Film Sessions: the 1776 Commission Report and Cultural Marxism

NinaIllingworth April 19, 2021November 5, 2022 1619 Project, American exceptionalism, Amerikan Musik, anti-blackness, antisemitism, bad scholarship, Charlie Kirk, Cultural Marxism, Donald Trump, early American history, FA1, fascism, film sessions, Founding Fathers, Hooverism, ideological justification for fascism, JA5, legacy of slavery, lie, McCarthyism, Media Madness, MP6, mythology, News, Nina Illingworth, Offsite Writing, patriotism, patriotism is fascism when it smiles, Racism, revisionist history, right wing conspiracy theories, selective quotations, Shaun Vids, Skull Boy, slavery, slavery apologia, Social Justice, ST2, the 1776 Commission Report, Trumpism, Video, white nationalism, white supremacy, whiteness, writing Black people out of history

Cracker Historical Revisionism

Buckle up lads and lasses; we’re in for some real egg-head shit today. Way back when I first thought up the idea of this Film Sessions series, one of my major goals was to find a way to analyze and share the type of DIY intellectual discussions I’d observed in video essays by a few specific creators; some of whom we’ve featured here already, and some we haven’t yet, but hope to eventually.

I’m happy to say that after what appears to be a long break, one of those OG creators is making video essays again and today we’re going to feature his work in this space; his name is Shaun. No, really, just Shaun; although he also goes by Youtuber Shaun, Shaun Vids, and Skull Boy apparently – as far as I know, the skull on the left is a self portrait. Armed primarily with his intellect and British accent, Shaun’s decidedly low-tech debunking of bloviating right wing shitlords is somewhat legendary in online spaces; for a good example of this phenomenon in action, feel free to check out any one of the three videos linked in this sequence.

As I hope the video we’re going to watch today will demonstrate however, what sets Shaun apart in my eyes is his willingness to go well beyond debunking, and engage the ideas and ideologies driving reactionary thought in the Pig Empire. I’ve mentioned in the past that debunking isn’t much good if you’re not teaching the kind of critical thinking necessary to recognize and obstruct revanchism in the wild; but Shaun’s debunking videos seem to go that extra mile to actually teach you something about why fascists and right wing extremists behave the way they do, at the same time.

This is of course particularly important regarding the subject of today’s video, Trump’s stillborn “1776 Report” because the reasons why this absurd document remains important, have nothing to do with the future life of the document itself; as Shaun notes early in the video, Biden had the report deleted from the government’s websites almost immediately after taking office. At this point you might be asking yourself why I’m recommending you watch a fifty-seven minute video about Trump’s final propaganda stunt, but as our skeletal essayist reveals in this presentation – there’s something larger and far more sinister going on here than a make-work project for fascist muppets like Charlie Kirk.

Confused yet? Okay, let’s rewind and take it from the top then.

What is the 1776 (Commission) Report?

As it turns out, answering that simple question really depends on how deep down the reactionary rabbit hole you want to go. On the surface, the so-called 1776 Report is a racist, cynical, and half-assed attempt by fascists, conspiracy theorists, and Trump cronies to re-write early American history in forty-five pages of white supremacist drivel. You could also say it’s ahistorical bullshit and an example of openly dishonest scholarship, but given that literally none of the people involved in producing it were historians, that might be a bit redundant; assuming that’s even possible in this situation. Finally, an astute observer might note that the 1776 Commission is ultimately Trump’s fragile cracker manbaby response to the 1619 Project; a Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times series that seeks to center the role of slavery, and the African American experience in the study of American history.

What’s Really Going on Here?

You mean besides thinly-veiled white supremacy? Well, it’s obviously an attempt to essentially write the truth about slavery, abolition, and African American resistance out of the classroom; thereby indoctrinating future generations with a baseline set of beliefs that will tolerate, prolong, and reinforce white supremacist structures in American life. While the report is certainly an attack on history, it’s also fundamentally an attack on social justice and Black agency as well. As if that weren’t insidious enough, the report also explicitly attempts to cast educators and critical race theorists who do teach the truth about America’s origins, as attacking the United States; thus, the 1776 Commission Report is a direct assault on teachers, historians, and critical observers, hidden within the false glow of “patriotism” and national pride.

What’s at the Bottom of this Pit?

I’m glad you asked; the end game here is nothing less than a plot to promote a far-right conspiracy theory known as “Cultural Marxism” and then use that conspiracy theory to justify a new kind of McCarthyism (or Hooverism) against the ideological enemies of the American fascist movement. Putting this explicitly racist, anti-Semitic, anti-intellectual, and anti-progressive nonsense on paper, ultimately allows fascists throughout American academic and political life to point to an official commission paper (even a pile of nonsense like the 1776 Report) that supports silencing their opposition in the name of defending the Fatherland. And if that sounds silly to you, I’d suggest you stop laughing because this is literally how both “Red Scares” and COINTELPRO happened and clearly what Trump’s flunkies were hoping to accomplish with this last-minute, now-cancelled report. Furthermore, as multiple observers have noted, Biden’s decision to merely cancel the report doesn’t do enough to prevent that possibility.

Of course the above points are merely a synopsis of what’s going on in Shaun’s video; a lengthy presentation which explores these topics in greater detail. In addition to debunking literal nazi propaganda, our presenter also finds time to clown on some fraudulent Republican “intellectuals” and even provides a back-of-the-napkin left wing critique of the 1619 Project that has literally nothing to do with Trump’s incoherent ravings. While there’s no question that the 1776 Commission Report is in many ways a standard example of Trump’s reactionary assclown nonsense, this video goes a long way towards demonstrating that not everything is about the Klepto Kaiser’s vanity; guys like Stephen Miller are playing a much longer and more explicitly fascist game with this report.

Overall, there’s just a whole lot to like here in this discussion and as such I’m excited to recommend it in this edition of Film Sessions; even if the presentation is certainly a little short on eye candy. You can check out Shaun’s “the 1776 Report” by clicking the header below, or watching the embedded video itself: