[pjc50]

In the end, history, being in the past, denies direct access or verification. In some sense it is just what we choose to remember, which is a very fluid thing. I guess culturally the Chinese are just more flexible about it. It is not necessarily bad, as it is a less fanatic ideology.

This is the extreme end of moral relativism that leads to dark places. There are things that should be remembered, no matter how uncomfortable they are or whether people would rather they be forgotten, because they have to be avoided. See the ongoing controversy between Turkey and Germany over the Armenian genocide and Turkey's attempt at erasing this history, while Germany legally opposes any attempts to erase its own crimes from its history. The holocaust is a fact, and attempts to deny it are not some kind of morally neutral "flexibility".

History is, as you say, not directly verifiable. But that just creates an obligation on us to be honest with the evidence we do have and recognise that plenty of things are well-verified enough to be called fact, even if the details are unclear.

[exelius]

Ultimately, history is written by the winner. It's impossible to separate biases from fact when the sources have opposing world views. To many, the US today is an imperialist power that props up strong-man dictators and oppresses people globally -- but what ends up in the history books will likely be about the liberalization of the US and our leadership on human rights within our borders (a narrative the GOP is all too happy to support since it fits their talking point of "things are changing too quickly and people can't adapt!")

Facts are often distorted decades later to suit political expediency (i.e. the myth that Reagan was a staunch conservative; he was a middle-of-the-road centrist Republican from one of the most liberal states in the US). In your example, Turkey's conservative government is using the Armenian genocide as a way to drive a wedge between Turkey and Europe -- because Erdogan and the AKP would much rather be allied with Russia and Iran (who have no qualms about his use of force to suppress dissent).

Do this often enough and you end up with a "history" that barely resembles contemporary thought on the matter. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex actually tackles this matter with the "Individual Eleven" storyline -- what would happen if someone created a virus that infected the historical record? You could create a fake "cause" with supporting digital documentation, and people would swear to have a memory of it happening, even if it never did (it's a well-documented phenomenon that eyewitness accounts taken long after the fact are unreliable and often based on secondary sources; and that's not even part of the science fiction aspect of SAC). Change a few minor facts in the altered historical record to link it to a marginalized group in society and watch the violence unfold on both sides; with the marginalized population latching on to the "cause" and the rest of the populace using the violence of a small few to justify their discrimination / hatred against the minority.

Rewriting history is the entire purpose of governments. It's already exceedingly difficult to find information on events that happened early in the digital age; if anything, digital records are easier to purge / falsify. Hell, just try to read a CD or backup tape created 20 years ago and see how far you get.