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The Trump Administration Dropped Their Anti-Progressive, Slavery Minimizing ‘1776 Project’ On MLK Day, And People Were Appalled

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Donald Trump is on his way out the White House door, but he clearly has some fight left in him. On Monday, aka Martin Luther King Jr. Day, his administration unveiled two curious things. One was a bizarre garden honoring tons of random historical figures. Then there was “The 1776 Project,” their long-threatened response to The New York Times’ 1619 Project, which aims to reframe how we look at America’s past in relation to its embrace of slavery for nearly its first century. And it was what a lot of people expected it to be, which is to say a mess of historiography that downplays slavery, attacks “progressives,” and many more whoppers besides.

It ran some 45 pages, half of which was a reprinting of the U.S. Constitution, and it purported to be a “definitive chronicle of the American founding,” attacking “destructive scholarship” that might view the nation’s past through the lens of the bad things it did for so long.

“States and school districts should reject any curriculum that promotes one-sided partisan opinions, activist propaganda, or factional ideologies that demean America’s heritage, dishonor our heroes, or deny our principles,” it reads.

It was, in short, a lot. It attacks higher learning. (“Colleges peddle resentment and contempt for American principles and history alike.”) It lumped “progressives” in with “fascists” and “communists” as “challenges to America’s principles.” It even attacks those who teach the nation’s grim history with non-whites. It asserts that pointing out that the founding fathers were “hypocrites” for preaching that “every man is created equal” while owning slaves was “untrue, and has done enormous damage, especially in recent years, with a devastating effect on our civic unity and social fabric.” (You can read the whole thing here.)

People online were quick to highlight the most jaw-dropping parts. There was its minimization of slavery.

Its distortion of the civil rights movement.

And lots of other weird ahistoricisms.

There was also a curious overuse of the word “facts,” which struck some as fishy.

Some didn’t think it looked like a work of serious history.

Others pointed out the terrible timing of releasing all this on MLK Day.

Those who read it all felt worse afterwards.

There was a lot of unflattering words for those who were involved in its creation.

Though some assumed it was really just Stephen Miller.

But at least there was (allegedly) not a trace of young Trump guy Charlie Kirk.

There is a silver lining: Many of those involved in it are about to be out of a job.

(Via Forbes)