History_As_Mystery

History As Mystery History as mystery Prologue - page xv A dissenting view invites us to test the prevailing explanations and open ourselves to neglected ones. Through this clash of viewpoints we have a better chance of moving toward a closer approximation of historical truth. Dissidents (or revisionists, as they have been called) are not drifting with the mainstream but swimming against it, struggling against the prevailing range of respectable opinion. They are deprived of what Alvin Gouldner called "the background assumptions," the implicit, unexamined. but commonly embraced notions that invite self-confirming acceptance because of their conformity to what is already accepted as properly true. This established familiarity and unanimity of bias is frequently treated as "objectivity." For this reason dissidents are constantly having to defend themselves and argue closely from the evidence. In contrast, orthodoxy can rest on its own unstated axioms and mystifications, remaining heedless of marginalized critics who are denied a means of reaching mass audiences. Orthodoxy promotes its views through the unexamined repetition that comes with monopoly control of the major communication and educational systems. In sum, while dissidents can make mistakes of their own, they are less likely to go unchallenged for it. Not so with orthodoxy. It remains the most insidious documents, one, military, inquisition, cia, public, history, capital, about, state, government, century, against, after, upon, states, role, might, information, human, department, been, while, war, united, torture, thousands, president, interests, guatemalan, conspiracy, years, wealth, washington, through, themselves