OMG this White House conference on American History is insane. This may be a thread. Hold on to your butts.

Speaking right now is Dr. Larry Arnn. He's from Hillsdale College. So.....yeah.

Dr. Mary Grabar was on a Heritage talk last week on history and Howard Zinn, and to push her book. She also was very proud of "being kicked out of academia" for being conservative. She's a wacko.

Why is an anthropologist on a panel to discuss American History? To talk about the evolution of protesting and decry social justice of course. This is a farce and is completely an anti-American panel.

Dr. Peter Wood is a member of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative advocacy group founded to go back to a mid 20th century scholarship and education.

"Those of us who cherish western civilization...." He literally just fucking said that.

Lots of people think Allen Guelzo is a very smart historian. Not least of which is Allen Guelzo himself.

Oh my gawd not the ruins of the republic Allen say it ain't so. Replaced by some new world order? The humanity Allen the humanity.

LIKE NEHEMIAH OF OLD geez put it away Allen

Ms. Victoria Spiotto, a student at UVA, here to talk about how "cancel culture" on campuses keeps wrong students from spewing wrong ideas. She's also here to attack social theory apparently.

You can't remember history if you ignore the vast majority of it in the first place because it doesn't fit your narrative

All this makes me want to do is scream what historiography is from every rooftop and how challenging old narratives with new information and research is what we do as historians. Because it seems nobody on this panel knows what historiography actually is.

Ted Rebarber is a Reason guy and worked in the Department of Education under GW Bush. He's here to attack the 1619 Project with some type of counternarrative teaching program. It's probably very white.

Ben Carson closes by attacking the media and then questions the role of the media. He then says we're being manipulated by people who have an agenda.

So per Peter Wood the only schools that are bringing "real" American history are the charter and private schools that aren't beholden to the progressive orthodoxy. I'd like him to go talk to some actual history teachers about that. I don't think he has.

Asked about good history books coming out Allen Guelzo points to the movie Lincoln (for some reason) and then says there is trouble in books now coming out. Allen would think any book other than his are troubling.

And then he goes all Shakespeare. What a snob.

This event is all about promoting charter schools and attacking the 1619 Project. It was never about history.

The focus on textbooks reminds me of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and how they personally approved textbooks for American school children and made sure they taught the "correct" history of the Civil War.

And it's over. This was the panel. Not a minority historian on the dais. These are the people who want to write your history. White men. We can't let them drive our study of history. It's up to us that they don't.

I spoke too soon. The President is going to address this American History panel. Get ready for some craziness.

Why is Pence out there instead of Trump? Maybe the tanning machine is broken.

Trump starts out saying their mission is to defend America's founding and to clear out the web of lies that is being taught in our schools.

Note: there are no teachers teaching lies to their students

The President says that "left wing mobs have torn down statues."

The VAST majority of statues have been taken down by local communities and in a peaceful, legal manner. Not by any mob.

Trump blames the Black Lives Matter movement and protests on left wing "indoctrination" in schools and says the 1619 Project is designed to help this by teaching America is about oppression and not freedom.

This is the main reason for this speech and the conference.

Jesus Christ this is an authoritarian and white supremacist speech in every way, shape, and form. With the Constitution behind him. My goodness.

Wow. He just called teaching the 1619 Project "child abuse." Wow.

So teaching about race and America's actual history is propaganda and a Leftist plot to destroy America. This sounds familiar to any historian who has studied the anti-Civil Rights movement.

Trump says they are enacting a "pro-American" history curriculum. And that he's issuing an executive order to promote pro-American education called the 1775 Commission. This is absolute fascism.

And the slurring is over. That was probably the most authoritarian speech I've ever listened to. Basically dictating teaching propaganda instead of real history? This is fascism.