What exactly did William Wallace say?

by liberal japonicus

Was watching and episode of The Rest of Politics which had historian Dominic Sandbrook sitting in for Florence of Belgravia, (i.e. Rory Stewart) across from Alastair Campbell. Novakant has expressed his disgust with Campbell, though I’m not as far along, but this episode had me wondering wtf they were on.

Sandbrook is from the spin off podcast, entitled the Rest is History, with Tom Holland (the historian, not the actor) I haven’t watched it, but I hope it isn’t as egregious as the US sidequel which features ‘the Mooch’ (Anthony Scaramucci).

But Sandbrook had enough howlers that I don’t think I’ll be checking it out. First (where the link starts), he launches into an explanation of why Trump isn’t a fascist. If you follow Sandbrook’s argument, it is apparently that Trump wouldn’t be the same kind of dinner guest as Hitler or Mussolini.

Glutton for punishment I am, I listened to the following episode, and Sandbrook said this:

You know the Tory party for example has always been very good at um putting people on a pedestal and creating a slightly simplified Hollywood version of them and turning them into political heroes. So Benjamin Israeli Churchill obviously Thatcher and so on. Why don’t the left do that? I would argue and maybe I mean I you will know much more about this than me Alistister but I would say there is a tendency among the more the more fervent left-wing activists tend to believe that their leaders have let them down.

It’s really astonishing that a historian is lauding the ability of the Tories to ignore history. I get the impression that Sandbrook thinks things would be a lot better if everyone just had their historical fantasies and never asked how true they are. Reading the reviews of his book on his wikipedia page suggests that this is a thing with him.

Anyway, something that struck me, but don’t let me stop anyone from making this an open thread.