This year marks the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in America.

@TomCottonAR delivered a fitting tribute to the Pilgrims and their story of faith and perseverance.

Perhaps predictably, the speech was attacked by @Ilhan...

. @Ilhan's comment, as utterly unserious as it was, demonstrates the crisis confronting modern Americans.

She's not alone dismissing the Pilgrim story or Thanksgiving as a whole. Many of our elite institutions have a knee-jerk reaction to attack or dismiss much of our history.

Clearly, a steady drumbeat of woke ideologues in the media and on Twitter have convinced enough people to view the Pilgrim story as another example of oppressor against oppressed, of racist versus antiracist.

How did this happen?

It’s unclear what “actual history” Omar was referring to, but perhaps something akin to it is Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” a work often celebrated by her left-wing allies.

Zinn created a dishonest, distorted picture of the Pilgrim arrival in America.

As Mary Grabar, author of “Debunking Howard Zinn,” wrote for @FDRLST, Zinn deconstructs the Pilgrims’ “first” Thanksgiving to advance his Marxist ideas of oppressors versus oppressed.

In these simplistic narratives, the Pilgrims are portrayed as wicked oppressors and the native people as angelic, oppressed victims.

This is the narrative now being peddled in elementary schools around the country.

In her critique of Zinn-inspired literature used in Portland, Oregon, public schools, Grabar wrote:

It’s no surprise that in 2020, Portland became an epicenter of Jacobin-like rioters, who targeted statues of George Washington and countless others while making absurd demands to abolish the police.

Here we see the fruits of a generation raised on Zinn.

While it is likely pointless to convince the vandals who attack statues and businesses that their views are misguided, we need to take the propaganda that has undermined our country and driven fellow citizens to lunacy and extremism seriously.

Thanksgiving is in the beginning stages of receiving the Columbus Day treatment.

We can’t underestimate the threat of a few militant voices amplified by America’s elite culture-shaping institutions.

Columbus was once nearly universally admired in America, his holiday only questioned by an odd collection of left-wing radicals and, at an even early date, white nationalists who resented the celebration of a Catholic and Italian-born hero.

Now, the holiday has nearly collapsed. Even his statues are going undefended by the descendants of Italian immigrants who helped construct them.

Columbus may receive a revival someday, but for now, the radicals have mostly won.

Thanksgiving is much harder to cancel at the moment, but it is clear that leftists want it on the chopping block.

Because the real target isn’t the Pilgrims and Puritans—it’s the very heart of the Thanksgiving holiday, a holiday that stands for faith, family, and patriotism.

All of these virtues are anathema to woke social justice warriors, who want to purge religion from the public square, obliterate the “Western-prescribed” traditional nuclear family, and redefine love of country as a mask for hatred of others.

This year’s Mayflower anniversary, as @TomCottonAR eloquently explained, is particularly noteworthy:

The future of our country, and the continuity of ideas and institutions that we should all be deeply grateful for, depend on Thanksgiving.

If we fail to cherish the special achievements of 1620, Americans a century from now will look forward through the lens of grievance and back with a feeling of contempt.

This war cannot be lost—or our country is lost. https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/11/23/the-war-on-thanksgiving/