Posted on 05/04/2023 6:42:50 AM PDT by Heartlander
Joe Biden, or whatever communications flunky operates his social media accounts, took to Twitter this week to inform the nation that “Muslim culture has been woven throughout American culture from the very start.” This is an obvious and absurd lie, but Biden is not the first president to make such a claim. Barack Obama and several other Democratic politicians have asserted that Islam has been present in America since its founding and is a natural part of our nation.
What possible purpose could the telling of such a blatant lie serve? What does the left gain by pushing a historical narrative that is so provably false? The answer is simple: The left understands that history is the foundation of identity. It seeks to demolish American identity and remake it in its own image.
The most basic investigation into the American founding reveals that Islam was not just completely absent from the formation of the United States but was the young nation’s direct adversary. The first military action that the U.S. took after winning its independence was the defense of American sailors against the Barbary pirates. These Muslim raiders were enslaving and ransoming Americans in accordance with their religion, and the nation spent a large percentage of its budget paying those pirates off before finally sending its newly formed navy to put an end to the raiding. This is why the Marine Hymn contains the line “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Claiming that Muslim culture was part of America from the beginning is not only a lie; it is a direct and deliberate inversion of the historical facts.
The general lack of knowledge about this period of American history is unsurprising, as it is omitted from most school curriculums. The conflict was significant and shaped America’s approach to both foreign policy and a standing military, but very few teachers bother to cover it. This is, in no small part, due to our progressive education system’s attempt to cast slavery as a uniquely American institution. While Muslim civilizations were some of history’s most prolific slavers, this fact is barely mentioned, as history texts fall over themselves to praise Islam as a religion of tolerance and peace.
The relentless focus on American slavery and careful avoidance of its practice in other cultures is intentional. The progressive effort to manufacture this narrative has been largely successful. As a former high school teacher, I can tell you that many young people believe that slavery was an American invention, and this notion is particularly popular among minority students.
The most impressive thing about the left’s revisionist history is how often it is at odds with its own foundational claims. America is uniquely evil because it was founded by straight white Christian men who were basically genocidal religious puritans, but America has also been a multiracial melting pot that wove foreign religions into its culture from the very beginning. The progressive believes simultaneously that this nation was founded by an oppressive racist patriarchy and that inclusion and diversity defined America from the very outset. Apparently, America was ruled by tiny proto-Hitlers who were just bad at their jobs, and the forces of diversity, equity, and inclusion managed to allow the country to flourish in spite of its inept evil overloads.
The narrative is convoluted and contradictory, but that hardly seems to matter. Strict adherence to this narrative is key to obtaining degrees and maintaining employment in any major corporation. The facts do not matter; history is simply one more ideological litmus test for the institutions that underpin our current regime. Sure, Muslims did not found America, but is that fact really worth losing your job over? Probably best to nod politely and move on.
The left’s historical revisionism has successfully created a population that is completely unmoored from the reality of its past and therefore has no way to legitimately evaluate assertions about its current identity. Is America a nation founded on democratic principles? Are we a nation of immigrants? Was the Civil War just about slavery? Did the founders truly want religious values separated from political and legal decisions? Was Islam always a part of American culture?
All of these modern narratives are taken at face value as history is reshaped by progressive newspeak operations like the 1619 Project, and these assertions are not chosen by the left at random. Each one is pregnant with political meaning and shapes the thought process of the modern voter. Human identity is not formed by the individual but is instead shaped by the historical narrative and social context into which people are born and must live their lives. To control the historical narrative is to control the identity of the nation, and that identity is what shapes the nation’s vision of the future. As Orwell famously wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” If you can warp a nation’s understanding of its past, you own the entire frame in which discussions about its present and future take place.
When popular sovereignty is the mechanism by which your ruling class is legitimated, control over identity is key. We are told that people vote their wallets or key single issues, but these are only proxies for identity. This is why the left invests so heavily in the social engineering required to manufacture identities that are dependent on progressive politics.
Whether they are lying about the Muslim origins of the United States or telling 6-year-old boys that they can become girls, the motivation is the same. Progressives use their control over consensus-manufacturing institutions to socially engineer and advance identities that are dependent on the leftist political apparatus. There is no need to persuade a voting bloc that sees the Democratic Party as its only defense against forces that threaten their right to exist. If the very existence of the identity is contingent on progressives holding power, then its adherents will be committed supporters of that political movement no matter what. That kind of loyalty is far more valuable than some vague commitment to historical accuracy, and the Democrats will secure it at any cost.
When an individual is stripped of his historical, familial, religious, and even biological context, he can be manipulated into holding any belief. The leftist project seeks to strip Americans of their connection to the past as well as the organic communities and institutions to which they would naturally belong in the hopes of manufacturing an identity that is wholly dependent on the progressive political apparatus.
It does not matter how conflicted or contradictory the narratives become, as long as they continually bind voters into a coalition that elevates Democratic Party apparatchiks as our permanent ruling class. Institutional hegemony is used to reshape the voting public in the image of progressive social engineers, securing support for not just one election cycle, but for generations to come.
If the right is to combat these tactics, it must understand the need to make long-term investments in alternative institutions that can reconnect Americans to their real history, family, and faith. It is only by rejecting the progressive narrative and reconnecting to their true heritage that Americans will be able to once again chart a future not just for themselves, but for their posterity.
BTTT
“Muslim culture has been woven throughout American culture from the very start”
Translation: We’re bringing a few million so get used to them, you bigots!
Ping
No matter which puppetmaster was responsible, the entire ChiComjoe kakistocracy are traitors to the United States of America.
I guess it could have been worse. Biden could have claimed that most the northern abolitionists were actually Democrats, and practicing Muslims. But they had to keep it secret.
Who knows? Maybe they’re saving that line for President Harris’ inaugural address.
(I was going to add the sarcasm tag. But we now live in a sick, bizarro world where anything is possible. History is whatever the left wants it to be.)
Ping.
Don’t get me going.
The author should also get into how actual regular “culture” is being pushed on us in general, and not just history.
All the “Months” for everyone but whites and men, etc. Growth of Mexican food push and that weirdo Day of the Dead garbage even for kids’ movies. Blech. And everywhere everything in Spanish. All to accommodate ILLEGAL aliens (it was not about legal people).
Our education system has been obliterated!!!!!
Kids learn nothing of real American History anymore...
The American education system started falling apart in 1979 when Jimmy Carter started the Department of Education...
Downhill ever since...
It’s 1984 every day.
That timing sounds about right. And the GOP has done absolutely nothing to stop it.
I believe the Clintons and their activities and enduring popularity brought an entire generation of young aspirees to Wash DC with the idea of "Damn, if I could get away with 100th of what those jokers did in terms of raw grift, I'd be in Fat City." I've come to believe that 85% of the people in Wqsh DC are there solely for the purpose of self-enrichment.
And here we sit, the so-called intellectual elite of the country, the best and brightest, cannot wait but to formulate the next piece of America Hate Theory.
Don’t worry, Kevin “deer in the headlights” McCarthy will get right on it.
Years ago, this country could’ve split peaceably. That window has probably passed by now. I’m relieved to be deep into the fourth quarter of my lifespan. Life in “America” is going to be ugly beyond description in the future.
In other words, a true American identity is being replaced by things invented out of thin air or based on physical traits or sexual behaviors. Notice that these identities focus on “self”.
I’ve been passively thinking about this recently and I have a hunch than it is related to the sin of pride. I just haven’t formulated a cogent argument yet and put it in words. Any help is appreciated.
> Our education system has been obliterated!!!!! <
It’s all very Stalinist. Stalin erased any part of history that didn’t fit his needs, and replaced it with something else.
Side story: I taught for years in an urban school district. Well, one day the school board decided to make Civics an optional class. That’s just crazy. Students no longer needed to know how our government works?
Every social studies teacher hated that idea. No matter. Civics is now an optional class. It can be replaced by World History, Africa History, etc.
Interesting article, but I’m not entirely convinced that its central premise is 100% true.
A quick internet search unveils claims that many of the slaves who were brought here from Africa were Muslims, and that some of them converted to Christianity while on the plantation, and others didn’t.
American slaves as a rule passed down their stories and African tribal and cultural traditions orally to their children, and since Islam is essentially competitive to Christianity, it makes sense (to me) that if there were Muslim slaves who carried on their faith and customs on the plantation— a form of resistance — they probably would have done so quietly, out of earshot of their owners.
Further, the dearth of evidence of early Muslim presence in America in our history books could be easily explained by the fact that illiterate slaves weren’t the ones writing them. That doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
It’s an interesting question. I’d like to see the scholars roll up their sleeves and dig into it. I’d be willing to bet there are a few heretofore overlooked nuggets in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.
Mohammedanism was fundamental to the early United States Navy and United States Marine Corps.
Of course. mohammedanism played the part of “The Enemy” in that drama ...
“Curtin’s study of the Atlantic Slave trade reveals that the bulk of the slaves were brought from the Congo basin and the Guinea coast—non-Muslim regions. A small percentage came from the Senegambia, and even those numbers would not have been necessarily Muslims as they included people brought down to the coast from the interior.
“The regions from which most of the slaves were taken was not Muslim. It did include great numbers of Yoruba and FOn and related peoples, whence the existence of Voodoo (Vodun) in Haiti and the Caribbean, and the worship of Yoruba gods to this day in Brazil and throughout the Caribbean and even the American south.”
https://networks.h-net.org/node/28765/pages/31929/islam-and-african-slave-trade
“Muslims came to the Americas from two distinct regions. First, in the early eighteenth century the Senegambia was an avenue from which the sons and daughters of Allah were sent to the Americas.
“Later, in the early nineteenth century, captives from the Central Sudan states began to appear in the Americas. The latter group landed primarily in South America and in the Caribbean because they came, for the most part, after the prohibition on slave imports into the US.
“Nevertheless, within the boundaries of the modern United States there is eveidence of Muslim slaves in South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana...”
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