America’s Racist Founding? An East-European View
The article discusses the recent movement initiated by the NYT to „reframe“ American history, as if the United States was established in 1619 and its main aim was to preserve slavery at any price. We sum up the timeline of the discussion from 2019 till the present. Since an East European historian sees the striking similarities with the Communist anti-American propaganda, we ask here, to what extent is this present approach dependent on the propagandist image of the past. In the first part, we explore the way history of Black Americans had been exploited by the propaganda from 1951 to 1990, then we examine the arguments put forward by the present-day 1619 Project. Whereas the Communist propaganda put emphasis on the principle that Black and white workers should unite against capitalism (or „fascism“), the present-day approach sees Black Americans as the only exploited class in the US. It has racialized also many other elements of the Marxist historiography (e.g. primary accumulation, class struggles).
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