revisionist history
Altered historical narrative
Revisionist history is the reinterpretation of historical events, often to challenge established narratives.
The term can be neutral—historians legitimately revise understanding as new evidence emerges—but more often carries a pejorative sense: distorting or denying historical facts to serve an agenda.
Holocaust denial is revisionist history at its most dangerous.
In casual use, accusing someone of revisionist history means they're rewriting what happened to suit themselves: That's revisionist history—you were the one who wanted to break up.
- whitewashingConcealing unpleasant facts
- secondary sourcesMaterials analyzing original records
- doublethinkHolding contradictory beliefs simultaneously
- selective memoryUnconsciously filtering past events
- debateFormal argument on issues
Holocaust denial · false equivalence · historiography · historical narrative · critical race theory · airbrushing · memory hole · presentism · correction · ideology · rewriting · cultural relativism · myth · founding myths · lost cause · distortion · truth · censorship
- self-deceptiondenial, delusion, wishful thinking, rationalization, willful blindness
- US HistoryAmerican Revolution, Civil War, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, US Constitution
- History Bookstextbook, biography, memoir, chronicle, anthology
- Hidden Meaningssubtext, hidden meaning, coded messages, secret codes, cipher
- historiographyhistoriography, historiographer, secondary sources, historical interpretation, historical analysis
- Xinhai RevolutionSun Yat-sen, Republic of China, abdication, provisional government, republican movement