History is a story, a way of presenting facts, it is not the so-called truth.
I do not want to talk about propaganda, the so-called "storytelling" or the manipulation of facts to build a truth useful to someone, that is, basically, a fake.
I want to talk about how, without changing or completely altering the facts, we can create a story of these facts, that is a story, which then remains in the collective imagination, but which does not correspond to the truth, that is, to the correct and cold exposition of the facts in themselves.
If I asked you what is the president of the United States from a very wealthy family, who started the war in Vietnam and who took us one step closer to the third world war with nuclear weapons, what name would you give?
I don't know how many of you would name John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
If I asked you who is the president of the United States of humble origins, who put an end to the war in Vietnam and laid the foundations of the US dialogue with China and Russia, during which all the missions that allowed the 'man to set foot on the moon', who introduced health insurance, who signed the treaties of non-proliferation of atomic weapons with Russia, which has, firstly, allocated public money for cancer research, which started policies environmental protection, how many of you would name Richard Nixon?
Yet these are facts.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in our imagination, is the young, handsome, pacifist, good president.
Richard Nixon is the sneaky, fake, warmongering, bad president.
How were their actions told, how were the facts twisted up to this point?
Obviously it was possible even without telling untruths, because both have also done other things.
For example, Nixon is the president who had Allende killed and Pinochet brought to power in Chile.
Kennedy is the president who has carried out projects against poverty, against racial discrimination, in favor of education.
People are complex, multifaceted, have ideas and do things that can hardly be framed in a story, that is, in a simplification of facts.
To be able to tell the facts as a story, we simplify, eliminate or diminish those things, facts, ideas, which cannot be placed in the character we want to create.
We do it because we need characters and people are not characters, we need stories and facts are not stories, they are facts and that's it, behind it there is not necessarily an overview, a direction, a vision.
Those who have the power to control the story omit or magnify the facts, consciously or unconsciously, so that they adapt to the story they want to do, without even the need to manipulate or mystify them.
