Ancient Fake News
The inaccuracies of popular media are nothing new
Archives at the Sacramento's major newspaper, The Sacramento Bee
Fake can come from the credible
Fake News is something people recall from recent memory, with the rise of accusations of media sources propagating bogus information. But to even say that Fake News is an epidemic that has only occurred recently is fake news itself. The truth is that this has been going on for hundreds of years.
When I was in high school, my peers and I were taught how the Spaniards dominated over the Inca. We studied, thoroughly, the way in which the Spaniards technology decimated the Inca during battles. We watched documentaries recounting how lethal the Spanish bullet was, how frightening the roar of a cannon, and how effective Spanish swords were. We learned how the arrival of the Spanish coincided to an ancient prophecy of the arrival of gods. In the end, the Inca had no chance against the Spaniards.
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The International Baccalaureate program is a prestigious two-year program incorporated in the last two years of high school. This world-wide program incorporates the same rigorous courses and requirements in every school across dozens of countries.
Inderkum High School is located in Sacramento California. It''s the first and currently only International Baccalaureate World School in the Natomas Unified school district. I graduated in the class of 2017, the second batch of IB students to graduate from Inderkum.
I, and my many peers, learned all of this in an International Baccalaureate Higher Level course. To refute knowledge from such a ‘credible’ source was something I couldn’t imagine at the time.
Fake is nothing new
So imagine my reaction when this curriculum, which I took as fact, was blown to bits. An entire semester of learning, all based on some myths. O’Toole’s lectures didn’t just challenge this IB course’s teachings, it systematically took apart each and every argument using legitimate primary and secondary sources, particularly Matthew Restall’s Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest.
Take, for instance, the myth of the deification of the Spaniards by the natives of the Americas, including the Inca. I had always believed this was a powerful tool used by the spaniards to dominate over the natives, since they were seen as gods, and who could in their right mind could possibly stop a god? Restall uses Columbus’s letters to the Queen of Spain to debunk this myth. As a primary source – the first Spaniard to land in the Americas – Columbus's accounts are credible and useful for support or refuting the deification of the Spaniards. Restall first notes that Columbus never wrote “gods” in his letter. Additionally, Restall analyzes the words used to describe the Spanish, stating, “Cielo, glossed as ‘heaven’ in the first two translations above, and as ‘sky’ in the third. Cielo means either, or both, so accurate translation hinges on context”(Restall 111). Therefore, we can come the conclusion that the Spanish were never seen as gods – maybe like gods, but still human nonetheless.
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Humanities core has illustrated how learning, even in prestigious academic environments, can be false. This false knowledge caught me by surprise, and reminds me of the plague of “Fake News” in the media.
When fake is seen as fact
Why are we all believing in things that simply aren’t true? How can we see what is real in a darkness of falsehood and myths?
Looking back at the 2016 election, my peers, myself included, believed that Hillary Clinton would win by a landslide. We were so sure, yet we were wrong – Trump won. How did we not recognize the reality that Trump actually had a chance? The evidence was all around us
I believe this Fake News epidemic, including the myths of the Spaniards, are spread because of the assumption we all make in our daily lives. We simply believe things to be true because many people tell us it is true. We believe in people who we think are credible, but in actuality, are not. We often fall short into seeking a balanced views.
During the 2016 election, I believed Trump had no chance because my friends said there was no chance. On social media, all I saw were Hillary supporters and memes making fun of Trump. I was stuck in an information bubble, as I have talked about before in my previous posts.
Likewise, many students today believe in the Spanish’s unquestionable domination over native peoples. Students trust their teachers, and the teachers trust the sources, which mostly originate from Spaniards who wrote their accounts from their perspective, and promoted by their government in a light that shines unreasonable, untrue glory on the Spaniards.
After this eye-opening experience, I wonder what else I believe in on false pretenses. To avoid being a sheep led by the false understanding of the majority, I will try to seek more balanced, credible sources, as well as dig deeper before making a stance.
Because, in the end, IB History would have been much more fun if the Incas were seen as the Ass Kickers they were, rather than the helpless natives which they were not.