Violent intimidation suppresses historical scholarship where state coercion cannot
Evidence
Coercion is the best method of falsifying history, but it is not always possible. The second best is intimidation. This can be quite effective. A number of years ago a history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles published a book that displeased some elements in the community. They picketed his lectures and his publishers and blew up his house. He and his family were in the house at the time. Miraculously they escaped. This seems to be an extreme and for most people unacceptable form of historical argumentation. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1847
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- SEED: Essay angle: the unofficial, non-state machinery — mobs, doxxing, letter campaigns — by which history gets suppressed even in democracies that formally protect speech.
- QUESTION: Which UCLA professor and which book is this? The dryly understated ‘blew up his house’ begs identification.