"A history that prioritizes spectacular but brief violence against elites while downplaying millennia of elite violence against everyone else isn’t really history; it’s propaganda."

I’d be remiss if I failed to note that my correspondent’s argument is not only empirically wrong, but also deeply morally repugnant. All of these systems—American chattel slavery, the feudalism of ancien regime France or czarist Russia, modern capitalism—are deeply, intrinsically violent. *Even if*...