217. Mary Grabar on the 1619 Project, Howard Zinn, Historical Revisionism, and Pseudohistory

Michael Shermer speaks with Mary Grabar about her books Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America and Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation Against America.

According to the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” America was not founded in 1776, with a declaration of freedom and independence, but in 1619 with the introduction of African slavery into the New World. Ever since then, the “1619 Project” argues, American history has been one long sordid tale of systemic racism. Celebrated historians have debunked this, more than two hundred years of American literature disproves it, parents know it to be false, and yet it is being promoted across America as an integral part of grade school curricula and unquestionable orthodoxy on college campuses.

The “1619 Project” is not just bad history, it is a danger to our national life, replacing the idea, goal, and reality of American unity with race-based obsessions that we have seen play out in violence, riots, and the destruction of American monuments — not to mention the wholesale rewriting of America’s historical and cultural past. In Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide AmericaMary Grabar shows just how full of flat-out lies, distortions, and noxious propaganda the “1619 Project” really is.