Ok, so... why am I asking this. First of all, I know close to nothing about modern day politics, both in global context as well as in my own nation, and when I read and research different historical topics I usually do it only because of interest, and I rarely try to connect different historical events to the current political state in the world/certain region.
However, whenever I try to discuss some historical topics with my friends/relatives, they always tend to make analogies with the modern day political conflicts and tell about how certain historical facts are fake, and were invented only because of political reasons, etc. When I try to tell them that I'm not really comfortable with discussing politics, as I know nothing about them, and what I actually would like to talk about are events from the past in particular, and not how they are related to some modern political conflicts, they tell me that history is, in fact, useless by itself and that it is purposeless to discuss the past events without mentioning their effect on the modern day politics.
So am I wrong, and I actually first need to educate myself more about politics in general, as well as develop my own point of view when it comes to certain political conflicts in my nation, and only then I will be able to discuss history? Or are they wrong, and it is actually possible to discuss events from the past without touching the topic of modern day political conflicts?
Yes and no. (How's that for an answer?) Or, to put it another way, it depends on the type of history and what you're discussing, but to be up front about it there really is no "right" or "wrong" here, it's really about how one thinks and processes historical information.
Admittedly, certain histories just get political, and it's hard to avoid it: see, for example, the current controversy over "critical race theory" in the United States (which isn't really about critical race theory at all - what is really being discussed is the history of systemic racism in the U.S. and whether and how it should be represented in the educational system). You could not realistically have a conversation about this and not expect politics to come up. Neither, for example, could one really expect to have a non-political conversation about the history of indigenous Americans or Australians, especially with the discovery of mass graves at residential schools in Canada recently; or, say, the impact of European imperialism in various parts of the world; or the history of the modern Israeli state (especially its establishment); and even post-Soviet Russian approaches to the holodomir -- rare would be the conversation about any of these that doesn't turn political, as many of these discussions have been politicized through the embrace (or rejection) of one historical narrative by a political faction that bases part of its ideology upon it. While one can have a non-political discussion about them, it's not always that easy outside of an academic setting unless everyone involved in the discussion is on the same page about keeping the conversation apolitical from the beginning.
Having said that, what your friends and relatives are doing is employing a common method of processing historical events by making them relevant through analogy. For some, it's easier to discuss or process historical events by trying to imagine what it would be like to be in a certain situation or live through a certain series of events by comparing them to things they've lived through or can relate to. Teaching a beginning course on the history of medicine last fall, for example, I began the course by having students consider their experiences with COVID-19, because it then became easier to have them consider, for example, what the "year without a summer" during the polio outbreak in the US in the 1950s was like for the people who lived through it, for example.
For other sorts of history, or for people who tend to process information in different ways, this might be less effective or less necessary. One of the issues is tangibility: not everyone (and I'm one of these) is interested in discussing issues they don't find interesting or important -- with all due respect to my colleagues who really enjoy it, I find intellectual and philosophical history dreadfully boring and don't get the appeal, in large part because I have difficulty conceiving (or motivating myself to consider) abstract concepts.
All of which is to say that I wouldn't say that there is a right or wrong answer to the question you've posed (or, more accurately, everyone can be right here). Depending on the issues of the day, you might do well to learn about politics and conflicts in your own nation (especially if you want to discuss the history of them); but, as a historian, I also don't agree with the idea that history is useless on its own unless it can be related to modern day politics -- it just might be less interesting to people who aren't also otherwise interested in history.
/u/commiespaceinvader has previously answered:
/u/snapshot52 has previously written about delusions of neutrality and framework analysis
/u/Georgy_K_Zhukov wrote Rules Roundtable XIV: Political Agendas, Moralizing, and the Mythical 'Unbiased Answer' which is a commentary on why the subreddit has rules against using the comment threads for a personal soapbox.
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