For thousands of years, China’s biggest scam for dulling the masses is hidden in every history book: it makes common people spend their lives standing on the side of imperial power, judging the people’s history, and praising the glory of butchers.

In modern learning of history, there is a scam rooted beneath everything that has run for a thousand years—absurd and most satirical at the foundational level: all commoners who study history are taught exclusively the perspective of imperial power. They have never been allowed to look at history from their own commoner stance.

A group of ordinary people, bottom-tier citizens, spending time and effort to learn history, yet what they learn are the emperors’ family genealogies and court power-struggle games—this, in itself, is the greatest dulling of the masses.

I. The most ridiculous current reality: when common people learn history, it equals watching sheep study the butcher’s family genealogy. The mainstream education is, from start to finish, narration from imperial power.

What are we learning?
How Zhu Yuanzhang killed officials who had served him; how Zhu Di moved the capital; how the Wanli Emperor suspended the court; how the Chongzhen Emperor lost the country. The history common people should learn is the kind that truly concerns their own lifeline: how to farm without starving, how to pay taxes without being cheated, how to file lawsuits without being bullied, how to band together and live on, how to avoid the exploitation and harvesting by the upper strata.

That is the historical wisdom common people need.
But today’s education is completely upside down. It has ordinary people studying every day how the wolf king rises to power, how the wolf king kills, and whether the wolf king is in a good mood.
It makes sheep study a butcher’s life, and makes the bottom tier worry on behalf of the top-tier power. This brings no benefit at all to common people—there is only one result: brainwashing.
It makes people subconsciously worship imperial power, long for power, empathize with emperors, and completely forget their own class, their own identity, and the suffering their ancestors endured.

For thousands of years, this is the most successful domestication.

II. The highest-level method of dulling the masses: make common people “mentally Sinicize into imperial subjects.” The true dulling of the masses is not to stop people from studying history, but to teach you to view the world with the eyes of an emperor.

When everyone reads history from the perspective of imperial power, they automatically slide into the role of emperor: arguing endlessly about whether Zhu Yuanzhang should kill his meritorious officials; getting red-faced over whether Zhu Di usurped the throne; judging and commenting on the diligence-and-governance or incompetence of emperors of every dynasty.

You’re busy evaluating emperors, worrying for them, and worshiping their machinations.
Yet you’ve completely forgotten the most fundamental fact: the clothes emperors wear are provided by the people; the grain they eat is scraped out by the people; among the countless people whose lives are ended by power struggles in the court, there are the ancestors of countless ordinary people.

The ultimate consequence of this kind of brainwashing is “mental imperialization”: you completely can’t see your own wounds, completely forget that you are oppressed common people, yet you end up proactively defending the oppressors, empathizing with them, and praising them. For thousands of years, this has been the most successful domestication.

III. The biggest accounting scam in history: merits belong to imperial power, while blame is dumped on the dynasty. From ancient times to now, common people carry the blame for the whole process. History narration follows an extremely lawless logic of accounting—this is also the root of why most people can’t understand history: all achievements are credited to imperial power; all crimes are thrown onto feudal dynasties and “limitations of the era.”

We must completely tear up these fake accounts:
Building the Great Wall, digging canals, planting good fields everywhere, weaving silk, sustaining the whole nation’s population, marching to the frontier to die and holding up the entire society’s operation—none of that was ever done by emperors.

All achievements of civilization, the foundation of prosperous eras, and all social wealth were stacked from the blood, sweat, and lives of the people.

What did imperial power do? It only seized everything created by the people, then signed and put its own name on it—rewriting the people’s achievements as “the emperor’s civilized governance and martial prowess.”
Then what about disasters, famines, harsh policies, vagrants, wars, and the fall of the nation?
It’s never “dynasties inevitably decay.” It was the evil policies of specific imperial power.

It was Zhu Yuanzhang’s suspicion and slaughter; it was Zhu Di’s massive construction projects that drained people and resources; it was the Jiajing Emperor’s waste of governance; it was the Chongzhen Emperor’s emergency policies and harsh taxes; it was the selfishness, incompetence, greed, and internal fighting of imperial power from generation to generation.

Yet the mainstream narrative always muddles through: it blurs the personal responsibility for crimes of imperial power into “the common problems of feudal dynasties” and “the limitations of the era.”

It’s like robbers steal your family’s property to buy a house and a car, and after the incident they say: “It wasn’t me—I was the product of the age of robbery being bad.”

The most foolish thing is that countless people today follow this wrong narrative: they vaguely curse “the Ming is rotten and the Qing is rotten,” but they don’t dare to criticize the Zhu family’s imperial power and the alien imperial power that committed evil. They praise “the Kangxi-Yongzheng-Qianlong prosperous era, and the strong Ming,” yet they never mention the bottom-tier people who sweated in farming and bled guarding the land. They count money for imperial power, and they carry blame for imperial power—this is the norm of ordinary people learning history.

IV. The clearest boundary in history: dynasties were propped up by the people, while imperial power is what feeds on the people. We must establish the only correct historical view, and completely cut apart two concepts: dynasty and imperial power.

Many people curse history, but they curse the wrong target forever.

You shouldn’t broadly blame feudal dynasties, because the continuation of dynasties, the continuation of civilization, and the transmission of culture rely on generations of people who persist and work.

Dynasties are lifted by the people; imperial power lies on the people and feeds by draining them.
Dynasties are the lives, civilization, and society built by countless citizens; imperial power is an oppression machine that stands above everyone, issues evil policies, harvests wealth, restricts human bodies, and manufactures suffering.

Merits always belong to the people who create everything; responsibility always belongs to the despotic imperial power that issues tyranny. This is the simplest and most just ledger of right and wrong in history.

V. Reconstruct the standards of judgment: being loyal to imperial power doesn’t equal being a good person. Benefiting the people is what true righteousness is.
For a thousand years, the biggest character-evaluation scam has been to decide good and evil by “loyalty to the lord,” and to define heroes by “protecting imperial power.”

The mainstream historical view has long brainwashed people: as long as someone is loyal to the emperor, maintains imperial power, and keeps stability for the court, then they are a loyal subject, a good person, and a famous minister through the ages.

But the judging standards from a commoner historical perspective must be completely reversed: to determine whether a historical figure is good or evil, don’t look at whether they are loyal to imperial power. Look at whether they benefit the ten thousand people and the entire realm’s civilization.

Loyalty to imperial power is loyalty to a family and a power position. Protecting a dynasty is protecting a piece of land, countless people, and civilization across generations.

These are completely two different things. Many “loyal ministers” praised by history books worked diligently their whole lives, devoted their hearts and minds, doing nothing else—just helping imperial power stay alive, helping the court harvest and loot, and helping the system suppress common people.

They emptied people’s savings, increased the tax burden on the bottom tier, and enforced harsh law to maintain stability—all their efforts were only to let the faltering imperial power live a few more years.
They preserved the emperor’s seat and crushed the people’s path to life. They extended the lifespan of imperial power and drained the foundation of the dynasty.

Tell me: if someone drains the people’s blood and crushes the well-being of the multitudes, just to preserve power for one family and one surname, why should they be called a loyal minister?
Why should they be called a hero?

Those who protect imperial power and harm the people are all traitors to the people; those who benefit the people and stabilize the realm are the true loyal and righteous.

Without overthrowing the wrong standard of “loyalty to the lord equals justice,” you’ll never understand history’s good and evil.

A person’s greatness is never measured by how loyal they are to the emperor, but by how much suffering they shield for the grassroots and how much life they leave behind for the common people.

VI. The textbook’s biggest fracture: slogans belong to the people, while the narration belongs to imperial power.
Everyone has seen in history textbooks the line: history is created by the people.

That phrase is not what the people who wrote the textbooks thought up. It is a materialist historical-views truth proposed by great leaders.
It is the truth spoken by Comrade Mao Zedong that’s meant to shock and awaken people:
People—only people—are the driving force behind creating world history.

This is the ultimate historical conclusion from the standpoint of the bottom tier, the masses, and justice.

What’s absurd is this: the textbooks copied the slogan of that truth, but completely discarded its standpoint.
The entire set of teaching materials, the whole way history is explained, still uses the main line of emperors and ministers, the main line of dynastic changes.

In the opening they loudly proclaim that people create history; in the main body they praise emperors’ achievements all the way, blur the crimes of imperial power, and still use loyalty-to-the-lord thinking to judge characters, using imperial power standards to define heroes.

This is typical “stitched-together” historical education: on the lips it’s a people’s history view, but in the bones it’s a thousand-year imperial power history view. It makes generations of young people speak that people are great, see that emperors are great, worship power in their hearts, and completely lose their own commoner stance.

VII. Conclusion: whoever is buried in the passage of time is the one qualified to judge history.
Reading history, the only correct stance is never to look up at the dragon throne, but to look down on the common people.

When common people learn history, they don’t need to weigh pros and cons on behalf of emperors, and they don’t need to pity imperial power’s rise and fall.
All we need to remember is this: the “blame” is decreed under imperial power; the “merits” are paid for with the blood of the people. Loyalty to the lord may not be goodness; benefiting the people is true merit.

Don’t broadly smear a whole era’s people’s creativity. Don’t blindly beautify imperial power’s greed.
Don’t mistake servants who suck the blood of imperial power for heroes.

Don’t vouch for emperors. Don’t whitewash tyranny.
Don’t let yourself be domesticated by a thousand-year imperial power narrative.

Stand forever on the stance of ordinary people: whose bones are buried in the soil, whose sweat and blood built civilization—whoever that is has the qualification to judge history.

That is the historical view that truly frees you from the thousand-year scam and makes you truly clear-eyed.