Alexander Dolitsky: History doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes

March 14, 2024

By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” Mark Twain reportedly said. In my various articles published in Must Read Alaska (e.g., “Appreciation of history, truth, fact, and understanding of beauty”) I similarly reiterated that, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but patterns of historic events do.” Indeed, yesterday will never become today or tomorrow, but the patterns, or the “rhymes,” of historic events will.

Let me blend definitions of the terms—history, reality, facts, truth, and beauty—since they are important to the objectives of this essay.

Just like beauty, truth also is “in the eye of the beholder.” And even though history is created by facts (facts actually occurred in reality independent of human minds and desires), it becomes a story told by storytellers, and the biases and viewpoints of the storytellers become very much a part of that history; and what people remember of those stories depends on their own biases and viewpoints, too. So, history, just like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Thus, history can be rewritten to be politically correct, and once the new story becomes the one people have learned, it becomes unimportant whether it really happened or not. Indeed, today we are living in the bleakly dystopian Orwell’s 1984 science fiction. George Orwell’s dystopian novel about the dangers of totalitarianism, warns against a world governed by far-left propaganda, surveillance and censorship.

Interestingly, the job of Winston Smith (the protagonist in George Orwell’s novel), while working for the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, was to rewrite historical documents so they match the constantly changing current party line. This involves rewriting newspaper articles and doctoring photographs—actually, rewriting history—so they would correspond with whatever new history was being told today.

There you go—truth and history tied together by facts that simply need to be rewritten by clever progressive activists to change history. This is a reality of the today’s progressive movement wrapped in the neo-Marxist ideology, namely: Pro-Palestinian activism, Black Lives Matter, White Privilege doctrine, Critical Race Theory, Systemic Racism, and ANTIFA.

Today, worldwide antisemitism, pro-Palestinian activism, vandalism and insane anti-Israel protests were triggered by a Hamas heinous terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Mostly misinformed and brainwashed young individuals, pumped up by progressive educated elite and far-left media, suddenly found a “cause and mission“ in their life and the reason to stand for something that they clearly do not understand very well.

These “world peace” activists, for the most part, have no historic, ethnic, geographic or theological connections with the Middle East, particularly Gaza and Israel. They cannot clearly explain the concepts of genocide, apartheid and occupation in relation to the Israel/Gaza-Hamas history and today’s conflict between these two countries; and, yet, these radical protesters are demanding ceasefire in Gaza, condemnation of Israel in defending itself and to end Israel’s military efforts in eradicating the terrorist Hamas organization.

Recently, the radical far-left activists demanded from Anchorage and Juneau City Assemblies to pass ceasefire resolutions between Israel and Gaza and condemnation of Israel’s military operations in Gaza in defending their country, citizens and livelihood.

Such resolutions open the door for the far-left radicals to initiate other aggressive demands, hypothetically, including destructions of Jewish properties, vandalism against of pro-Israel political leaders, burning books of prominent Jewish authors (e.g., Sholem Aleichem, Michael Chabon, Franz Kafka, Lion Feuchtwanger, Menachem Mendel Dolitsky[my great-great uncle], etc.); and who knows what else is hidden in their horrific “tool box.” For example, as was reported by Must Read Alaska on March 14, over 33 campaign signs for Mayor Dave Bronson have been vandalized in Anchorage by far-left pro-Palestinian activists.

Dozens of Bronson signs attacked by pro-Hamas vandals; mayor issues statement supporting Israel

In fact, these are similar historic patterns that occurred in the Nazi Germany from the 1930s through the mid-1940s. We are all well aware of the rise of Nazism in Europe and the consequences of these historic patterns.

Evidently, pro-Palestinian protests and activism are not random and spontaneous undertakings. These anti-Semitic protests are well planned, organized and funded; they have far-left agenda, professional neo-Marxist leaders and provocateurs.

American patriotic and rational citizens and our political leaders must prevent these anti-Semitic developments in our country and stand for the Judeo-Christian moral values, advocate good vs. evil, and to protect and preserve freedom, liberty and factual truth.

Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.