History

History articles feature analysis of historical context in relation to censorship, policy, technology, media, economics, and social life.

All Brownstone Institute articles on the topic of history are translated into multiple languages.

Filter posts by category

The Familiarity of Old Evils: The Zone of Interest Movie Review

The Familiarity of Old Evils: The Zone of Interest Movie Review

By / / , / 5 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

I think my hunch was correct — a movie about an entire society that ignored the genocide all around them hit a bit too close to home for Manohla Dargis and her bosses at the NY Times who have spent the last four years ignoring the genocide all around them. But for anyone trying to understand the murderous actions of the Covidians and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their crimes, this film is illuminating.

The Familiarity of Old Evils: The Zone of Interest Movie Review Read Journal Article

No Institution is Safe: DEI Thought Control in the Military

No Institution is Safe: DEI Thought Control in the Military

By / / , , / 10 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Members of the medical community are the select few in the present-day military who can offer safe harbor to those exposed to unremitting propaganda. DEI is a scourge of the armed forces, and commanders should cultivate relationships with military medical and legal professionals to channel their efforts to challenge DEI programs at every level. 

No Institution is Safe: DEI Thought Control in the Military Read Journal Article

The Blind Brute Blunders Forth

The Blind Brute Blunders Forth

By / / , / 11 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

What are the chances that a natural addition of the PB2 gene segment to the H5N1 bird flu virus would occur? Pretty slight, if not impossible, one would guess. The mere fact that such research (which also includes the laboratory construction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Wuhan) has occurred, and is probably still taking place, is an unmistakable manifestation of the kind of irrationality that Kafka, Schopenhauer, and Freud unmasked on the part of the not-so-sapiens human race.

The Blind Brute Blunders Forth Read Journal Article

This Silence Is Not Golden

This Silence Is Not Golden

By / / , , / 6 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The silence is not golden. It’s dangerous. It is even treacherous. The Covid response ruined everything the world identified with America: freedom, rights, decentralism, commerce, individual liberty, and bravery in the face of trial. Governments together with all the commanding heights betrayed all those values. We need to know why. We need to know how. We need to know who. The silence could mean there is more to come. Which is to say that silence equals death. 

This Silence Is Not Golden Read Journal Article

Boris Was Right Not to Trust Neil Ferguson

Boris Was Right Not to Trust Neil Ferguson

By / / , , / 3 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

We have held the belief that no politician who has not experienced the bestiality of war should ever be elected Prime Minister of any state. Ours is a belief and an aspiration, as those who have been in action are nowadays thin on the ground. Enforcing such a belief would entail restricting democracy: only veterans, front-line media and humanitarian agencies could be elected. 

Boris Was Right Not to Trust Neil Ferguson Read Journal Article

The Covid-19 Inquiry is a Sham...So Far

The Covid-19 Inquiry is a Sham…So Far

By / / , / 8 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The Covid-19 Inquiry is the latest demonstration that UK public inquiries have long since been reduced to an unfunny joke at the expense of UK citizens, and one would have to be naïve in the extreme to expect to find much of anything of value in the conclusions they publish. One did, however, think that useful information might be found in the evidence inquiries gathered, but over the major issues which it should address the Covid-19 Inquiry will not even attain this more modest objective.

The Covid-19 Inquiry is a Sham…So Far Read Journal Article

White House Covid Task Force Members Cashed in on Pandemic Panic

White House Covid Task Force Members Cashed in on Pandemic Panic

By / / , , / 4 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

Operation Warp Speed and the resulting Task Force operation was, by all objective accounts, a catastrophic blunder, but that didn’t stop many of its members from parlaying their roles on the high visibility government detail into successful post service gigs. So we thought now would be a good time to take a look at some of the healthcare/pharma-related government officials responsible for some of those fateful decisions, and where they are today.

White House Covid Task Force Members Cashed in on Pandemic Panic Read Journal Article

We Must Save Ourselves from the Public Health Professionals

We Must Save Ourselves from the Public Health Professionals

By / / , , / 7 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

We need legislators, and the public, to reclaim public health ethics and to return to credible concepts of health and well-being – as the WHO once did – “physical, mental and social.” This is what was intended when previous generations fought to overthrow dictators, striving for equality and for the rights of individuals over those who would control them. History tells us that public health professions tend to follow self-interest, taking the side of those who would be dictators. If our democracies, freedom, and health are to survive, we must accept reality and address this as a basic issue of individual freedom and good governance for which we are all responsible. There is too much at stake to leave this to self-interested corporatists and the notorious enforcers they control.

We Must Save Ourselves from the Public Health Professionals Read Journal Article

Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State

Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State

By / / , , / 11 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

If you live in a Chinese city, or even in London, you are probably so used to surveillance cameras all around you – on lamp posts, the corners of buildings, and so on – that you would hardly bat an eyelid. Yet what contemporary city-denizens take for granted was not always the case, and most people would be surprised to know that surveillance has a long history, and was linked to modes of punishment from early on. 

Living Everywhere in a Carceral Surveillance State Read Journal Article

The Historian of Decline: Ludwig von Mises’s Relevance Today

By / / , , / 22 minute read / Articles
SHARE | PRINT | EMAIL

The mistake we made was in believing that there is logic to history. There isn’t. There is only the march of good ideas and bad, and the forever competition between the two. And this is a central message of Mises’s 1954 overlooked masterwork Theory and History. Here he offers a devastating rebuttal to determinism of all sorts, whether from old liberals or Hegel or Fukuyama. 

The Historian of Decline: Ludwig von Mises’s Relevance Today Read Journal Article