7 ms·

The Paris Attacks and the Abuse of History

69 points by diodorus 11y ago

jacobolus 11y ago
Niall Ferguson’s argument style is tendentious and question-begging, painfully oversimplified and predictable in the extreme, which he tries to paper over with rhetorical flourish. It seems like every other sentence he says something jaw-droppingly wrongheaded. Nothing of his I’ve ever read has contained even a shred of insight, and he’s infuriating and frankly exhausting to read. His “success” owes to his ability to effectively flatter a particular group of rich men, but I don’t know anyone of substance who takes him seriously. Just ignore him and move on.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ysilver 11y ago
  I have tried to take his work seriously. At first glance it looks like it should be thorough and center-right -- not a bad way to read history when read along-side differing accounts. However, he can't help himself from reducing his voluminous work to strangely simple political jabs. Maybe if he stuck to long-form topics from long-ago periods he could keep his credibility.
rtl49 11y ago
I always find it surprising how many academics at prestigious institutions manage to get away with professing such obviously risible ideas. There is no meaningful analogy to be drawn between the sack of the city of Rome and Western civilization's current conflict with Islamic extremism. The imbalance of power, resources, and organization between the West and Daesh is not remotely comparable. Concerns about the import of ideology along with refugees might be legitimate, but comparing the downfall of modern Western civilization to the sack of a single city, Rome, is just ridiculous.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I always wonder if people don't understand the massive disparity between the economic and military power of first-world countries and organizations like ISIS, or if they do understand but still somehow think it makes sense to compare it with Rome or be paranoid that they're going to conquer Europe or whatever.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    There was an article on HN a few days ago that put the financing of ISIS into perspective. The US spends more on a typical large bridge than ISIS would earn over the course of several years at their peak income. Comparing this to, say, the GDP of the United States alone, or even the US military budget, it's easy for even a layman to see how silly this professor's argument is.
    - orionblastar 11y ago
      That is because the USA is building things and ISIS is destroying things. It cost more to build things than to destroy them. ISIS has an ideology that it uses to recruit people who are willing to work for a low amount of money and do suicide bombings. Most of their weapons they stole from Iraq, and they stole oil and sold it to raise more money. Yet the USA spends more on its military and drones and still cannot stop ISIS. We are told ISIS is contained, but right after that the Paris Attacks happened. ISIS can just recruit people and give them resources and money to carry out attacks. We are not fighting a nation or religion, we are fighting an ideology. One that can recruit people over social media and operate on a low budget with low pay because everyone they recruit thinks they will have 72 virgins in paradise after they die. The USA is a nation of laws and we have a separation of church and state. We have minimum wage laws and pay people more based on their skill set and value. We pay more for our military and for building bridges because we are trying to build an economy and improve our nation's infrastructure. ISIS does none of those things so they can operate on a lower income, and since their recruits can become a suicide bomb they don't have to pay them after that. They recruit so many people that life is cheap to them and they sacrifice them as pawns. ISIS or any other terrorist group always finds a way to get an income, blackmail, stealing oil, fake Islamic charities, raiding banks for cash, forcing people to pay a tax or be killed, killing people and taking their wealth, and all sorts of things. They operate like a criminal operation and are even known to deal in drugs as well sometimes. Defeating ISIS will be very hard indeed. You have to disprove their ideology so they stop getting recruits. You have to cut off their sources of income. You have to kill of their leaders until there is nobody qualified to be a general or leader. Then in the process make sure no innocent women and children get killed or else it will be used as propaganda to recruit more people. You have to understand what we might be seeing World War 3 in the Middle East right now if things don't get any better.
omonra 11y ago
I was hoping to see more specific criticism from someone claiming to be an expert in 5th century Rome. But all I see is a left-wing professor unhappy with insufficient PC-ness of someone's argument (too Western-centric, not afraid to use the 'us-them' language, etc). His one real point is that the Rome collapsed because of partly internal and partly external factors. That's certainly true - but it was the barbarians who ultimately sacked Rome and not a civil war that did them in.
- rtl49 11y ago
  I think the fact that he posted this on facebook gives us reason to believe this was intended for a very general audience. Yes, his criticism is not so far from mere insult. But it remains true that Ferguson's argument is laughable, and perhaps the author's frustration with its absurdity has leaked into his writing. This is to say nothing about Europe's interests in preventing an influx of refugees, just that likening the West's conflict with Islamic extremists to the circumstances surrounding the fall of Rome is nonsense.
  - xiaoma 11y ago
    What good does responding to a laughable argument with a angry laughable argument do? This fb post doesn't belong on HN.
    - rtl49 11y ago
      One possible reason is that Ferguson's words lent credibility to a social movement the author considers destructive. Even if the remarks were absurd in the context of the available evidence, few people will read further than to see they were written by a Harvard professor.
      - xiaoma 11y ago
        Does lashing out against something one feels is destructive without a reasoned argument accomplish anything positive? I have my doubts that it does. It might even lend weight to the very arguments he's attacking since he's made such a weak argument. I'm not debating his position, which I respect, but his argument. If an argument is nothing more than talking about how angry one is and then attacking those who hold the opposing position, it's noise at best and a rallying cry to a mob at worst.
ysilver 11y ago
My favorite line: > Some of my fellow historians have asked the obvious question why Ferguson fixates on the fifth century, when the seventh century in the East, which saw the rise of Islam, might present more obvious food for thought. Perhaps Ferguson knows even less about that. As the author notes, Niall Ferguson chose his Roman comparison to evoke fear of a fall from greatness, not because it is an insightful comparison. The rise of ISIS and its war with Al-Assad's Syria and Iraq should be seen in the context of an emerging revolutionary state like the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Cambodian, and Iranian revolutions. The refugees are just like those that are typically cast out during the rise of a revolutionary state. We get much more nuanced comparisons of ISIS and the refugee influx in this context. Here is a great set of such comparisons: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-revolutionary-state https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-rev... > In his ‘General considerations on the decline of the empire in the west’ that concluded volume 3 of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon made this European dimension explicit by considering how a similar chain of events might impact on the Europe of his own day. The best vaccine against alarmist predictions is looking at the previously incorrect alarmist predictions from the same source. This review is like @pessimistsarc on Twitter, except for angsty pundit-historians. Very gratifying.
benbreen 11y ago
For those looking for more concrete information about Roman history, a classics professor I know has written a really in-depth two part series about immigration in the Roman Empire over at a new online classics journal called Eidolon: https://eidolon.pub/barbarians-inside-the-gate-part-ii-c22c5becd228 https://eidolon.pub/barbarians-inside-the-gate-part-ii-c22c5... Granted, he's writing about Republican Rome so it doesn't directly relate to the 5th century, but it deals with similar themes in a thoughtful way. And I agree that it would be better for everyone if we collectively just ignored the 2015 incarnation of Niall Ferguson, but unfortunately being a tenured professor at Harvard (and now Stanford) gives you quite the bully pulpit! His first book is actually good, but it's been a downhill slide into largely fact-less political assertions and nasty ad hominem attacks since then...
- ysilver 11y ago
  > And I agree that it would be better for everyone if we collectively just ignored the 2015 incarnation of Niall Ferguson, but unfortunately being a tenured professor at Harvard (and now Stanford) gives you quite the bully pulpit! His first book is actually good, but it's been a downhill slide into largely fact-less political assertions and nasty ad hominem attacks since then... I couldn't agree more. The 2011 Ferguson was pretty vapid when dealing in short-form too. He debated Zakaria and Kissinger in 2011 on the future of China: https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/china https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/china It is hard to believe how frequently he resorts to ad hominem arguments. Furthermore, he can't seem to even acknowledge a the crux of a compelling argument made by Kissinger/Zakaria. Unsurprisingly, he drove the audience away from his argument in droves.
nickbauman 11y ago
Niall Ferguson's pseudo-scholarship ignores the fact that Karl Popper's entire career was based on debunking the myth of historicism Gibbon and Spengler espoused. Today nobody takes the latter two seriously, while Popper is still standing tall.
known 11y ago
If you're not from my caste/religion, you're non-human to me; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_writings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_writings
a_bonobo 11y ago
I've posted this on HN before: Every time someone tries to shoe-horn the Fall of Rome into contemporary history it's good to post Demandt's "210 Reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire" [1]. You can nicely see which ideologies have tried to fit Rome into their own crusade. [1] http://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html http://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html
WildUtah 11y ago
There's no link to the Ferguson article in Humphries's attack piece. The Sunday Times has a paywall, even for a single article in the current edition. But Ferguson's piece has been syndicated. Here's a link at the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fall-rome/ErlRjkQMGXhvDarTIxXpdK/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fal...

69 points by diodorus 11y ago

Niall Ferguson’s argument style is tendentious and question-begging, painfully oversimplified and predictable in the extreme, which he tries to paper over with rhetorical flourish. It seems like every other sentence he says something jaw-droppingly wrongheaded. Nothing of his I’ve ever read has contained even a shred of insight, and he’s infuriating and frankly exhausting to read. His “success” owes to his ability to effectively flatter a particular group of rich men, but I don’t know anyone of substance who takes him seriously. Just ignore him and move on.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ysilver 11y ago
I have tried to take his work seriously. At first glance it looks like it should be thorough and center-right -- not a bad way to read history when read along-side differing accounts. However, he can't help himself from reducing his voluminous work to strangely simple political jabs. Maybe if he stuck to long-form topics from long-ago periods he could keep his credibility.

rtl49 11y ago

I always find it surprising how many academics at prestigious institutions manage to get away with professing such obviously risible ideas. There is no meaningful analogy to be drawn between the sack of the city of Rome and Western civilization's current conflict with Islamic extremism. The imbalance of power, resources, and organization between the West and Daesh is not remotely comparable. Concerns about the import of ideology along with refugees might be legitimate, but comparing the downfall of modern Western civilization to the sack of a single city, Rome, is just ridiculous.

mikeash 11y ago
I always wonder if people don't understand the massive disparity between the economic and military power of first-world countries and organizations like ISIS, or if they do understand but still somehow think it makes sense to compare it with Rome or be paranoid that they're going to conquer Europe or whatever.
- rtl49 11y ago
  There was an article on HN a few days ago that put the financing of ISIS into perspective. The US spends more on a typical large bridge than ISIS would earn over the course of several years at their peak income. Comparing this to, say, the GDP of the United States alone, or even the US military budget, it's easy for even a layman to see how silly this professor's argument is.
  - orionblastar 11y ago
    That is because the USA is building things and ISIS is destroying things. It cost more to build things than to destroy them. ISIS has an ideology that it uses to recruit people who are willing to work for a low amount of money and do suicide bombings. Most of their weapons they stole from Iraq, and they stole oil and sold it to raise more money. Yet the USA spends more on its military and drones and still cannot stop ISIS. We are told ISIS is contained, but right after that the Paris Attacks happened. ISIS can just recruit people and give them resources and money to carry out attacks. We are not fighting a nation or religion, we are fighting an ideology. One that can recruit people over social media and operate on a low budget with low pay because everyone they recruit thinks they will have 72 virgins in paradise after they die. The USA is a nation of laws and we have a separation of church and state. We have minimum wage laws and pay people more based on their skill set and value. We pay more for our military and for building bridges because we are trying to build an economy and improve our nation's infrastructure. ISIS does none of those things so they can operate on a lower income, and since their recruits can become a suicide bomb they don't have to pay them after that. They recruit so many people that life is cheap to them and they sacrifice them as pawns. ISIS or any other terrorist group always finds a way to get an income, blackmail, stealing oil, fake Islamic charities, raiding banks for cash, forcing people to pay a tax or be killed, killing people and taking their wealth, and all sorts of things. They operate like a criminal operation and are even known to deal in drugs as well sometimes. Defeating ISIS will be very hard indeed. You have to disprove their ideology so they stop getting recruits. You have to cut off their sources of income. You have to kill of their leaders until there is nobody qualified to be a general or leader. Then in the process make sure no innocent women and children get killed or else it will be used as propaganda to recruit more people. You have to understand what we might be seeing World War 3 in the Middle East right now if things don't get any better.

omonra 11y ago

I was hoping to see more specific criticism from someone claiming to be an expert in 5th century Rome. But all I see is a left-wing professor unhappy with insufficient PC-ness of someone's argument (too Western-centric, not afraid to use the 'us-them' language, etc). His one real point is that the Rome collapsed because of partly internal and partly external factors. That's certainly true - but it was the barbarians who ultimately sacked Rome and not a civil war that did them in.

rtl49 11y ago
I think the fact that he posted this on facebook gives us reason to believe this was intended for a very general audience. Yes, his criticism is not so far from mere insult. But it remains true that Ferguson's argument is laughable, and perhaps the author's frustration with its absurdity has leaked into his writing. This is to say nothing about Europe's interests in preventing an influx of refugees, just that likening the West's conflict with Islamic extremists to the circumstances surrounding the fall of Rome is nonsense.
- xiaoma 11y ago
  What good does responding to a laughable argument with a angry laughable argument do? This fb post doesn't belong on HN.
  - rtl49 11y ago
    One possible reason is that Ferguson's words lent credibility to a social movement the author considers destructive. Even if the remarks were absurd in the context of the available evidence, few people will read further than to see they were written by a Harvard professor.
    - xiaoma 11y ago
      Does lashing out against something one feels is destructive without a reasoned argument accomplish anything positive? I have my doubts that it does. It might even lend weight to the very arguments he's attacking since he's made such a weak argument. I'm not debating his position, which I respect, but his argument. If an argument is nothing more than talking about how angry one is and then attacking those who hold the opposing position, it's noise at best and a rallying cry to a mob at worst.

ysilver 11y ago

My favorite line: > Some of my fellow historians have asked the obvious question why Ferguson fixates on the fifth century, when the seventh century in the East, which saw the rise of Islam, might present more obvious food for thought. Perhaps Ferguson knows even less about that. As the author notes, Niall Ferguson chose his Roman comparison to evoke fear of a fall from greatness, not because it is an insightful comparison. The rise of ISIS and its war with Al-Assad's Syria and Iraq should be seen in the context of an emerging revolutionary state like the Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Cambodian, and Iranian revolutions. The refugees are just like those that are typically cast out during the rise of a revolutionary state. We get much more nuanced comparisons of ISIS and the refugee influx in this context. Here is a great set of such comparisons: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-revolutionary-state https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/isis-rev... > In his ‘General considerations on the decline of the empire in the west’ that concluded volume 3 of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon made this European dimension explicit by considering how a similar chain of events might impact on the Europe of his own day. The best vaccine against alarmist predictions is looking at the previously incorrect alarmist predictions from the same source. This review is like @pessimistsarc on Twitter, except for angsty pundit-historians. Very gratifying.

benbreen 11y ago

For those looking for more concrete information about Roman history, a classics professor I know has written a really in-depth two part series about immigration in the Roman Empire over at a new online classics journal called Eidolon: https://eidolon.pub/barbarians-inside-the-gate-part-ii-c22c5becd228 https://eidolon.pub/barbarians-inside-the-gate-part-ii-c22c5... Granted, he's writing about Republican Rome so it doesn't directly relate to the 5th century, but it deals with similar themes in a thoughtful way. And I agree that it would be better for everyone if we collectively just ignored the 2015 incarnation of Niall Ferguson, but unfortunately being a tenured professor at Harvard (and now Stanford) gives you quite the bully pulpit! His first book is actually good, but it's been a downhill slide into largely fact-less political assertions and nasty ad hominem attacks since then...

ysilver 11y ago
> And I agree that it would be better for everyone if we collectively just ignored the 2015 incarnation of Niall Ferguson, but unfortunately being a tenured professor at Harvard (and now Stanford) gives you quite the bully pulpit! His first book is actually good, but it's been a downhill slide into largely fact-less political assertions and nasty ad hominem attacks since then... I couldn't agree more. The 2011 Ferguson was pretty vapid when dealing in short-form too. He debated Zakaria and Kissinger in 2011 on the future of China: https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/china https://www.munkdebates.com/debates/china It is hard to believe how frequently he resorts to ad hominem arguments. Furthermore, he can't seem to even acknowledge a the crux of a compelling argument made by Kissinger/Zakaria. Unsurprisingly, he drove the audience away from his argument in droves.

nickbauman 11y ago

Niall Ferguson's pseudo-scholarship ignores the fact that Karl Popper's entire career was based on debunking the myth of historicism Gibbon and Spengler espoused. Today nobody takes the latter two seriously, while Popper is still standing tall.

known 11y ago

If you're not from my caste/religion, you're non-human to me; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_writings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_writings

a_bonobo 11y ago

I've posted this on HN before: Every time someone tries to shoe-horn the Fall of Rome into contemporary history it's good to post Demandt's "210 Reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire" [1]. You can nicely see which ideologies have tried to fit Rome into their own crusade. [1] http://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html http://www.utexas.edu/courses/rome/210reasons.html

WildUtah 11y ago

There's no link to the Ferguson article in Humphries's attack piece. The Sunday Times has a paywall, even for a single article in the current edition. But Ferguson's piece has been syndicated. Here's a link at the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fall-rome/ErlRjkQMGXhvDarTIxXpdK/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/16/paris-and-fal...