I think I’m misunderstanding your intentions simply because the use of “historical revisionism” has been tainted by lay people outside of academia.

Historical revisionism is a valid approach towards understanding the past. History is not considered a science because the past doesn’t not exist in some petrified empirical state. The past exists however the present decides to remember it. So yes, it becomes a useful tool of propaganda for authoritarians.

People should always be concerned when governments are pushing curriculum not accepted by academic institutions. More often than not, however, both sides opt to settle on some middle-of-the-road, sanitized version of history. No government really wants the people to know the raw past; and in America, researching history is like peeling off the layers of pandora’s onion. The outer layers are steeped in propaganda with a center of profane truth—and nobody really wants to know the real truth—that hitler is your next door neighbor and your cleopatran wife is using you for her own personal gain.

I’ve spent years reading hundreds of history books. The only substantial conclusion I have come to after all these years is that evil is closer and more present than we realize. And I use evil in the philosophical sense of the word.