The 1619 Project Is An Ideological Fiction The NYT Calls "History"
At City Journal, Allen C. Guelzo first explains the 1619 Project:
Designed largely by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and members of the New York Times editorial staff, the 1619 Project aspires--through essays, poems, and short fiction--to rewrite entirely the narrative of American slavery, not as an unwilling inheritance of British colonialism but as the love-object of American capitalism from its very origins. It reviews slavery not as a blemish that the Founders grudgingly tolerated with the understanding that it must soon evaporate, but as the prize that the Constitution went out of its way to secure and protect. The Times presents slavery not as a regrettable chapter in the distant past, but as the living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based, world without end.
Guelzo continues:
The 1619 Project is not history: it is polemic, born in the imaginations of those whose primary target is capitalism itself and who hope to tarnish capitalism by associating it with slavery. Slavery made cotton profitable; but profitability is not capitalism. Profit-seeking has been around since Abraham bought the cave at Machpelah in the book of Genesis. If profitability were capitalism, then the Soviet Union's highly profitable sales of natural gas and other commodities would surely make it one of the great success stories of capitalism - which, of course, it was not. Ask any worthwhile Marxist: capitalism is about the creation of class, and especially the bourgeoisie. And one thing the South never developed was a bourgeoisie. Which is why no single American, North or South, before 1861 ever imagined that slavery and capitalism were anything but mortal enemies. The proslavery apologist, George Fitzhugh, frankly declared that slavery was a form, not of capitalism, but feudal socialism; the antislavery president, Abraham Lincoln, explained the war on slavery as a war on behalf of free labor.The 1619 Project commits, moreover, the Supply Chain Fallacy--that slavery was necessary for capitalism and as a result inhabits every level of capitalism's subsequent development. This is the same reasoning that suggests that if a scientist receives a grant from the National Science Foundation for research, the result of the research is a production of the government. As economic historian Deirdre McCloskey comments, "It's a legal way of thinking, not economic." And not much in the way of historical thinking, either.
Again: the 1619 Project is not history; it is conspiracy theory. And like all conspiracy theories, the 1619 Project announces with a eureka! that it has acquired the explanation to everything, and thus gives an aggrieved audience a sense that finally it is in control, through its understanding of the real cause of its unhappiness. But historians--and most journalists--know that human experience is multivalent, contingent, and contradictory. And it bodes ill for the 1619 Project that while conspiracy theories arouse tidal waves of attention in their first unveiling, they also--like the Grassy Knoll or the Blood Libel--wear out quickly, because their ability to explain everything usually ends up explaining nothing.
And again: the 1619 Project is not history; it is ignorance. It claims that the American Revolution was staged to protect slavery, though it never once occurs to the Project to ask, in that case, why the British West Indies (which had a far larger and infinitely more malignant slave system than the 13 American colonies) never joined us in that revolution. It claims that the Constitution's three-fifths clause was designed by the Founders as the keystone that would keep the slave states in power, though the 1619 Project seems not to have noticed that at the time of the Constitutional Convention, all of the states were slave states (save only Massachusetts), so that the three-fifths clause could not have been intended to confer such a mysterious power on slavery unless the Founders had come to the Convention equipped with crystal balls. It behaves as though the Civil War never happened, that the slaves somehow freed themselves, and that a white president never put weapons into the hands of black men and bid them kill rebels who had taken up arms in defense of bondage. The 1619 Project forgets, in other words, that there was an 1863 Project, and that its name was emancipation.
Finally: the 1619 Project is not history; it is evangelism, but evangelism for a gospel of disenchantment whose ultimate purpose is the hollowing out of the meaning of freedom, so that every defense of freedom drops nervously from the hands of people who have been made too ashamed to defend it. No nation can live without a history, and no free nation can flourish without a history that affirms--in Ralph Waldo Emerson's words in 1856--"that the evil eye can wither, that the heart's blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent" and "overcome all odds." What the 1619 Project offers instead is bitterness, fragility, and intellectual corruption--not history.
He who controls the past, controls the future.
'scuse me, I should say "They who control the past, control the future."
I R A Darth Aggie at September 21, 2020 7:23 AM
History is written by the winners. But once the winners are dead, the children of the losers will rewrite it to suit their needs.
Sixclaws at September 21, 2020 9:20 AM
Lotta airbrushing going on. BLM is even trying to hide their Communist platform.
Isab at September 21, 2020 12:21 PM
They noticed that even in the push polls it isn't selling. Same with Pelosi suddenly being against arson and looting.
Ben at September 21, 2020 12:43 PM
All this is just an excuse, not a reason, for BLM and Antifa and the Left. It is an excuse for their real goal which is to tear down the US, destroy all our institutions and establish communism. You can tell it is fake because they have torn down statues of black Union soldiers, abolitionists, and statues at churches. Even and Elk statue and a T-Rex. They want year zero.
cc at September 21, 2020 1:59 PM
Turning the tide on stupidity like the 1619 Project would be like trying to grab the microphone from Kanye West. We're fucked now for at least 20 years unless some spine-stiffener like war or depression comes along.
Spiderfall at September 21, 2020 6:30 PM
" unless some spine-stiffener like war or depression comes along."
*Womyn and Minorities Most Affected*.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 21, 2020 7:34 PM
Bigot
its spelled womxn now
you will be assigned to the proper reeducation camp
lujlp at September 22, 2020 7:26 AM
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