(This post looks at the the meaning of the word myth in the study of history. It doesn't deny that the primary meaning of the word is 'a legendary tale', 'a sacred story concerning the origins of the world and the creatures in it'. And sorry about the length.)
A myth is a set of political and cultural beliefs and messages derived from a common or shared historical experience. I think this is what most historians would mean if they used the word, certainly those who study the practice of history. The national myth is simply one of the most common.
A national myth may be mythical in the sense of being false, but it may be mythical in other senses as well. It might simply over-dramatize true incidents, omit important historical details, or add details for which there is no evidence... National myths serve many social and political purposes. In totalitarian dictatorships, national myths often exist only for the most shallow purposes of state-sponsored propaganda... But national myths usually also exist in more liberal regimes, serving the purpose of inspiring civic virtue and self-sacrifice, or shoring up the power of dominant groups and legitimating their rule. (link)
For example, there are the Crusader myths; that the Crusades were a series of glorious wars of religion, fought by chivalric, pious knights, rather than squalid occasions of murder, theft, rape and betrayal in which the Crusaders were as often at each other's throats as fighting to free the Holy Land.
Bernard of Clairveaux provides the clearest expression of this myth:
They do not go into battle stormily and without thought, but with due consideration and caution, peaceful like true children of Israel... they are gentler than lambs and more ferocious than lions so that one has doubts whether to call them monks or knights. Yet they deserve both names, because they partake in the gentleness of monks and the bravery of knights.(link)
Bernard was to be disappointed, and later ascribed the failure to the worldly ambitions and vanity of princes.
There are many more: America has the myths of the Old West, stories designed to misdirect from brutal historical truths, and emphasise the messages the culture wishes to associate with the event. So the conquest of the west is cast as expansion driven by the finest qualities of the human spirit, rather than genocide and theft driven by greed and eastern capitalist expansion.
Article comments
1 - [MR]Chip
Or how about the myth that Reagan singlehandedly won the cold war through Star Wars?
2 - Chromatius
Yup. There's plenty of them. The Cold War itself is completely mired in myth from beginning to end; and a lot of lies - dodgy CIA and Pentagon threat and economic assessments, as well as plenty of dodgy political rhetoric.
Another myth is the entire Reagan story - the great patriot, the great leader - a proven traitor who traded with the enemy to get elected, risking the lives of American citizens in passing, passing them weapons that would threaten US interests for over a decade, and cost a fortune to recover. And so beloved by the 'fair and balanced media' (we're not just talking Fox), that they allowed him of the hook and now never mention it.
And for any one who gets this far - sorry, the article is too long and unfocussed - it should have been two or three separate, shorter pieces - one general, one on the Iranian angle and one on the Straussians.
I think I've learned blogs are best if they pretty well fit in a single screen - 2-3 paragraphs. But that's how we learn I guess.
I may rewrite accordingly at some point.
3 - Chromatius
On the subject of pre-war racist eugenics in the US:
The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 sanctioned the use of the bogus U.S. Army IQ scores of World War I promoted by eugenic racists) to “scientifically verify” the supposed hereditary mental inferiority of Jews, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Spaniards, and other non Anglo-Saxon Protestant racial and ethnic groups.
The screening was designed to address the fears expressed in Charles Davenport’s influential bestseller of 1911, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, where he prophesied that if unchecked by genetic national security agents, “the population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South-Eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, and vagrancy than were the original English settlers.”
Davenport even wanted to send eugenics inspects to Europe to examine all would-be immigrants for genetic flaws. In the end, this task passed to his German admirers.
In his great 1975 tract, The Legacy of Malthus, Allan Chase, narrating this shameful story, asks the question, how many of the 6,065,704 would-be immigrants excluded by racial quotas set by the eugenicists survived the war? For sure, most of the Jews, Poles and Russians identified by the Nazis (using U.S. eugenic “science”) were rounded up and exterminated. link
4 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
This is a rather interesting piece. Chromatius, you've got a few things about Israel and the Arabs of South Syria wrong, but that is no surpise.
It is extremely important for Jews to realize that those of our brethren killed by the Nazis were not all "saints" and many of those saved from the hands of the Nazis were not saints either. There are other issues here, not issues that I would expect you to discover.
Discarding these myths is very difficult - if done, it makes many holocaust museums empty wastes of money. The money spent of them could be far better spent helping Jews in Israel build a self-sufficient economy that would have few if any ties to America.
And discarding these myths allows Jews worldwide to move beyond the culture of victimization to the culture of Redemption.
5 - Chromatius
As I said in a comment, the article is too long and unfocussed, and a bit confused. There's a limit to how much I should bite off in a few paragraphs. Apologies.
I'm guessing 'Arabs of South Syria' means 'Palestinian', reflecting a couple of competing historical myths. If not, feel free to put me right.
Of course the moral status of victims shouldn't matter, but I guess all have been appropriated as martyrs for the Zionist cause. (Disclaimer: I don't know what saint or martyr means in Judaism).
And he concept of 'victimhood' itself has become the occasion for all sorts of illiberal developments in western societies. A bit of a favorite.
And even in a community such as 'Jews of Israel', there should be concern about the use of the natiional mythology. The fact is that national and religious myths seem to be most often exploited by those wishing to place military elites in power, by one means or another, over civilan populations.
(When they do it in concert with theocrats, which we're seeing a bit of these days, it can be hard to tell which anti-democratic strand is in the ascendence, but I suspect the military.)
I touched on what I consider one of the most dangerous aspects of the Israel/American relationship here
6 - troll
good stuff Chrom...no need to apologize - you left me wanting more
my fav modern myth is how evil communism was defeated by righteous capitalism
troll
7 - rktect
I'm interested in your comments on the following speculations.
1.) In selling thinking in process terms to academia, Leo Strauss had as much influence on the emergence of Sociology at the University of Chicago as on the neo-cons.
2.) The Bush administrations real mission in Iraq really is accomplished.
The lies regarding why we are in Yemen, Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait, and the lies regarding what our mission is, what are goals are, and why we remain, obscure the fact that we are not at war with any other nation.
We don't really care about the people of the mideast, insurgencies, civil wars, our troops or the effects on them of the mounting bloodshed and violence.
If we did we would focus on replacing the infrastructure a government needs to govern well enough to make its streets secure, rather than focusing on security and leaving the reconstruction to fend for itself.
All we really care about is maintaining a presence in the mideast that prevents our rivals(like China which now has 120 million cars on the road) access to the oil and gas for up to the 14 years it will take before its all gone.
We have already reached the point where there is more demand than production can supply.
Increasing production just makes us run out faster. Eventually we will reach the point where we have to raise prices to the point where people can no longer afford to commute to work.
3.) Most of the people of the book, Jewish, Islamic and Christian, don't realise Genesis is for the most part simply repeating earlier literary sources from Mesopotamia, to Egypt
but composed in a Greek or Platonic dialectic.
The initial pantheon is in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian fashion with paired opposites created by naming them.
First:
The heavens and the earth or Geb and Nut
http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/nut_shu_geb.jpg
Second:
light or day and darkness or night
Third:
the waters above are the vault of heaven
and the waters below are the land and sea, then
Fourth:
there are animate life and inanimate death, and
Fifth:
Law which can be measured, weighed and judged paired with Order
Sixth:
the good which is true and lawful, right and proper, and the evil which is the lie that breeds temptation.
Seventh:
The sons of god are joined with the daughters of men to produce the Able bodied, physically strong, innocent, courageous, and brave men as opposed to the Ka ain (thoughtless) outlaws.
The legend of the flood, complete with the fire next time, is used to tie together the waters above with the waters below, day and night, landfolk and seapeople, life and death, good and evil, with the premise that it intelligent design as being that which is right and proper.
In Genesis there are four gods mentioned in connection with Abraham that are part and parcel of the same pantheon.
Yahwah, the god of air
El Shaddai the god of the land or earth
El Roi the god of the well or water and
Moloch, the god of fire.
8 - Chromatius
1.I suspect I should have left Strauss out of the post - it just confuses and defocusses my argument. And I don't really know much about him.
2. Generally in agreement here.
3. Genesis is a pretty marginal text in the Jewish tradition, I believe. And I'd be very unsurprised that the religion was rooted in prior experience in Mesopotamia and Egypt (where the Jews spent some time, as we know). I'll follow up some of your comments here....
9 - gonzo marx
nah Chromatius.....Strauss is important to understanding the current political situation and explains and informs much about the current American ADministration and thier foreign policy...
to see how important Strauss is in these matters, go to pnac.org and check out the list of who signed off on their mission statement...Cheney, Jeb Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Perle and many more of the W admin policy makers signed off on these principles in 96/97
how deep does the cause of the "noble lie" rest in said administration...?
example: Wolfowitz, who wrote much of the W first term admin policy and who was rewarded with the "big chair" running the World Bank, learned directly from Strauss as a student, and taught his principles later to folks like his student, Scooter Libby who was Chief of STaff to VP Cheney before he was indicted...
on and on
but instead of examining these matters...many folks and the media fall for "let's bash the gays with a marriage amendment" bit of Lie...
and so it goes...
Excelsior?
10 - troll
rktect - *I'm interested in your comments on the following speculations.
1.) In selling thinking in process terms to academia, Leo Strauss had as much influence on the emergence of Sociology at the University of Chicago as on the neo-cons.
2.) The Bush administrations real mission in Iraq really is accomplished...
3.) Most of the people of the book, Jewish, Islamic and Christian, don't realise Genesis is for the most part simply repeating earlier literary sources from Mesopotamia, to Egypt
but composed in a Greek or Platonic dialectic.*
open questions...I'll play:
1 - so Strauss influenced academicians and politicians...what's your point - ?
2 - as you point out...controlling the growth and development of the 'enemy' is the name of the game
3 - is this class of historical data actively suppressed by religious elites or at an unconscious level by a deeper collective 'will to believe' - ?
troll
11 - Chromatius
2 - absolutely. Which is why the US now faces off against 'religious extremists', not national liberation or revolutionary movements.
3. probably not that deep. Most people simply don't have an appetite (or time) for comparative religion. Many who do have an appetite for it certainly do have an individual 'will to believe'.