By Matúš Lazar
Alongside his doctoral research on public history, Matúš Lazar also runs a YouTube channel under the name M. Laser. In this post, he discusses his experience in producing historical content online.
My real name is Matúš Lazar, but most people know me under my online pseudonym M. Laser. As M. Laser I have been communicating history online, primarily on YouTube, X and various podcasts, for the past seven years. As such, and pardon the self-aggrandisement, I have been at the ‘front lines’ of history communication. This is not as simple as it may seem. People don’t want to be told they are wrong or that their historical memory is constructed upon outdated historical research. Therefore, communicating even the most benign historical facts can sometimes cause people to regress into deep denial and hate the ‘communicator’, accusing you of things like, for example, having been taught by a ‘garbige cleaner’. The reason why people get so defensive about their historical memory is that historical memory is often tied to people’s identities. The nuances of historical memory and identity are complicated and beyond the scope of this blog post, but I at least wanted to share ‘images’ from the ’front lines’.
People’s political, cultural, ethnic, and even gender identities are often constructed and maintained in association with their historical memory.[1] As Stefan Berger writes in History and Identity, there are ‘manifold links between the writing of history and the construction of collective identities of nations, classes, ethnicities, religions, genders and a host of spatial and sub- and transnational identities.’[2] In other words, history is essential in shaping and cementing people’s identity. The history that shapes these identities is the history that the individual and their society remember. It isn’t ‘History’ with a capital H that shapes these identities rather, it is the historical memory, that is, the memory of the past as it is remembered (due to various reasons) by an individual and their society at large, that shapes them.
Since much of historical memory is in one way or another connected with person’s identities, contradicting people’s historical memory may lead to adverse and visceral reactions. Communicating history that contradicts historical memory is seen by some people as a personal attack on parts of their core identity. This intense feeling of being attacked, combined with internet anonymity, results in sometimes quite heinous comments and accusations. These accusations are usually targeted at the history communicators themselves, and the greater ‘establishment’. All these negative comments are also often combined with very strong denial of the history that is being communicated. This denial of history happens because people want to safeguard their historical memory and, by extension, their core identities that they perceive to be under attack.
The denial of the history being communicated is the most common negative comment I get. In response to a video where I discussed the involvement of European women in active combat throughout history, a person wrote ‘BS and tall tales, only believed by activists’. In response to a presentation of various historical theories about the fall of the Western Roman Empire based on GRW Halsall’s ‘shakers and movers’ idea, one commenter stated, ‘What do you mean? The Romans were all enslaved by the Germans and Colonized.’[3] In response to another video where I discussed the medieval Slavic Slave trade, one commenter completely ignored the etymology of the word slave coming from the word Slav, stating, ‘you are wrong, Slave does not come from Slav’.[4]
(European Heroic Warrior Woman)
(Early Medieval Guilds)
(Slavs & Slavery)
These comments can turn very ugly. For example, in my Oxford & Empire video where I talked about the problematic ‘civilising mission’ and ‘white man’s burden’ narratives the British used to justify Imperialism,[5] I got several comments stating that ‘Most of the places they once ruled over – especially the third world dumps like in Africa – would be better off under them again. Rule Britannia!’ and ‘The might of the most powerful and greatest culture was brought to all four corners of the world which we hence civilised.’ In a different video where I talk about the Hilsner trial in Austria-Hungary, which was a manifestation of strong antisemitic sentiments, someone not only disagreed with my statement but also went on to write out a very racist comment. In my latest video about high medieval guilds, I mentioned how the most excluded group from guild membership were women. Someone then replied with a quite misogynistic comment, stating that guilds excluding women were a good thing because women should be ‘dependent on men’ and in ‘domestic dedication and motherhood’.
(Oxford and Empire)
(Oxford and Empire)
(Making of a State Czechoslovakia)
(Medieval Guilds : Did they make Europe a superpower?)
When it comes to ad hominem attacks, I have been accused of being a ‘bias … Nazi bastard’, a ‘ridiculous … human’, a ‘stupid historian’, and ‘a moron who follows an agenda of people who try to hide real history.’ I have even received death threats.
(Slavs & Slavery)
(Slavs & Slavery)
(Making of a State Czechoslovakia video)
(Early South Slavic History)
This denial of history is usually directed not just at the history being communicated by ‘lying’ history communicators but also at the history coming from academia. Because many history communicators cite academic writings in their history communication, academia is often seen as a cobelligerent in this attack on people’s historical memory. In a video on medieval ethnicity where I mention that ethnicity is a social construct, as written by Patrick Geary and Walter Pohl, one person wrote, ‘genetics aren’t a social construct no matter what the Harvard people tell you’.[6] In another video, a commenter, when they found out I studied history at Oxford (before I came to Cambridge), stated that I ‘cannot be trusted’ because I am ‘part of academia’. Lastly, when I talked about the 6th-century Slavic migrations, I was accused of using ‘western history books full of LIES’.
(The Slavic Venetic Connection)
(Oxford and Empire)
(Early South Slavic History)
Communicating history online is tough. It can bring out the worst in people, and on many occasions, I have despaired when reading the comments and emails I get from people. However, the fact that these kinds of comments are so prevalent is also the fuel that keeps me going. People’s identities are often created in association with their historical memory. When this historical memory is that of blood libels, white man’s burden narratives, and women’s only purpose being ‘domestic dedication and motherhood’, these identities are created and supported by misunderstood and misrepresented history. I believe that as a historian, it is part of my job to communicate to the wider public the history that we, historians, have uncovered and, by doing so, better inform people’s historical memory.
[1] Abrahams Daniel, ‘Statues, History, and Identity: How Bad Public History Statues Wrong,’ Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9, no. 2 (2023): 253-267; S. Berger, History and Identity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 1-33.
[2] Berger, History and Identity, intro 1.
[3] GRW Halsall, ‘Movers and Shakers: The Barbarians and the Fall of Rome,’ Early Medieval Europe 8, no. 1, (1999): 131-45.
[4] For the etymology of the word slave see; William D. Phillips, Slavery from Roman times to the Early Transatlantic Trade, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 57.
[5] F. T. Harald and M. Mann, Colonialism as Civilizing Mission : Cultural Ideology in British India, (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 22.
[6] Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe, (Germany: Princeton University Press, 2003); Walter Pohl, ‘Ethnonyms and Early Medieval Ethnicity: Methodological Reflections,’ The Hungarian Historical Review 7, no. 1 (2018): 5–17.
Doing History in Public 