Revisiting Revisionism Diana West
https://dianawest.substack.com/p/revisiting-revisionism?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_
There was always something serendipitous if not downright miraculous in the fact that Ronald Radosh failed to receive his review copy of American Betrayal in a timely fashion. He asked for one early enough to have been out of the box with his “take-down” as the book came out in the spring of 2013; however, despite St. Martin’s and the US Mail’s best efforts, he didn’t get his book (and was too cheap to buy one, thank goodness!) until the summer. That gave the book a little over two months to be read and reviewed and talked about, and me plenty of time do a number of interviews and appearances and write some articles before the campaign of lies began. (Newcomers can catch up on this shocking history in The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal from the Book-Burners.)
So, in the history of American Betrayal, there is a period that predates the the Disinformation Campaign which began in earnest on August 7, 2013 with “McCarthy on Steroids” at Frontpage magazine.
There is a three-hour-interview I did with Brooks Agnew from this early period. It was on the night of June 2, 2013 when the book was barely a week old. That show came to mind recently, what with all the talk of revisionism and Churchill and Hitler and Joe Rogan and Darryl Cooper, and, now, Douglas Murray and the “experts,” including Andrew Roberts. I had thought the audio was lost but I find that some very dear person unknown to me uploaded the interview in hour-long segments to Youtube (links below). For added context, I will close with an email I received after the interview, as quoted in a post published at my dear old “cancelled” website, dianawest.net in which I linked to the Brooks Agnew interview.
The listener wrote:
“I’ve admired your clear-eyed analysis and writing for several years now, but tonight, after listening to the full three hour interview on X-Squared Radio regarding the substance of American Betrayal I’m really shocked at what you have revealed. Essentially you are saying that ALL of post-1930 American geo-political, WW2, and Cold War history, as it has been presented, is a fiction. I’ve long believed that the narrative was a little too cut and dried, but I never imagined things could be as false as that.
“With what you have uncovered I believe you have just written the most important book in American history, and I hope America has the good sense to take heed and understand the implications for present day issues. …”
Humbling accolades aside, there is nothing like having someone else cut to the chase. It certainly catches an author’s attention, habitually focused on explanation, documentation and elaboration. But this is the starkest rendition, the historical bottom line of American Betrayal. The moral/psychological impact of spinning and maintaining this web of lies — “the secret assault on our nation’s character” — is the other signal theme of the book.
When, in a previous interview with Ruth King, I was asked to address the findings of British historian Andrew Roberts, who argues that each of the Big Three (US, GB, USSR) played an essential role in defeating Hitler, I came close to the message of the letter-writer, but without his concision.
I wrote:
Andrew Roberts’ book, like practically every single other book on WWII, is written without taking into account Soviet influence operations over US policy — not at all. It must be emphasized that this tightly blinkered approach to events, even two decades after the release, for example, of the Venona archives (2900 decrypted and partly decrypted Soviet cables from the US to Moscow intercepted by Western Union), is universal. It is also mind-boggling.
It renders these general histories, no matter how excellently researched in other ways, flawed at their essence, even obsolete. Having ignored the implications of the secret influence war the Soviet Union waged against us even as it appeared to fight with us (and GB, ostensibly China, too) these books themselves remain subject to, and inadvertently perpetuate Soviet deception, beginning with the fundamental deception that we all of the Allies were on the same side and had the same war goals.
We were not and we did not. In Europe, the US and GB, subject to massive Soviet intel operations, thought we were fighting to remove Hitler. The USSR, however, was fighting to supplant Hitler, to fight its way into Eastern and Central Europe to raise a Communist empire. “The irony of it all is that the Soviet empire is largely one of our own creation,” Gen. Albert Wedemyer pointed out in his 1948 memoir in a concluding, two-part chapter he called “The War Nobody Won” (p. 277, American Betrayal). The fact is — the archives show — we were always fighting at cross purposes with the USSR.
This should be central to our understanding of the war, as well as to our understanding of the domestic war over Communist penetration to follow. …
The effort to revise, rework, and, in fact, rewrite what M. Stanton Evans calls (high on my book’s cover) “court histories” that we regard as gospel is precisely what American Betrayal is all about.
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I haven’t listened to this interview since recording it but I think it will show what revising “court history” is all about.
Part 1)
Part 2)
Part 3)
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