The 1619 Project Was Never Meant To Be Historical Analysis, Only Ideological America-Bashing

While plenty of other things have been on the news as of late (including a certain virus from China that I will do my best not to mention because it’s being talked about in every other media to an obscene extent), something that has flown under the radar is a slight correction made by the 1619 Project, the New York Times’ attempt at rewriting history for the benefit of an ideological war against this country.
 
Earlier in the month, a historian named Leslie M. Harris wrote an essay for Politico. According to National Review: “Harris claimed that Times fact-checkers reached out to her prior to the publication of the 1619 Project’s seminal essays to solicit her expertise on the relevant history involved. Harris wrote back to the fact-checkers, insisting that she ‘vigorously disputed’ the factual basis of one of the project’s central claims.”
 
What claim was she heavily contesting? The following passage from the Project: “Conveniently left out of our Founding mythology is the fact that one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”
 
This, Harris contends, is not factually accurate (unsurprisingly). The entire reason behind the Project’s absurd claim is because of the Dunmore Proclamation, a proclamation made by the British governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, that was meant to preserve his rule as a representative of the monarchy by “drawing the slaves of rebellious colonists into his militia in exchange for their freedom,” according to Phillip Magness of the American Institute for Economic Research.
 
Magness continued: “The Dunmore Proclamation revealed one of the many ways in which slavery cut across the other dividing lines of the revolutionary period, but it did not portend a coming general emancipation from the Crown. Indeed, most slave-owning colonists perceived the measure as an attempt to incite a slave revolt against opponents of the British rule, rather than a sign of slavery’s weakening position. The proclamation conveniently exempted the slaves of loyalist plantation owners, and Dunmore himself left a sordid record as supporter and beneficiary of slavery in the British colonial system. Meanwhile, as the long fight to abolish the institution made all too clear, supporters of slavery maintained a firm majority in the British Parliament at the time – and would continue in power for several decades to come.”
 
So it is not even remotely true that preserving slavery was a reason for the Revolutionary War. The Dunmore Proclamation, as Magness noted, was nothing but an attempt at crushing the rebellion by getting rid of revolutionary colonists’ slaves, promising them freedom if they fought for the Crown, while exempting loyalist colonists from that proclamation. Slaves were nothing but a tool, as they largely were considered back then, at furthering a goal.
 
But even then, the 1619 Project remains arrogant about its claim. While they offered a correction, it’s minimal. Instead of eliminating that factually-ignorant claim from its essays, the Project said that preserving slavery was the purpose of SOME colonists rather than all of them. But that claim IS STILL WRONG!
 
That, combined with the fact that the Project ignored or dismissed historians and fact-checkers who disagreed with their erroneous claims and dismissed the 1776 Project, a counter-project run by conservative African-Americans to maintain the fact that our founding was in 1776 and not when the first slaves arrived in 1619, shows that the point of the 1619 Project was never about simply revising and uncovering hidden histories of this country, but rather, destroying the very founding principles and concepts of this country, declaring everything from its governmental system to its economic system as stained and discredited as a result of its history of slavery (completely ignoring the fact that slavery was found in many other places around the world and still can be found in places like the Middle East and China).
 
The reason I make this assertion is because at the end of the aforementioned National Review article, we find: “[Magness’] piece… is worth reading in its entirety for its portrait of a project that succumbed to ideological ambition and, in so doing, lost a bit in the way of historical accuracy.”
 
The 1619 Project didn’t “succumb” to ideological ambition. Ideological ambition WAS ITS ENTIRE PURPOSE! It was never meant to be a recounting of our nation’s history, it was meant to be a REWRITING of our nation’s history, seeking to delegitimize our nation’s institutions. One of the sociologists brought in by the Project basically admits as much, having essentially argued that the country’s plantation economy stained and discredited modern American capitalism.
 
The entire point of this project wasn’t to offer a plausible alternative to the typical founding story we are taught in school. It wasn’t supposed to be about uncovering a secret truth behind our nation’s founding that has been buried for centuries. It was always supposed to be an ideological piece to fuel a war on American institutions and its very legitimacy. So for the writer at National Review to suggest it succumbed to ideological ambition, losing “a bit in the way of historical accuracy” is not putting it the right way.
 
This is the New York Times we’re talking about; some of the same people that right now (and I am about to break my promise about not taking about the Wuhan virus) are deflecting the blame from China for the damage it has caused the entire world as a result of the Chinese coronavirus that originated in China and has spread because of the CCP’s negligence (at best). The same people that lionized Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong in remembering his death back in September and absolved radical Islamic terrorists from any blame for the 9/11 attacks on the WTC during the 18-year anniversary.
 
Do you really think anyone at the New York Times would do honest research and fact-checking for a revising of history like the 1619 Project, leaving any semblance of ideological ambition or politics out of it? They do not care about history, as those two examples with Mao and the 9/11 remembrance tweets show. They care about setting a narrative and nothing more.
 
They cared about one of the most evil people in the history of the world seeming like an innocent son of a peasant farmer rising to the challenge of leading a nation and its people (conveniently leaving out his death toll standing in the tens of millions on the low end). They cared about the radical followers of a deadly religion by absolving them of any guilt on 9/11. They are not going to care about making this country look good or honest or legitimate. Whatever they can do to strip it of its legitimacy, they will do it, as evidenced by the fact that they dismissed any and all dissidents, including fact-checkers, numerous historians and a counter-project run by African-Americans who know the history of this country.
 
Their purpose, from the Project’s very conception, was bashing America and everything it stood for as being illegitimate because of its history of slavery, again, dismissing the fact that slavery has been used by practically every other country and is still widely used in Middle Eastern countries and in China (largely through concentration camps). History and facts were damned by these people and still continue to be. The ONLY reason they issued any sort of correction is because a fact-checker, whom they previously contacted and voiced her disagreement with a particular wild claim, wrote an essay for Politico that drew attention to the Project’s erroneous claim.
 
Their correction was barely even a correction, still implying that protecting slavery was the purpose of some of the colonists involved in the revolution, when there is no evidence to be found of that and the evidence USED by the Project does not show it. Again, the Dunmore Proclamation was just a method of snuffing out the rebellion, not a measure by the Crown and British Parliament to attempt to abolish slavery in the colonies, particularly because slavery wouldn’t be abolished in Great Britain until 1833, nearly 60 years after the revolution.
 
The reason for this Project in the first place is because the Left hates this country and thinks it illegitimate, arguing with whatever load of crap they can to deceive as many people as possible.
 
2 Thessalonians 2:3
“Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.”