Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” The 1619 Project tells many doozies, but the biggest lie that the New York Times propagates, in this radical and anti-American document, is that the Revolutionary War was fought because of a desire to maintain slavery, which they thought the British were about to abolish.

The lie makes your head explode in its sheer audacity. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense is the pamphlet that circulated for months before the war, generating discussions at taverns and other public venues, and yet there’s nary a word within its pages about slavery. Instead, Paine’s work focused on galvanizing the colonies to break free from England and create an independent republic, a system of self-government, that was not monarchical and that recognized the rights of the individual.

The other document that lays out the reasons for the Revolutionary War is of course the Declaration of Independence. Twenty-seven reasons are given for the need to break from the tyranny of England. Taxation without representation, a hierarchical system that favored British soldiers and gave them unfair rights over the citizens of the colonies, an inability to respond to the needs of its colonial subjects, and other complaints are given as reasons for the need for war. Again, the desire to maintain slavery is not among those complaints listed.

How can such a document that propagates such a big lie be now widely circulated and even promoted by stars like Oprah Winfrey? Who is behind this project that so reduces the history of the United States and leaves the key primary sources out of the equation?

The major voice behind the project is of course its creator, and now project director, New York Times reporter Nicole Hannah-Jones. Hannah-Jones created a stir a few months ago when she was asked how the rioting and looting in cities should be interpreted. She responded that property theft is not violence. (That’s news to me.) She also penned an article on June 30, 2020 called “What is owed?” making a case for reparations to be paid to blacks for the legal slavery that was abolished over 150 years ago.

Her most egregious statements about whites came as a student at Notre Dame University in 1995 when she wrote, “The white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager and thief of the modern world.” In this letter to the editor, which is still available to read online (indicating that she is not ashamed of her open hatred of the majority of Americans), she responds to another student’s piece on Christopher Columbus by describing Columbus as “no different then [sic] Hitler.” She calls whites “barbaric devils” and says that they acted like savages because of “some lacking” that made them “[need} to constantly prove their superiority.” 

Smart people who also have access to the internet give this woman money to peddle the 1619 Project. Surely, they also have access to Wikipedia to find out that she said these things as a student in 1995 and that she has never disavowed them. Oprah Winfrey and Lionsgate, for example, just announced a collaboration project with Hannah-Jones (and the New York Times) to adapt the 1619 Project for television and film.

The Smithsonian Institute, a government-financed group of museums and research institutions, collaborated with Hannah Jones on the 1619 Project. (The Smithsonian also, by the way, collaborated with the National African American History Museum, which also openly peddles anti-white propaganda about the blandness of white food (Italian, French, Austrian, Swedish food are all a monolith, you see) and the monolithic oppressive patriarchal culture of white people).     

Hannah-Jones’ Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting (of which she is the cofounder) lists Google News Lab, Knight Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations as funders of the non-profit which bills itself as a “news trade organization dedicated to increasing and retaining reporters of color” who are investigative journalists.

The National African American History Museum lists Target, Walmart, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Lilly Endowment, The Andrew. W Mellon Foundation, 3M, American Express, Smithsonian Channel, 21^st Century Fox, Walt Disney, Nike, Toyota, Time Warner, AARP, Coca-Cola, Lowe’s, Verizon, and Wells Fargo as donors of amounts ranging from $1 million to $20 million. (The list is worth checking out for yourself because it is so extensive and includes most of the major corporations in the United States today.)

So what happened? Did these funders give the money and not anticipate the anti-white rhetoric espoused by Nicole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project, or by the National African American History Museum? Or are they also able to do research like me, meaning they’re aware of the rhetoric but choose to ignore it? Maybe it is like the case of Nick Cannon’s anti-white rant. He can be fired for saying something anti-Semitic, but when he says something anti-white, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the other major media outlets will simply ignore it.

I’m of the opinion that these multimillionaires simply don’t care. They are our modern-day British oppressors who simply do not care about the problems of their colonial subjects. If the property of “these American lowlifes” gets destroyed, well, let’s just ignore it. If they don’t feel safe in their own homes, that’s not my problem as long as they keep buying Nike shoes. And as for the race peddlers like Nicole Hannah Jones who promote big lies with the intent of tearing down the foundations of the country, these are people who care about a narrow ethnic nationalism only and their hatred of the “other,” (who constitute the majority) is patent to anyone willing to open their eyes and see it.

Anne-Christine Hoff is a proud American whose father lived through the propaganda of Nazi Austria. She considers the big lies being peddled today as dangerous as the ones peddled during the 1930s and 40s Nazi period. Her work has appeared in New English Review, American Thinker, Middle East Quarterly, and LifeSite News.

Image: Alice Vergueiro/Abraji