/u/screwyoushadowban's posts in /r/askhistorians
Why did the 20th century U.S. largely back (politically diverse) liberal democratic movements and governments in Europe while backing (largely right-wing) dictatorships and illiberal democracies elsewhere?
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I've noticed lots of medieval and early modern painters depicted antiquity looking almost exactly the same as they depicted their own times. Did ancient audiences think these depictions were accurate?
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What were Medieval Christian and Muslim rulers' and intellectuals' perceptions of/ideas about Samaritanism? Outside the Levant, did they know that the Samaritan community still existed and had a distinct culture? Did states treat or acknowledge Samaritans differently from (Rabbinic) Jewish people?
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Were deities immanent in early Greek religion? For example, was Helios god *of* the sun or was he the sun you saw in the sky every day? Was Chronos god *of* time, or was he time, and thus a constant part of lived experience?
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How did the United Farm Workers go from a multi-ethnic social/labor organization to an outwardly Chicano/Mexican/Mexican-American organization that, at least in the American Southwest middle school education I got, is remembered almost solely for racial justice/civil rights?
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Did late 19th century voters overall care about foreign policy when making election choices, or were concepts like the "Great Game" or "The Sick Man of Europe" we learn about in grade school now solely the domain of small circles of professionals, wonks and the intellgentsia?
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I heard a claim that the practice of using watermills for manufacturing, having been "lost" during the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire, was "rediscovered" during the late middle ages, & that the mechanical hydropower they produced helped enable the Renaissance. Any substance to that at all?
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Was Hitler's model of government organization, with multiple inefficient, redundant and competing agencies, a form of "coup-proofing" like that undertaken by modern authoritarian states, or was it really just about his belief in competition/"survival of the fittest"?
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