1619 Project: Rewriting history
with a hidden agenda
America’s founding is tainted with the stain of slavery. This is undoubtedly among the darkest parts of American history, that has long been repudiated.
It also presents a paradox which is this: the founding principles of liberty and equality under the law are incompatible with the institution of slavery that was still present upon the founding. This has left a void ready to be filled with all kinds of interpretations as to what America is fundamentally about.
There are historians who research the past in order to understand the nuanced truth.
And then there are those who are focused on rewriting history in order to further their ideological and political agenda in the modern day.
Phil Magness is one of the most passionate, significant and qualified critics of the New York Time’s 1619 project, which just launched a Hulu miniseries. As a historian who specializes in 19th century United States, the American revolution, and the political and economic dimensions of slavery, he was astonished at the core fallacies, distortions and omissions of the 1619 project, and its blatant attempt to rewrite American history to fit a modern day political agenda.
In this episode of Liberty Curious, we explore the fundamental flaws of the 1619 project, and point to stories about abolitionists like Frederick Douglass that never made the cut. Phil also explains how they shockingly use pro-slavery figures to make a denouncement of slavery and free market capitalism, and exposes the underlying Marxist ideology that underpins the 1619 projects’ premises, when ironically, it is slavery and Marxism that have much more in common than the 1619 projects’ authors care to admit.
