03/28/2023
This month in the VDARE Book Club, we’ll be looking at a useful counter to the utterly disingenuous 1619 project. This is 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Projectby Peter Wood.
It’s worth remembering how the 1619 Project actually started. It was pushed by the New York Times as the major Narrative Shift after the Russian Collusion Hoax collapsed. However, the creation may have spiraled beyond the control of those who pushed it. Unlike the Russian Collusion Hoax, anti-white race-baiting has a powerful institutional base, and there is a lucrative market for affirmative action intellectuals eager to pour scorn on the American experiment. The 1619 Project has now spread well beyond The New York Times and is spreading quickly in education.
The 1619 Project posits that blacks, specifically the story of how they were oppressed, should become the defining characteristic of the way we view American history. Indeed, it should become the focus of American identity. Of course, whether you can build a national identity around shame, self-loathing, and a race to the bottom is highly questionable. Unfortunately, until America collapses completely, there will always be a way people can make money off this and a way for the naive or self-hating to get off on racial masochism.
The 1619 Project put forward numerous historical errors and false claims, many of which Wood points out in this book. However, there is a deeper issue — if your opponents are putting forward a compelling Narrative, is the only way to defeat it with a counter-Narrative? In other words, do the facts even matter?
I’ll be discussing this with Paul Kersey in an interview. Don’t miss it.
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