Further more to the person who asked if there are any historians as leftwing as Windschuttle is rightwing, the left vs right thing is largely based on how you define the center.

If Windschuttle were saying “yes, Australians massacred the Aborigines and tried to wipe them out as a race and culture, and that was a damn good thing too” he might be the equivalent of 1930s apologists for Stalinism. As it is, he comes across as an antipodean David Irving.

Yeah, that’s why we need to call those extreme leftwing historians ‘black-armband wearing’ so we can tell they’re not of the mainstream.

Oh, except that they’re all-powerful and PC and stifling debate.

Or are they both?

How do they do it?

Yeah, me too. I’m going to start by changing my name to Niall Ferguson.

That is illuminating.

It’s not at all clear to me that such qualifications are more commonly applied to the right than the left (which I take it is anatoly’s implicit claim).

Very unscientifically doing Google searches on “’leftwing historian’”, “’left-wing historian’”, “’rightwing historian’” and “’right-wing historian,’” here’s what I found:

“leftwing historian” received 129 hits
“left-wing historian” received 597 hits
“rightwing historian” received 240 hits
“right-wing historian” received 841 hits

or the totals:
left = 726
right = 1081

This (again unscientifically) might suggest that: 1) people do note historians rightwing leanings somewhat more frequently than their leftwing leanings, but not by a great extent; and 2) based on the very small raw numbers here, these Google searches would suggest that these qualifications are fairly uncommon (and hence far from “obligatory”).

If we add the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” the numbers grow dramatically, but the relative frequency actually flips.

Googling “liberal historian” gets 31,800 hits
Googling “conservative historian” gets 16,500 hits.

http://www.sydneyline.com/

I know little about Tasmania and less about this guy, but this may help:

http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/20/sept01/keith.htm

But as a member of western civilization’s leisure class —the inheiritocracy you might say— I do know that a few hundred thousand isn’t enough for a civilized life of leisure. That kind of change is sufficient only for, say, a walkabout.

an interview (over lunch) with rightwing Australian historian Keith Windschuttle

Lest anyone think that he might be, you know, the proper kind of historian.

Trivial errors on the part of opponents are blown up into causes celebre, witnesses of killings and massacres are slandered, and the victims are blamed for their own misfortune.