had paved the way for the Romans. So they didn't abandon the cruelty of history. They couldn't. /9
They did everything they could to refashion it so that young Jewish people wouldn't become fanatics and get killed in the process. They created a fairy tale. But the reality beneath the fairy tale couldn't be swept away. /10
Contrast this, as the Times writer did, with Christmas and the astounding ignorance comes into to full view. You could not come up with a better example of how the blood-soaked history of Christianity is literally whitewashed in our culture... /11
...than that of a magical god dropping presents from the sky for children. (Yeah, folks, that's DEFINITELY what Christianity has been as a historical reality!) But this idiot contrasts the child's view of Santa with the "sad, somber" songs of Hanukkah. Fuck that shit. /12
Perhaps the Maccabees illustrate all too well how foolish it is to try to turn history into myth. As far as I'm concerned, you don't have to like the history *or* the myth. That's fine. /13
But if you are just reading now in Wikipedia... for the first time... that the Maccabees did some things you don't like, then maybe you should ask yourself why you never bothered to learn about this until now. /14
And then read about all the other things you uncritically believe without thinking. Absorb the difficult reality that the past kind of sucks. And, therefore, the present does too. And that maybe a little humility is in order before you spout off about your big discovery. /END
