Editing Keith Windschuttle (section)

==Political evolution==
An adherent of the [[New Left]] in the 1960s and 1970s, Windschuttle later moved to the [[political right]]. This process is first evident in his 1984 book ''The Media'', which took inspiration from the empirical perspective of the [[Marxist historian]] [[E. P. Thompson]], especially his ''The Poverty of Theory'', to make a highly critical review of the Marxist theories of [[Louis Althusser]] and [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]]. While the first edition attacked "the political program of the [[New Right]]" and set out a case for both favouring "government restrictions and regulation" and condemning "private enterprise and free markets",<ref>Gerard Henderson, [https://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/12/23/1040511005690.html "The Battle is not to be Left Behind"], ''The Age'', 24 December 2002.</ref> the third edition four years later (1988) took a different view: "Overall, the major economic reforms of the last five years, the deregulation of the finance sector, and the imposition of [[incomes policy|wage restraint]] through the social contract of [[Prices and Incomes Accord|The Accord]], have worked to expand employment and internationalise the Australian economy in more positive ways than I thought possible at the time."

In ''The Killing of History'', Windschuttle defended the practices and methods of traditional empirical history against [[postmodernism]] and praised historians such as [[Henry Reynolds (historian)|Henry Reynolds]], but he later argued that some of those he had praised for their empirically-grounded work fail to adhere to the principle. In the same book, Windschuttle maintained that historians on both sides of the political spectrum had misrepresented and distorted history to further their respective political causes or ideological positions.

In ''The Fabrication of Aboriginal History'' and other writings on [[Indigenous Australians|Australian Aboriginal]] history, Windschuttle criticised historians who, he claimed, had extensively misrepresented and fabricated historical evidence to support a political agenda. He argued that Aboriginal rights, including land rights and the need for reparations for past abuses of Aboriginal people, had been adopted as a left-wing 'cause' and that those he perceived as left-wing historians<ref name=Grieves2003/> were distorting the historical record to support that cause. For Windschuttle, the task of the historian was to provide readers with an empirical history as close to the [[Objectivity (philosophy)|objective truth]] as possible, based on an analysis of documentary, or preferably eyewitness, evidence. He questioned the value of oral history. His "view is that Aboriginal oral history, when uncorroborated by original documents, is completely unreliable, just like the oral history of white people". A historian has no responsibility for the political implications of an objective, empirical history. One's political beliefs should not influence one's evaluation of archival evidence.<ref>Keith Windschuttle, 'Doctored Evidence and Invented Incidents in Aboriginal Historiography', in Bain Attwood and S. G. Foster (eds), Frontier Conflict: The Australian Experience, Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2003, p. 106.</ref>

For some of his critics, "historians don't just interpret the evidence: they compose stories about these meanings, or in the words of [[Hayden White]], they 'emplot' the past. This is itself a cultural process".<ref>Stephen Garton, "On the Defensive: Poststructuralism and Australian Cultural History" in Hsu-Ming Teo, Richard White (eds.) ''Cultural history in Australia, '' UNSW Press, 2003 pp</ref>

Windschuttle's research in the early 2000s disputed the idea that the [[colonialism|colonial]] settlers of Australia committed [[genocide]] against the [[Indigenous Australians]]. He also disputed the widespread view that there was a campaign of [[guerrilla warfare]] against British settlement.<ref>Keith Windschuttle, ''Postmodernism and the Fabrication of Aboriginal History'', Lecture to NSW Higher School Certificate History Extension Conference, Tom Mann Theatre, Sydney, 30 May 2007. He writes: "There are two central claims made by historians of Aboriginal Australia: first, the actions by the colonists amounted to genocide; second, the actions by the Aborigines were guerilla tactics that amounted to frontier warfare." He goes on to say: "Ryan says the so-called 'Black War' of Tasmania began in the winter of 1824 with the Big River tribe launching patriotic attacks on the invaders."</ref> Extensive debate on his work has come to be called the "[[Australian history wars|history wars]]". He dismissed assertions, which he imputed to the current generation of academic historians, that there was any resemblance between racial attitudes in Australia and those of [[South Africa under apartheid]] and Germany under the [[Nazis]]. He was a frequent contributor to conservative magazines, such as ''[[Quadrant (magazine)|Quadrant]]'' in Australia, of which he became editor in 2007, and ''[[The New Criterion]]'' in the United States.

In the wake of the [[2011 Norway attacks]], Windschuttle did not deny that the perpetrator, [[Anders Behring Breivik]], had read and praised statements he had made at a symposium in New Zealand in 2006,<ref>Keith Windschuttle, {{cite web|url=http://www.sydneyline.com/Adversary%20Culture.htm |title="The Adversary Culture: The Perverse Anti-Westernism of the Cultural Elite," |access-date=10 October 2013 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130426232213/http://www.sydneyline.com/Adversary%20Culture.htm |archive-date=26 April 2013 }} ''The Sydney Line'', 2006.</ref> but stressed that he was "still at a complete loss to find any connection between them and the disgusting and cowardly actions of Breivik". Windschuttle went on to add that "it would be a 'disturbing accusation' if people thought that he had ever used deliberately provocative language that might have caused Breivik to take up a rifle and shoot unarmed teenagers in cold blood".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/charge-of-deadly-provocation-is-false/story-e6frg6zo-1226102316185|title=Charge of Deadly Provocation is False
|author=Keith Windschuttle}}</ref><ref>Laura Westbrook, [http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/europe/5349226/Mass-killer-Anders-Behring-Breiviks-NZ-link "Mass killer Anders Behring Breivik's NZ link,"] ''Stuff'', 2011.</ref>