Lies by the New York Times in the late 1950s were crucial to enslaving the nation of Cuba under mass-murdering dictator Fidel Castro, who was portrayed by the paper as an anti-communist “freedom fighter.” Before that, Pulitzer Prize-winning lies by the New York Times were crucial in helping mass-murdering dictator Joseph Stalin conceal his genocide-by-starvation perpetrated against Ukraine. And now, it seems, the far-left newspaper and the forces behind it hope that lies about America in the “1619 Project” will destroy the freest and most prosperous nation in human history. Fortunately, the lies were caught early, and they are now sparking outrage and scrutiny nationwide.
The central element of the 1619 Project is the claim that “ant-black racism,” slavery, systemic oppression, and other evils are embedded “in the very DNA” of America. Of course, if America’s very DNA is evil, there can be no change in policy and no possible transformation that would make the nation redeemable. In short, under the view put forth by the Times and its project, the only possible conclusion is that America must die so that something new can replace it. That is the objective. The free market system is painted as responsible for slavery, too. Because the narrative is based on easily disproven lies, though, a simple dose of truth can neutralize the poison — and that is already happening.
But the threat remains. In thousands of government schools all across America, including some of the largest districts, children are being force-fed the Times’ blatantly false historical narrative about the United States — a history so phony that even left-wing historians have debunked it as ridiculous. While the fake history in the “1619 Project” has been widely ridiculed and totally discredited by virtually every scholar who has examined it, including those hired by the Times, the lies are being openly pumped into the minds of millions of captive children across the nation. More jurisdictions are jumping on the bandwagon. If left unchallenged, the consequences of these pernicious lies being taught to ignorant and impressionable young Americans will be devastating.
Fortunately for America, however, the entire scandal surrounding the fake history is causing parents and taxpayers everywhere — and even the president of the United States — to take a much closer look at what is being taught in government schools more broadly. Already, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from public schools that teach it, sparking a national conversation. And he identified indoctrination in public schools as the reason for the mayhem in the streets. As parents realize that their children are being strategically brainwashed with fake history as part of a plot by powerful forces to destroy America and her liberties, the repercussions and the coming backlash are likely to be even more profound.
The 1619 Project narrative, mostly invented by Times “journalist” Nikole Hannah-Jones and a kook historian she parrots, flips reality completely on its head. America was founded on the idea that all men are created equal, a principle that led to it becoming one of the first societies in all of human history to abolish slavery. But instead, the United States is portrayed as a uniquely evil nation. In fact, under the false history of the 1619 Project, America is defined almost exclusively by its temporary tolerance of an institution that has been ubiquitous literally since the dawn of humanity: slavery. Instead of celebrating America’s incredible history of human progress and expanded respect for God-given liberties, the racist project erases it and replaces it with a deadly fraud.
The project originally began as a series of essays published in the summer of 2019 in the far-left and increasingly racist New York Times. The initiation date was chosen to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival in Virginia of indentured servants (not slaves, the Times’ fake history notwithstanding) from Africa who had been kidnapped by Imbangala warlords in modern-day Angola. Once in Virginia, they joined indentured servants from Europe brought over by the Virginia Company. The Times’ makes no reference to these facts, falsely referring to the Africans as “slaves.”
The Times also makes no reference to the fact that one of America’s first military engagements as a new nation was to battle African slave catchers who were capturing and enslaving Europeans and Americans on the high seas. Nor does the Times mention slave ownership by the free Americans of African descent, such as Anthony Johnson, who arrived in Virginia in 1621 as an indentured servant. He became the colony’s first legal slave owner after a lawsuit in which a court ruled he could keep his servant in servitude for life. Johnson also owned rights to a number of European indentured servants, which the Times again conveniently omits.
According to the paper, the 1619 Project was supposed to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of [the United States’] national narrative.” Everything including road traffic in Atlanta was supposedly caused by this slavery and racism. And yet instead of “reframing,” the project rewrites history, using lies and deception. In essence, it is an elegant regurgitation of the debunked ramblings of fringe University of Houston “historian” Gerald Horne, a proud supporter of genocidal Marxist mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who murdered more Africans during his barbarous reign than all living white Americans (excluding abortionists) combined.
Even the first sentence of the headline of the first essay in the project contains multiple factual errors: “Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written,” it says. Of course, America is not and never has been a democracy. If Hannah-Jones had bothered studying any American history, she could have read The Federalist, No. 10, by James Madison, the Father of the Constitution (and an enemy of slavery), to understand why he rejected democracy as a terrible form of government, and chose to create a republic instead. Instead, the project blasts the “decidedly undemocratic Constitution,” as if that were a bad thing. Also, claiming that America’s founding ideals are false implies that all men are not created equal, a self-evidently racist statement.
The second sentence of the 1619 Project’s opening essay title is deceptive, too. “Black Americans have fought to make them true.” Of course, Americans of all skin tones struggled in the fight, with hundreds of thousands of European-descent Americans dying in the Civil War that freed the slaves in the South. Instead of recognizing that, the racist Project demonizes “white Americans” for their supposed collective “sin” of slavery, while falsely suggesting that black Americans have been left on their own to struggle for freedom against evil “white Americans.”
Everything was going great for the Times’ false narrative, for a while. Copies of the magazine were flying off the newsstands. A podcast and a school curriculum were launched to spread the propaganda further. Times’ writer Hannah-Jones, the creator of the project, even joined the paper’s disgraced Soviet propagandist Walter Duranty, who covered up a genocide for Stalin, in getting a Pulitzer Prize for publishing lies. Apparently peddling obvious and deadly communist propaganda for the Times has its benefits!
But then, actual historians from across the political spectrum took a look. The whole narrative promptly crumbled. In a letter to the Times, a coalition of historians specializing in U.S. history, U.S. independence, and the Civil War demanded “prominent corrections” of “all the errors and distortions” contained in the 1619 Project. “These errors, which concern major events, cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing,’” wrote the group brought together by Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, which included leading historians such as James McPherson, Gordon Wood, James Oakes, and Lincoln Richard Carwardine. “They are matters of verifiable fact, which are the foundation of both honest scholarship and honest journalism.”
The enormity of the errors and the subsequent refusal to correct the record “suggest a displacement of historical understanding by ideology,” the historians continued. Indeed, even the most important points in the narrative are blatantly false, with no historical evidence to support them. The central narrative is that practically everything in American history, including the decision to declare independence, revolved around slavery. But that is so obviously phony, historians could not identify even a single piece of anecdotal evidence to support the charges.
“I don’t know of any colonist who said that they wanted independence in order to preserve their slaves,” explained American Revolution historian Gordon Wood, one of the innumerable critics and debunkers of the Times’ propaganda, calling the narrative “so wrong in so many ways.” McPherson, dubbed “dean of Civil War historians” by the Wall Street Journal, blasted the Times for peddling an “unbalanced, one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” And that is just the mild criticism from liberals. Conservatives largely blasted it as racist, pseudo-historical propaganda, with one critic even referring to it as neo-confederate drivel.
Even the radical Left could not provide cover for the enormity of the errors. The World Socialist website, which pointed out that virtually no black sources (including Fredrick Douglass) were used for the 1619 Project, interviewed, among other historians, Oxford historian Richard Carwardine, a recognized scholar on U.S. history. He exposed what he described as the “one-sided” narrative. “I am troubled that this is designed to make its way into classrooms as the true story of the United States, because, as I say, it is so partial,” he said, blasting as “preposterous” the primary thesis of the 1619 Project. “It is also wrong in some fundamentals.”
Carwardine also noted that the drive for immediate abolition of slavery owed much to “evangelical Protestant fervor,” and that the movement was “largely white,” discrediting another central elements of the project. “This urgent thrust towards immediate emancipation surely poses a problem for those who see racial hostility as the ineradicable DNA of white America,” the Oxford historian of America continued, adding that many white Christians were killed and were prepared to be martyred for their biblical acknowledgment of the reality that dark-skinned people were created equal and in the image of God and therefore should be liberated immediately.
In an interview with the far-left Atlantic magazine, anti-Trump activist and Princeton historian Wilentz actually expresses sympathy and support for the goals of the 1619 Project, but blasts the obvious factual errors. “To teach children that the American Revolution was fought in part to secure slavery would be giving a fundamental misunderstanding not only of what the American Revolution was all about but what America stood for and has stood for since the Founding,” Wilentz explained, adding that opposition to slavery was a “very new thing in the world in the 18th century.” Discrediting the 1619 Project’s central thesis even further, Wilentz noted “there was more anti-slavery activity in the colonies than in Britain.”
Other historians were even harsher, pointing out the almost absurd ironies that pervade Hannah-Jones’ ramblings. Writing in City Journal, historian Allen Guelzo ridiculed the Times’ 1619 Project as a silly “conspiracy theory.” Making matters worse, he continued, is that the false conspiracy theory was concocted from the “chair of ultimate cultural privilege in America.” “In no human society has an enslaved people suddenly found itself vaulted into positions of such privilege, and with the consent — even the approbation — of those who were once the enslavers,” continued Guelzo, mocking Hannah-Jones for her privilege.
Even the Times’ own fact-checker, Leslie Harris, blew the whistle, saying that her corrections were ignored and that the central premise of the 1619 Project was wrong. “Far from being fought to preserve slavery, the Revolutionary War became a primary disrupter of slavery,” she explained in Politico, adding that most of the 13 colonies employed black slaves in the fight with the promise of securing their own freedom. “Despite my advice, the Times published the incorrect statement about the American Revolution anyway, in Hannah-Jones’ introductory essay.” The paper also mischaracterized slavery in early America, she added.
Of course, one does not need to rely on modern-day historians to understand that Hannah-Jones could not be more wrong. America’s Founding Fathers left a long list of writings in which they denounced slavery as an affront to God, human dignity, and liberty. Dr. John York at the Heritage Foundation compiled a sizable list of documented quotes proving it. “There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of [slavery],” explained George Washington, the father of America, in a 1786 letter posted online from the government’s own archives. He eventually provided for his slaves to be freed and even cared for from his estate. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, Mason, Jay, and plenty more made similar statements.
Now, in response to the outrageous narrative in 1619, black Americans who value truth are coming together behind the “1776 Unites” Initiative as an “inspirational alternative” to fight back against the anti-American slander sold by the Times. Led by Bob Woodson, the effort is dealing a devastating blow to the racist agenda of the 1619 Project, even offering a pro-America, pro-truth curriculum that can be used to teach history in high schools. The goal: “let millions of young people know about these incredible stories, African-Americans past and present, innovative, inventive, who faced adversity, did not view themselves as victims, and chose pathways to be agents of their own uplift.”
“What 1619 postures is that all of the problems facing inner-city blacks are attributed to factors that are external to that community,” Woodson said, blasting “self-flagelating guilty white people” and “angry, rich blacks” as the source of so many problems. “Explain to me how institutional racism could cause black people to fail in systems run by their own people. Tell me how that works! Nothing is more lethal to a people than to covey to them that it’s impossible for them to be agents of their own uplift.”
Federal officials are also fighting back. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill to block federal funds to any schools using the 1619 propaganda, which he blasted as “a racially divisive, revisionist account of history that denies the noble principles of freedom and equality on which our nation was founded.” President Donald Trump, who recently blamed government-school indoctrination for the riots in the streets, warned on Twitter that the U.S. Department of Education was exploring ways to stop federal funding to schools that use the propaganda.
Fortunately for history and America, exposing the indoctrination of children has become a high priority for the Trump administration and other leaders. Indeed, as President Trump explained in his Independence Day speech this year at Mount Rushmore, the sort of dangerous propaganda in the 1619 Project is responsible for the ongoing demolition of society. “The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets of cities that are run by liberal Democrats, in every case, is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions,” he said. “Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that they were villains.”
Talk-radio king Rush Limbaugh has also taken aim at the indoctrination, warning that “left-wing activists disguised as teachers” were “poisoning” America’s children “with hatred and vile racism.” Last year, he even urged parents to get their children out of public schools. Responding to the LGBT “history” indoctrination mandates passed in New Jersey, evangelical leader Franklin Graham also warned parents that it was time to get their children out of government schools.
Even left-wing historians and educators are sounding the alarm about what is happening in America’s classrooms. In his new book How to Educate a Citizen, emeritus professor at the University of Virginia E.D. Hirsch highlighted the implications. “Intellectual error has become a threat to the well-being of the nation. A truly massive tragedy is building,” he warned, adding that public schools were now “diminishing our national unity and our basic competence.” “The culture is up for grabs, and elementary schools are the culture makers,” he continued.
“The idea that identity and ethnicity are inborn and indelible from birth is a false view that leads to group hostility,” Hirsch continued, calling on schools to teach true history and help create a united American culture so that children can embrace their identity as Americans rather than become competing and warring factions. “The idea that there can be an American culture that everyone joins seems to be anathema to some academic thinkers. But I can’t believe it’s anathema to any normal person in the country who isn’t some social theorist.”
Instead, the 1619 Project joins communist propagandist Howard Zinn’s fake history as yet another tool for government schools to poison the minds of children and divide them from their nation and their incredible heritage. It also comes amid escalating Marxist indoctrination under the guise of “Black Lives Matter” propaganda, which has infiltrated government schools all across America. That has occurred even as the founders of the movement admit publicly that they are “trained Marxists” and that they are consulting with “ancestor spirits.” Combined with “Critical Race Theory,” “white privilege,” “intersectionality,” and hatred of America, Christianity, the nuclear family, and more, it is all a recipe for national and civilization suicide.
Of course, it is true that individuals of African heritage have been dehumanized by some individuals of European heritage. And there is nothing wrong with talking about that — in fact, it is important and offers valuable lessons. Yet in the entire screed against “white Americans” that is the opening of the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones never once mentions Charles Darwin. Darwin’s racist ramblings on “favoured races” included the idea that “the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world.” He also claimed that differences between gorillas and darker skinned people from Africa or Australia were small, but that once allegedly superior Europeans wiped them out, the gulf between humans and gorillas would be huge. His ideas inspired Nazism, Marxism, eugenics, and many other mass-murdering movements. And yet Darwin is held up to children as a hero.
Racist Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, who believed in eugenics to improve the human race by eliminating people she considered “human weeds” from the gene pool, is also given a pass in the 1619 Project. No mention is made of her “Negro Project” to reduce the population of blacks. Today, the institution she created has slaughtered millions of black babies, and the death toll continues to grow daily. Nor are Times readers informed about her frequent appeals to the KKK and other white supremacist groups in the quest to reduce minority numbers. In other words, the fake anti-racist propaganda peddled by the Times ignores the real racists while demonizing those who laid the foundation for equality and liberty worldwide.
Ironically, the real racism of today is oozing out of the Times. In 2018, for instance, the paper hired virulent racist Sarah Jeong to serve on its editorial board. Among other outrages, Jeong admitted it was “kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” She also argued that “white people” are “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” The raw, seething hatred shocked America, but the Times saw no problem with it. The paper has also been described by one of its former reporters as the establishment’s propaganda “megaphone” to sell foreign wars to Americans, primarily against “black” and “brown” people. Another liberal editor recently left, too, blasting her former employer for hostility to truth and honesty.
Hannah-Jones has also been exposed as a virulent racist herself. In a letter to the editor published in 1995, she described whites as “savages” and “bloodsuckers,” adding that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world.” Claiming Columbus was no different from Hitler, she said the collective crimes of “Europeans” were “unnecessarily cruel and can only be described as acts of the devil.” Of course, holding an entire “race” responsible for the real and imagined crimes of some individuals who share the same skin tone is the very essence of racism.
Also ironically, many of the claims made by Hannah-Jones are exactly the same as those made by supporters of slavery such as John Calhoun. For instance, the 1619 Project falsely claims that the statement in the Declaration of Independence “all men are created equal” only applied to those of European ancestry. This is literally the exact same claim made by Calhoun. And yet, even the briefest review of the Founding Fathers’ writings show that it is false. All Hannah-Jones has been able to do is hurl silly accusations of “racism” and being “white” at her critics. Though a minor correction was grudgingly made by the Times as an “update,” the grotesque arguments used by defenders of slavery are still being peddled to children and adults.
Hannah-Jones also fails to mention several indisputable facts that completely contradict her racism narrative. For instance, immigrants to America from Nigeria tend to do better than European-descent Americans born in America. How could this be possible if America is a white supremacist society designed to keep blacks down, where “anti-black racism” is in the nation’s “very DNA”? Nor does Hannah-Jones reveal that there are more black people today in America who immigrated voluntarily than were brought over as slaves after being purchased from other Africans. Why does she not mention those facts? Because it would discredit the entire premise of the 1619 Project, of course.
For her dishonesty, Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer Prize. But this is not the first time such a travesty has happened. Times’ Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty parroted Stalin’s obviously false propaganda to American audiences, even hiding the Soviet genocide in Ukraine that starved an estimated 10 million people to death. In 1933, he quipped about the ghoulish extermination, which he continued to deny, that “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” For those lies, he, too, received a Pulitzer. More recently, Times propagandist Herbert Matthews convinced Americans that Castro was the “George Washington” of Cuba, even as sensible Americans and even the U.S. ambassador to Havana were warning that he was a communist. That deception resulted in Cuba being enslaved unto this day.
The reality of America is practically the opposite of the depiction created by the Times and Hannah-Jones. True history reveals that America is a unique and special nation in world history, among the first to be founded on biblical principles. This solid foundation would lead directly to the creation of the first major self-governing, godly republic since ancient Israel. And eventually, this amazing heritage would lead to the ending of legal slavery less than a century after independence. Ultimately, the then-revolutionary ideas America’s Founding Fathers enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” — would spread liberty worldwide.
Like virtually every society throughout all of human history, it is true that some Americans originally tolerated slavery. However, it was because of America’s unique and incredible founding and the biblical principles and worldview upon which it was founded that the ubiquitous scourge of slavery was practically eradicated from the face of the Earth. That process began in the Christian West and then slowly spread around the globe. It took until 2007 for some African nations to criminalize slavery, and the institution is still widely practiced on the continent. But thanks to the example set by Western Christians, it is slowly dying.
The 1619 Project, then, represents a case study in flipping history upside down for Marxist purposes. As George Orwell explained, those who control the past through the teaching of history in the present will control the future. The goal of those behind the Times’ deception is to destroy America and everything it represents — especially human liberty. After all, racism is supposedly in the “DNA” of the nation. It is bad enough that paying adults are swallowing this ludicrous propaganda. To teach this hatred and false history to children should be viewed as a crime. It must be opposed. And after the 1619 Project is removed, a full-scale investigation into the poison being fed to children nationwide should ensure. America’s survival depends on getting history right.
Image: duncan1890/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images
Alex Newman is a senior editor for The New American. He can be reached at [email protected] or through Liberty Sentinel Media. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook.
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