Delusions from history - how easy it is to be taken in.

Two great examples.

This is just a quick post with a few random thoughts which came to mind recently from material I have been listening to and reading.

First off, I am three-quarters the way through Selling Hitler.

This was one of Robert Harris’s (of Fatherland - and a host of many other brilliant novels - fame) first books, published in 1986.

It tells the story of how in the 1980s Stern magazine was taken in by the work of a petty criminal (Konrad Kujau) into believing that they were purchasing diaries written by Hiter, when in fact they were extremely crude forgeries; by way of example as to exactly how crude these were, the gothic lettering on the covers had been made using Letraset, and the ageing appearance was faked using tea.

Stern paid millions of marks (mostly in cash) for dozens of volumes, and the episode remains the most notorious episode of counterfeiting in publishing history.

The story was entertainingly told in a 6-part 2021 TV series - Faking Hitler - though this is extremely skimpy on detail, the narrative playing out more like a comedy caper.

Harris’s book, on the other hand, goes into immense detail as to precisely how and why Stern were taken in.

Some of these details are rather astonishing; for example, samples were sent to various experts to verify their authenticity, but in some cases there were accompanied by samples of handwriting created by the same forger, to which the writing in the diaries was to be compared. Moreover, only handwriting analysis was employed; nobody insisted on doing any analysis of the paper, glue or ink until it was too late.

Secondly, the other day I listened to this brilliant podcast about “Piltdown Man”.

For those unfamiliar, “The Rest is History” is one of the most popular podcasts globally. Notwithstanding a decidedly “normie” view of most topics (notably those related to “the pandemic” and “pandemics” of the past), I find most episodes rather enjoyable. (Yes, I do struggle to overcome the fact that it is produced by a company founded by the rather odious Gary Lineker.)

Wikipedia gives a reasonable summary of the Piltdown hoax.

Briefly, an amateur archeologist (who was actually a respected local solicitor) announced to the world in 1912 that in Piltdown, a village in East Sussex, he had found a 500,000 year old skull representing “the missing link” between early apes and man.

Everybody - including “experts” from the Natural History Museum - was taken in, and it took until 1953 for the hoax to be officially uncovered:

It consisted of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of an orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth.

Someone had created the appearance of age by staining the bones with an iron solution and chromic acid. Microscopic examination revealed file-marks on the teeth, and it was deduced from this that someone had modified the teeth to a shape more suited to a human diet.

Taken together, these two episodes illustrate a number of features relevant to the present day, including the following:

• Experts can easily be taken in - credentialism seems to trump common sense.

• The phenomenon whereby everyone thinks someone else is doing the checking - but nobody actually is - is commonplace.

• Once people are invested in the lie it’s nearly impossible for them to back down.

• Every sinew will be strained to twist evidence which could potentially unveil the lie into a version which sustains it.

Happy reading and listening.