Posted on 10/31/2023 8:34:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Did you know that the archfiend best representing the Halloween season — namely, Count Dracula — is fake news?
I don’t mean that he’s fake in the sense that he’s fictional — which, of course, he is — but rather that his entire genesis is grounded in a pattern we now recognize and see on a daily basis: leftist propagandistic forces working to transform heroes into villains.
Count Dracula entered the popular consciousness in 1897, with the publication of Bram Stoker’s novel, "Dracula," which surrounds the exploits of an undead bloodsucker from Romania. As many novelists do, Stoker tried to give his story an aura of historic legitimacy by connecting it to real people and events. For his novel’s namesake, Stoker found a real Romanian, Vlad III Dracula (c. 1430-1476), also known as Vlad the Impaler.
Although the contemporary historical records Stoker relied on did not portray Dracula as a denizen of the night, fluttering about in the darkness in search of his latest victim (before retiring for the day inside a coffin), they did portray him as a sadist who tortured and impaled his victims.
Among other depravities, these accounts say that Vlad boiled people alive, shredded others “like cabbage,” forced parents to eat their children and husbands to eat their wives’ breasts, forced Muslim Tatars to swallow their own semen, and built secret trapdoors to drop his victims on cunningly located stakes below.
Most historians today reject these accounts and see them for what they were: enemy propaganda meant to demonize and take down Dracula. (Johannes Gutenberg had only recently invented the movable-type printing press, and Vlad’s enemies made great use of it to propagandize his alleged atrocities.)
That said and to be sure, by today’s standards, Vlad III Dracula was immensely cruel and regularly impaled his enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Something I never understand is why so much of the propaganda against Vlad seems to come from Europe, specifically the Holy Roman Empire.
Vlad was a great enemy of the Turks. The Turks hated him and would certainly want to tell stories about how awful he was. But as far as I know, Turkish sources are not the primary foundation for what we’ve been told about Vlad.
He was a Christian, fighting Islam, trying to preserve his part of Europe from Muslim invasion. And the Holy Roman Empire seems to have hated him for it.
Just seems odd.
Indeed.
well by golly why can’t he be both
He was cruel to a small portion of his country, the nobility. Which means he wasn’t a “good” guy in the classical sense.
However he allowed the poor people many freedoms and reforms for the time. One of which was allowing the common man to serve in the military, which was why Transylvania was able to field relatively huge armies for its size. Most armies at the time were composed of fighting classes or paid mercenaries.
IMO he was a complex character..murdering many nobility in the most barbaric fashions yet uplifting the commoner and fighting Islams invasions fiercely.
Make Wallachia Great Again
Vlad III and Dracula the fictional character are two different entities.
Vlad III was an anti-Jihad hero but he was also a sadist
Count Dracula the fictional character was an undead bloodsucker.
He was an adherent to the Eastern rite, which did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope. There was no love lost between the sects in the time of the Holy Roman Empire.
Vlad fought against the Holy Roman Empire, siding with the Muslims, turning against Mehmed II only after Mehmed demand he partially reimburse the Muslims for warring against the Catholics. Against the HRE, Vlad had made a regular practice of kidnapping children and slow-motion impaling them up the anus. That other bizarre and inventive torture techniques were attributed to him in no way means he was innocent of the horrific war crimes that made his name synonymous with evil even among his coreligionist Orthodox.
That Vlad III was an anti-Jihad hero is also fictional. He sided with the Muslims against the Catholic church in ways that horrified the other Orthodox rulers.
What you mean is that he didn’t spare the nobility from his acts of gruesome horror. By far, the vast majority of his torture victims were poor people, and the majority of them were children. It’s pretty sick that we’re debating the merits of Vlad.
And, of course, it’s darkly ironic to read of forcibly enlisting poorly trained and unequipped peasants to commit war crimes which would bring vengeance down upon them as a “reform.”
>> The thing that usually gets glossed over is this: where did Dracula learn about impaling, and torturing, and all those acts of cruelty? Oh, yeah, that’s right: the Muslim Turks. <<
No, we also learned about from the Saxons, the Russians, the Hungarians... When the Orthodox, Catholics and Muslims (and later Protestants) unite to declare you the most diabolical war criminal who ever lived, you’ve accomplished something... especially when you consider the various war criminals he topped...
It brings to mind some modern-day situations.
The Turks being major cry bullies!
“specifically the Holy Roman Empire”
Well, the Austrians ruled the HRE, and the Austrians also ruled Hungary. And Romania is right on the border of Hungary, in a very key strategic spot, yet the Romanians wanted to remain stubbornly independent instead of acquiescing to Hungarian rule, even as the Ottomans were swallowing up every lord who wouldn’t join the Austrians and Hungarians.
According to the book I read he nearly destroyed the nobility as they were a threat to his power. Many of the images of children etc being massacred were in fact families of Nobility.
sounds like we have different sources.
The “Boyars” were the nobility I spoke of:
“ In the spring of 1457, Dracula began his campaign against the boyars.
“He [Dracula] had found out that the boyars of Tirgoviste had buried one of his brothers alive. In order to know the truth he searched for his brother in the grave and found him lying face downward. So when Easter Day came, while all the citizens were feasting and the young ones were dancing he surrounded them … led them together with their wives and children … to Poenari [Castle Dracula], where they were put to work until their clothes were torn and they were left naked.”
“On the way out of the chapel the old boyars and their wives were apprehended by Dracula’s henchmen and impaled beyond the city walls. The young and able-bodied were manacled and chained to each other and then marched northward under the vigilant eye of Dracula’s men.” ”
On the other hand regarding the peasants:
“ For the most part, the peasants viewed Dracula rather favorably. After some time he refused to send tribute to the Sultan, and completely opposed enrolling children into the Janissary corps. The rich could no longer bribe their way out of punishment, and there was a general feeling that the people of the land were all judged and treated with equal harshness. It was said”
When old families of Boyars were wiped out he gave the lands to loyal peasants:
“Many of the old families fled to far-flung estates or Turkey. Dracula gave confiscated lands to new men, many of ‘low birth’. Almost ninety-percent of his boyars came from the lowly-class or were free peasants.”
Of course he WAS Dracula , a murderous psychopath , and of course he was cruel to many peasants but all in all he treated them better than the Boyars (there was the time he invited all the poorest people in a province to a giant banquet..once feasting he had his men lock the doors and burned them all alive).
On the men serving freely in his armies I think but can’t remember pease acts could gain freedom from serving.
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