0529blog
Fog and Smoke
Two incidents of historic proportions in past months included the Jan. 6 attack against the Capitol by trump supporters who believed his unfounded and discredited claims that he was robbed of re-election by massive voter fraud and the groundbreaking “1619 Project,” a collection of magazine articles published in the N.Y. Times about the ways that slavery shaped the nation.
Not surprisingly, reactionary right wingers have minimized both, claiming the reporting on the attack on the capitol and the “1619 Project” both contained flawed facts. Similarly, the trumpers cited limited looting following civil rights rallies and blamed the entire Black Lives Matter movement. It is a criticism right out of the trump playbook where a few errors are exaggerated and used to create a smokescreen to paint a widespread smear.
An example was a recent Facebook meme that garnered widespread attention:
“Trump’s Capitol Attack:
1 cop was murdered.
2 cops committed suicide.
140 cops were injured.
1 cop had brain trauma.
1 cop had a crushed cervical disc.
1 cop lost 3 fingers.
1 cop was stabbed with a metal stake.
and cop 1 lost an eye.
IF THIS IS NOT AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE…NOTHING IS.”
One local official, an unquestioning and unapologetic trump backer, responded to the posting correctly that “no cop was murdered” although the official did not dispute that one officer who died after the attacks had been sprayed with a noxious substance by rioters. The local official also did not take issue with the other injuries noted in the meme.
“You would think a journalist would do a better job than spreading lies,” the official posted.
Another equally unequivocal local trump supporter commended, “Total BS.”
As dubious and misleading proof of his claim, the first official referred to a Wall Street Journal story about the cause of death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick who died a day after he was assaulted by two men with a chemical spray during the riot at the capitol.
The Journal reported on April 19 that Sicknick “suffered a stroke and died of natural causes” but it went on to quote the Capitol Police Department statement that “This does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the Line of Duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.”
More than 400 people have been charged so far in connection with the insurrection.
Apparently, the local official was inferring that Sicknick’s death after a stroke showed the assault was not as serious as reported. Oh boy.
Now on to the “1619 Project,” a Pulitzer-Prize winning collection of essays published in the New York Times last year that re-examines and explains American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived in America. It was distributed to libraries and museums around the country and was expanded to include a podcast series and a collaboration with the Pulitzer Center to develop a free school curriculum.
The project and related study of “critical race theory” have gotten renewed attention during the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement and in the aftermath of last year’s murder of African American, George Floyd, by a white Minnesota police officer.
The subject also has been roundly, aggressively and predictably rejected by conservatives who want to blunt efforts to educate students around the country as to the pernicious, obvious and ongoing effects of racism and slavery.
Trump said last year that the “1619 Project” has “warped, distorted and defiled the American story with deceptions, falsehoods, and lies.” That trump has the audacity to point out lies is beyond explanation but that’s for another blog. Trump also banned federal agencies from providing racial sensitivity training related to “white privilege” and “critical race theory,” a concept that has been around for decades, that was reflected in the “1619 Project” and now is being attacked as a Marxist ideology that threatens the American way of life by exposing the links between the long, deadly shadow of slavery and today.
Partly in response to the “1619 Project,” trump at his Orwellian best established the “1776 Commission” to support “patriotic education.” The commission included no historians specializing in U.S. history and issued a report two days before trump left office, a report that was roundly condemned as being “filled with errors and partisan politics.” President Joe Biden shut down the commission on the day he was inaugurated.
New Jersey is one of only three states that require school districts to teach critical race theory and many states specifically bar such curriculum. Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation on March 1 requiring school districts to incorporate curricula to “highlight and promote diversity, including economic diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance, and belonging in connection with gender and sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, disabilities, and religious tolerance.” Illinois and Washington State have passed similar legislation.
Nicole Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the introduction she wrote to the “1619 Project,” whose overarching theme is that 1619 is as crucial as 1776 to the nation’s history. As part of the project, the Times included 10 essays about the legacy of slavery, from sugar consumption in America and modern-day traffic patterns in Atlanta to the U.S. failure to guarantee health care to its citizens.
Hannah-Jones wrote that the American Revolution was fought because slave owners believed that England would soon abolish slavery and in turn, end the primary source of income in the south. And that was enough for Princeton historian Sean Wilentz to contact the Times with his opposite opinion that slavery was not a key to the revolution. Other historians and groups issued similar statements and the Times added a clarification that “some of” the colonists were motivated by fears that slavery would be abolished.
The Kerfuffle was enough to provide fodder to the politicians who have weaponized the “1619 Project” for their own racist purposes. Conservatives have read the project as an attack on whites and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it was an “exotic notion” to think that 1619 was among “the most important dates in American history. And this is how the right wing hopes to continue the fantasy that racism and slavery no longer reverberate.