False News in History

Most of us have heard of the Knights Templar. They were Christian Knights who were monks dedicated to protecting travelers. In the 1140s AD they were granted property in Tripoli which included a fort. It is said the Knights would use the fort as protection after returning from raids in the surrounding areas. They were successful and their numbers grew. The Sultan Baibars was angry at the Knights Templar, because they supported the Mongols. He spent most of his time driving them out of Syria. He decided to attack and the villagers fled to the Templar Fort for protection. This was a common practice for people in those days. The fort was attacked by the Sultan, but eventually the siege stopped. The Sultan sent some of his men to meet with the Knights so they could present a letter to them from the Grand Master of the Knights. The letter granted the Knights permission to surrender, which they did. None of them were killed, but the Sultan took the fort and turned it into a mosque. The letter was false news and did not come from the Grand Master at all, but the Knights fell for the ploy.

If we look at ancient Rome we can find examples of false news which certain people used to push their agenda. Octavian was the heir to Julius Caesar and he had an alliance with Marcus Antonius who we call Mark Anthony. The alliance was falling apart. When this finally happened Mark Anthony claimed the Eastern Roman empire as his. He had taken up residence with the famous Cleopatra in Egypt. Octavian who became Augustus Caesar was situated in Rome. A propaganda war broke out between the two of them. Octavian claimed to have found a document he said was Anthony’s official will and testament. Many historians believe it was a forgery. He read the document aloud on the Senate floor. The next thing he did was get permission to have it posted in the forum for all to see. He sent messengers throughout the Empire with copies of the document. Using this document Octavian proposed Anthony would hand Rome over to Cleopatra. The document itself played on the prejudices and said he intended to leave everything to his children and Cleopatra, which included large pieces of Roman territory in the Mediterranean. But there was more, the will stated Caesarion, son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar would be Caesar’s legitimate successor. The will went on to say when Mark Anthony died he didn’t want to be buried in Rome, but wanted to be buried in Alexandria instead. The Senate was so angered they striped Mark Anthony of his “imperium”. This was the legal right to lead Roman armies and without it you couldn’t legally command a legion. Anthony was declared a traitor and eventually destroyed, but interestingly when war was declared it was declared on Cleopatra as Queen of Egypt. The will had worked.

There is a mathematician named Anatoly Timofeyevich Fomenko who believes there are no reliable historical records before the 11th century AD. He bases this on the fact he states much of history is plagiarized and events are repeated in written documents of different dates and places. Could this be true? Mr. Fomenko is a member the Russian Academy of Sciences has claimed we have radical revision history, in other words much of history is false news. Perhaps we might have to look at things differently. Take the case of the great flood. This story has been repeated by many cultures and we have been told it happened in many different places, because of the stories, but if we listen to Mr. Fomenko, we would have to change our opinions and think there are so many stories like this, because the civilizations that wrote about the flood copied the story from each other rather than it actually happening to them. I only mention this because it is something to think about when we talk about false news.

Even in this country false news is nothing new. The United States went to war in the nineteenth century because of false news. Newspapers all over the country had headlines shouting  our battleship the Maine had been sunk by the Spanish which led to the Spanish American War. There was no proof this actually happened, except for the fact the Maine did explode and sink. The Spanish contacted the United States immediately to tell us they had nothing to do with this, but the pressure brought by the news media was too much to bear, plus the fact some in the government may have looked at this as an opportunity for us to gain territory. The Maine was a battleship of a type which was susceptible to exploding, because of the way it was designed. When a board established by the Navy looked into the explosion they claimed it most likely was a Spanish mine, but today many experts believe it was caused by an explosion in the magazine within the vessel and had nothing to do with any external cause. The newspaper media published the stories stating the cause was a Spanish mine, but they had absolutely no evidence this was the fact.