The “1619 Project” is Propaganda
As 2020 starts, a PC propaganda campaign called the “1619 Project” is taking hold in American news media, university faculties, and K-12 public school curricula. The New York Times Magazine published the original batch of articles on August 14 of last year, and the ramrod of the project was a reporter named Nikole Hannah-Jones. A Times writer named Mara Gay characterized the campaign this way: “In the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”
The central claim of the “Project” is that United States, uniquely among all the nations on Earth, was founded on, and shaped by, the evil of slavery. The name comes from the claim that the first black slaves to arrive in North America were brought in August of the year 1619, exactly 400 years before the publication of the first “Project” articles. As a result, says Hannah-Jones, “Anti-black racism runs in the very DNA of this country,” with the implication that such deep racism does not stain any other nation the way it stains the US. The Times wants us to identify the United States so strongly with slavery that 1619, rather than 1776, will be viewed as the year of the nation’s true founding.
Continue readingWhy No “Peace” Movement in WWII?
“The problem in the summer of 1941 was that many regular Americans were not ready for war, since their country – the United States – had not been attacked. For American Communists, however, their country – the USSR – had been attacked. They were gung ho.” Paul Kengor
World War II is unique among the five wars the United States fought in the 20th Century, in that there was virtually no left wing “peace movement” trying to undermine America’s war effort.
During the First World War, President Wilson’s government jailed or deported hundreds of war protestors, most of whom were Communists or Socialists. During the Vietnam War, leftist radicals organized a “peace movement” that eventually undermined support for the war among the broader public. Similar left wing protests took place to a smaller extent during the 1991 Gulf War and the Korean Conflict of the 1950’s.
But the Second World War was different.
Eric Foner Preaches Marxism on Campus
“Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is one of this country’s most prominent historians.” Professor Eric Foner
The quote above is the first sentence on the homepage of Professor Eric Foner’s personal website. There is little doubt about who wrote this encomium, because footer of the homepage says “Copyright 2005 Eric Foner.”
Further down on the homepage the professor quotes another historian, who praises Foner in terms that would embarrass a more modest man. After praising Foner for his “voluminous scholarship,” Dr. Steven Hahn goes on to say that Foner “has had an enormous influence on how other historians, as well as a good cut of the general reading public, have come to think about American history.”
This statement is probably true, unfortunately. Dr Foner personifies everything that is wrong with academia in America, especially where history departments are concerned, and his influence is widely felt.
Eric Foner on the “Tragedy” of Socialism’s Failure
“To the Marxist paradigm that underlies this vision, I have no objection.” Eric Foner
College faculties tend to be very liberal – and very defensive about it. Any accusation of left wing bias makes the typical college professor fiercely indignant; and the most biased profs usually show the most indignation.
Campus Marxists have even been known to join together to form groups and publish papers to give an aura of academic legitimacy to their denunciations of their conservative critics. As far as their public image is concerned, university professors clearly want to be seen as moderate, mainstream Americans who can be trusted to give their students a well-rounded education.
When scholars write for other scholars, however, they are more candid.
Is Government the Answer?
“The most terrifying words in the English language are ‘we’re from the government and we’re here to help.’” Ronald Reagan
In his second inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the all-powerful federal government he was trying to build as “an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.” During his first term, he boasted, he had “made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public’s government.”
FDR was articulating one of the central beliefs of the political Left: that only good can come of making the government more powerful, and that only a more powerful government can do anything good. Individuals and businesses in the private sector, according to this view, play no constructive role in society.
