dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The history of the American Revolution isn’t the only thing the New York Times is revising through its 1619 Project. The “paper of record” has also taken to quietly altering the published text of the project itself after one of its claims came under intense criticism.

When the 1619 Project went to print in August 2019 as a special edition of the New York Times Magazine, the newspaper put up an interactive version on its website. The original opening text stated:

The 1619 project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. [emphasis added]

The passage, and in particular its description of the year 1619 as “our true founding,” quickly became a flashpoint for controversy around the project. Critics on both the Left and Right took issue with the paper’s declared intention of displacing 1776 with the alternative date—a point that was also emphasized in the magazine feature’s graphics, showing the date of American independence crossed out and replaced by the date of the first slave ship’s arrival in Jamestown, Virginia.

For several months after the 1619 Project first launched, its creator and organizer Nikole Hannah-Jones doubled down on the claim. “I argue that 1619 is our true founding,” she tweeted the week after the project launched. “Also, look at the banner pic in my profile”—a reference to the graphic of the date 1776 crossed out with a line. It’s a claim she repeated many times over.

But something changed as the historical controversies around the 1619 Project intensified in late 2019 and early 2020. A group of five distinguished historians took issue with Hannah-Jones’s lead essay, focusing on its historically unsupported claim that protecting slavery was a primary motive of the American revolutionaries when they broke away from Britain in 1776. Other details of the project soon came under scrutiny, revealing both errors of fact and dubious interpretations of evidence in other essays, such as Matthew Desmond’s 1619 Project piece attempting to connect American capitalism with slavery. Finally back in March, a historian who the Times recruited to fact-check Hannah-Jones’s essay revealed that she had warned the paper against publishing its claims about the motives of the American Revolution on account of their weak evidence. The 1619 Project’s editors ignored the advice.

https://quillette.com/2020/09/19/down-the-1619-projects-memory-hole/

>>10735511

Appearing in China Global Television Network (CGTN), an outlet which serves as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, the op-ed “Barr & Trump Try To Rewrite Slave History But Fail In Reality” also contains several digs at President Trump and U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr.

The nearly 800-word piece hypes the findings of the 1619 Project, a New York Times affiliated initiative aimed at infusing American history taught in classrooms with social justice narratives. It’s central thesis is that America’s birth year is 1619, the year slaves first arrived, as opposed to the conventionally accepted year of 1776.

CGTN agrees with the project’s findings, insisting 1619 “should actually be seen as America’s year of birth”:

“The project marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slaves in the Virginia colony in 1619, which should actually be seen as America’s year of birth.”

The outlet also criticizes President Trump’s efforts to remedy the influence the 1619 Project has amassed throughout American classroom by launching a Patriotic Education Commission:

“Speaking on the campaign trail in Wisconsin at the U.S. National Archives, the U.S. president said his administration would instead launch “a new pro-American lesson plan for students” called the “1776 Commission.” This is supposed to counter the 1619 narrative, 1776 being the year of America’s Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately for Trump, no amount of denial or deception can erase the contribution of African-Americans in the country. To his credit, however, his negation of the facts on this matter follows his trend of denying almost everything that does not suit his interests or ideology.”

CGTN also likens President Trump’s initiative to “whitewashing” and “mockery”:

“Admittedly, slavery was not exclusive to the States. But an attempt to rewrite history by whitewashing its brutality and other social and economic consequences is an injustice to the societies who still bear deep and indelible scars of this trade. Instead of engaging in mockery, Trump should really have tried to build bridges of understanding in his proposed “Patriotic Education” Commission.”

The article is replete with personal attacks on Attorney General Barr and President Trump, insisting the two are “kindred souls” on the subject of “poorly calculated, shocking, and totally insensitive remarks.”

The article confirms Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s criticism of the project as a “Marxist” initiative favored by the Chinese Communist Party: “They want you to believe Marxist ideology that America is only the oppressors and the oppressed. The Chinese Communist Party must be gleeful when they see the New York Times spout this ideology.”

https://thenationalpulse.com/news/cgtn-hypes-1619/