Not a good look tbh
IDK much - I am pretty dumb - but my understanding is that Furr is kind of notorious for unreliable scholarship on the Soviet Union, no?
Yeh he’s more of sam amateur pop historian than a serious academic.
Personally I find the idea that Trotsky was actively conspiring with fascists a little kooky. I think him constantly undermining the revolution and being an all around asshole and sore loser is bad enough without trying to tie him to literal nazis.
I've listened to interviews with him and it seems like he uses way more academic rigor than most academics. He goes through the citations/footnotes of scholars and often finds that they are misrepresenting or straight up lying about what the primary source says. So if that's being an "amatuer pop historian" than I guess I'll take it over most of these NATO shill historians.
He has a similar reputation to BadEmpanada it feels like. They're both accused of being unhinged hacks by liberals and some leftists but when you read/watch their actual work it's like them eviscerating their opponent's arguments without any possibility of a defense. Is Furr a Stalin obsessed "Tankie"? Sure. But if he effectively debunks the official narratives of anticommunist propaganda all the time, maybe we should all strive to be unhinged Tankies?
Pointing and laughing at Furr feels like an ad hom cop out to me. If anybody can give me an actual reason to laugh at Furr I'm genuinely willing to hear it. I mostly just see vague gesturing though
not notorious, he has some places where it could be said he did, and most where he did not.
Some people like him some hate him. For what it's worth our boy Hakim seems to approve of him.
Never seen someone actually address Furr on anything, it's always just "lol Grover Furr"
well he's been at this sort of thing for like 15 years now and he's already established as something of a hack. He's not a historian, he's a medieval literature critic. He's more correct than an average reactionary or liberal academic, of course, but he's otherwise just some really aggressive weird dude.
To be fair he's not nearly as bad as some people think. I've read Khrushchev Lied and it's pretty good. I think he just likes arguing. He's our version of a debatebro.
Whenever he comes up in conversation I always recommend people read his paper on Katynn Forest because it changed my mind and is pretty damning of previous journalism on the topic as his argument is based on newer forensic evidence and almost impossible to argue against.
every time I think the title of weirdest guy possible has not yet been achieved, someone on this website reveals a guy even weirder and more horrible than I thought imaginable.
I think medieval literature criticism would require more historical literacy than everyone on this forum has. I don't understand why people bring this up except that they've heard someone else say it (like they've heard someone else say that he's a hack).
Perhaps it does. But that literacy seems to not carry over to his works about the USSR