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Honestly curious
Mar. 27th, 2025 04:50 pmI've been browsing a few history related videos on bilibili lately, and every time there's a video that makes comparisons to western history (eg. Ancient Rome, Greece, etc.) inevitably there will be comments that essentially parrot the western pseudohistory conspiracy theory (西方伪史论).
They claim something to the effect that those "golden eras" didn't exist, those civilizations/empires were made up, those famous people didn't exist or never wrote the great works they're known for...It's all invented out of whole cloth during the Renaissance to justify/glorify Europe's rise to power. Or even more hilarious: that the root of all western science was "stolen" from Ming Dynasty's 永乐大典, which those darn pirates like Newton, Copernicus, Da Vinci and ilk copied from, and then burnt the original in the heart of Beijing.
It all brought back bad memories from when I was reading historical based enovels in the 历史直播 genre I was into a while back. Every time some reference or comparison was made to western history, there would be commenters of the same stripe coming up and claiming Europe is all fake history. These were more egregious on qidian than on jjwtx (though possibly because qidian is more conducive to comments in general and has more history novels and audience than jj, which is more concentrated in the drama genres). It was annoying back then, almost to the same degree as those authors not bothering to research history and just writing around common cliches/inaccuracies.
I used to believe that these kind of people fall into the same category as flat-earthers, creationists, Korea universal origin claimers, and generally idiots that normal people should ignore for fear of dragging down one's own IQ. But, at the same time...amount of noise I see also makes me wonder if the belief is more pervasive in the population than the above-mentioned kooks. Or is it just a consequence of China's larger population resulting in a larger number of kooks just by the statistics?
Surely this isn't a view that normal people who've passed through the mandatory public education would hold. Right? Right?
They claim something to the effect that those "golden eras" didn't exist, those civilizations/empires were made up, those famous people didn't exist or never wrote the great works they're known for...It's all invented out of whole cloth during the Renaissance to justify/glorify Europe's rise to power. Or even more hilarious: that the root of all western science was "stolen" from Ming Dynasty's 永乐大典, which those darn pirates like Newton, Copernicus, Da Vinci and ilk copied from, and then burnt the original in the heart of Beijing.
It all brought back bad memories from when I was reading historical based enovels in the 历史直播 genre I was into a while back. Every time some reference or comparison was made to western history, there would be commenters of the same stripe coming up and claiming Europe is all fake history. These were more egregious on qidian than on jjwtx (though possibly because qidian is more conducive to comments in general and has more history novels and audience than jj, which is more concentrated in the drama genres). It was annoying back then, almost to the same degree as those authors not bothering to research history and just writing around common cliches/inaccuracies.
I used to believe that these kind of people fall into the same category as flat-earthers, creationists, Korea universal origin claimers, and generally idiots that normal people should ignore for fear of dragging down one's own IQ. But, at the same time...amount of noise I see also makes me wonder if the belief is more pervasive in the population than the above-mentioned kooks. Or is it just a consequence of China's larger population resulting in a larger number of kooks just by the statistics?
Surely this isn't a view that normal people who've passed through the mandatory public education would hold. Right? Right?
