The Opium of the Intellectuals

To begin this review of Peter Wood’s book, 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project, we must first understand the premise of the 1619 Project and what its aim is in the context of American history. The 1619 Project is the initiative to “reframe the nation’s history” by altering the birth year of the United States from 1776 to 1619. 1619 was the year in which two ships arrived in Jamestown, Virginia from West Africa carrying slaves. The goal of this project was to embed slavery into the core principles of which our country is built upon and transform the way we think about the United States. This project was delivered to the public in August of 2019 by Nikole Hannah-Jones and a group of intellectual journalists and historians to back up her argument in The New York Times magazine. This article gained traction right away from all people, whether that be intellectual or lay people in society, even though it had almost no documentation or “rigorous scholarship”, as Wood describes in his book. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wood took it upon himself to respond to such an abrasive and seemingly controversial article released by one of the most prestigious and influential news platforms in the world. Wood attempts to argue that the actual year that set the stage for how our country was laid out and core beliefs and principles on which we stand should be 1620: the year in which the pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. He argues that the Mayflower Compact was the major document and dictator in steering our country to self-government and to ultimately separate from the King across the Atlantic. Throughout this book he aimed to clarify the history of America and expose the falsehoods and hypocrisies within the language of the 1619 Project. 

Wood begins his critique of the 1619 Project by setting the stage with his argument of 1620 being the first influential year within American history. He begins by citing the Mayflower Compact by depicting the specific wording and historical context in which they wrote this document. The forty-one signers of the document utilized Old Testament scripture and their religious background to fortify and combine themselves into what they call “a civil body politic”. This united, single civil body politic is simply a cohort of people that agree to govern themselves under a common set of rules and laws through peaceful debate. The 1619 Project however, claims the actual start year of our nation begins when English pirates landed in Jamestown, Virginia with thirty some African slaves. The New York Times declared that the arrival of these slaves established the institution of chattel slavery in the Americas that would have not been present had these ships never landed there. Wood attempts to refute this claim by stating that the 1619 Project authors did not take into account historical context of slavery and its role in the world. He writes that slavery was not a novel institution in the Old World nor the New World, it had been present long before the year 1619. He explains that many African tribes willing sold their people into slavery in return for goods. By this, Wood means that indentured servitude and slavery were common practice for much of history and although most would agree it is immoral, it did serve its purpose during that time. Slavery was a much different institution from the time of the Pilgrims to prior to Civil War slavery. Wood defends this further by denouncing the vernacular term “dehumanization” and its misuse in regard to treatment of black slaves. He claims that slave owners did not deny that slaves were human and that people do not need to deny someone their humanity in order to perform hateful acts towards them. 

With the inability to put history into context and the cultural landscape at the time, post-modernism takes hold in the argument of the 1619 Project. Wood defines postmodernism as the idea that all facts and truths of society are up for interpretation based on a person’s background. People who ascribe to this mentality believe there are no universal truths in the world and one’s own truth is just as valid as another’s. As we have learned from early on in the semester, intellectuals base their entire existence on finding and deducting the truth. They also pride themselves in that they frown upon ambiguity and believe all things have one meaning and one meaning only, as Gouldner describes it in Chapter 6 of his book. During our discussion with Peter Wood, he claimed that this idea of post-modernism has a Marxist edge to it in that one interpretation can be favored more heavily than another. This idea favors the interpretation made by intellectuals that the oppressed must be liberated from the shackles of society by shutting down the privileged class. In the context of the 1619 Project, recognize that black Americans and their enslaved ancestors are the foundation of our country and must be given reparations for their suffering over all others. Along with that narrative, those white Americans are the privileged class that must be shut down and provide those reparations to the oppressed class of black Americans. Those who oppose this interpretation of the 1619 Project are labeled as white supremacists and racists, as Wood points out in his book. 

Peter Wood criticizes the 1619 Project in several other manners that would be difficult to cover in this one review. He brings up five main points of contention, such as the American Revolution being fought to protect the rights of American slave owners from abolition by the British, that Lincoln was a racist whose intent was to keep blacks and whites separate, that “black Americans fought back alone”, that plantation slavery was the foundation for American capitalism, and that our nations history is best thought about as a struggle by black Americans against white supremacy. Each of these points he refutes in their own chapter by breaking down the history and context of culture during that period of American history. He disputes these claims through consultation with the Declaration of Independence and the inalienable rights each human being has, the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement that brought all races together to fight for equal rights, and that slavery did not make America wealthier in the capitalist system, it decreased GDP of all things. 

One main argument he makes throughout the book however is that the 1619 Project simply has no scholarly backing. Much of these claims made by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others were reviewed by other historians who openly stated that much of their interpretation was false and meanwhile gave no footnotes or research citations for any of their claims. As an example, Wood states that Leslie Harris, a well-versed historian on slavery and black history, distinctly told the writers they were wrong but they did nothing to change it. As a basic intellectual piece of literature this in itself should pose some concern and warrants criticism, Wood writes. Open discourse forms the groundwork for intellectual analysis of any issue as we learned from Gouldner’s piece on the Culture of Critical Discourse. There must be a level of clarity and scholarly evidence to back up a claim no matter how small. The claim must also be subject to severe scholarly scrutiny and discourse to decipher its validity and truth. Wood finishes out his book by stating that slavery is a complex issue that Americans should understand and should be discussed in schools. However, the notion of reframing an entire historical basis is not logical or practical and may lead to generations of animosity toward our country.

For my book review, I will be taking a deeper look into Peter Wood’s Novel 1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project. 1620 is a critical response to The New York Times 1619 project, the goal of this project as Jake Silverstein put it in the opening remarks of the project: “The goal of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The New York Times that this issue of the magazine inaugurates, is to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year. Doing so requires us to place the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a country.” While this was the goal of the articles, Woods’ goal which he successfully achieved was to take the reader through the main points of 1619 and show the historical inaccuracies and critique the work in a non-biased way. The main parts of this novel are spent looking at claims that the project made and going back to look at the historical context of the claims in the project, more specifically Wood looks at the claims by date and finds contradictions in the projects and to be effective in his rebuttable he goes to historical text himself and brings in historians to analyze the text as well. 

In this review, I do not want to solely summarize the novel but rather look at the main concepts that Wood is trying to analyze and synthesize them. A goal I also have is to not look at how Wood thinks about history because it is not something that is up for interpretation (the main point that Wood is arguing). By starting the novel with the historical background the point in which I believe that Wood is trying to make is that it is much harder to reframe the way in which we think about history. Wood uses this narrative throughout the novel but most convincingly in the first and seventh chapters. These chapters take place after 1619, in 1620 and 1621, in these two chapters Wood gives the historical context of the time period while at the same time not focusing on slavery or the black experience during that time which I did find interesting since the main topic of the 1619 project is surrounding that topic. 

 The point that Wood is making about the difficulty of reframing history holds true and he tries to prove this throughout the novel by quoting excerpts from many historical documents to refute the claims made by Nikole Hannah-Jones. The critique that I have for this aspect of the novel is that some, not all, of the historical documents that are quoted when put against parts of 1619 are slightly taken out of context. But nevertheless, they still accomplish Woods’s goals of showing some contradictions and inaccuracies in Hannah-Jones’s work, showing that while the goal of 1619 might be along the lines of history it shows more of an opinionated journalistic style. 

Some of the chapters that are worth reviewing are the ones that are in the novel placed in modern times. These chapters highlight August 2019, March 2020, January 2020, and September 2020. Wood’s use of these chapters rounds out the rest of the novel so it is not just a recount of historical events that Wood says are incorrect in 1619. In these chapters, the most important concept that Wood is showing of the present-day is the response to the 1619 project and also looking at the language that the project uses. Something that has stuck out throughout is the words that the project uses to invoke emotions, Wood highlights this “dialogue” and as he puts it is an advertisement that is “mostly of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s monologues and conversations with the like-minded.”(53) The analysis by Wood to weed out what is a conversation versus fact and what is stated on emotion as well helps his argument. This is highlighted most clearly in the chapter titled March 2020, he was writing this in July after the 1619 project was released and in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd.  He continues this argument by looking at the present and seeing the emotional response to acts of racism, where Wood uses his background as an academic to see the connection between the project and these acts which he says is open for debate. 

Wood does note that the project is based on an ideology that he does not share, and in the chapter about the future he looks at how to move forward after reading. Wood spends this chapter laying out his final thoughts as a form of a conclusion, and answering larger questions about what should be done in the aftermath of the project. Something that Wood is arguing that should be done is for Americans to truly understand their history and that the 1619 project is not a viable source of this education on the topic. In this chapter, a large part of what Wood is saying is that schools should not use this as a way to teach students but rather go back to what he says is the discipline of history, a part of this chapter that I believe encapsulates the true meaning of the novel comes on page 221:

Let’s take several steps back. History is not just a collection of facts about the past, nor is it just “what happened.” The study of history has standards and approved methods. It is a discipline. It is also the way in which our civilization thinks itself into existence. By means of history, we recognize how we came to be, what we are, and why that matters. The term that contrasts most strikingly with history is mythology, that is, stories of the past that express key values but that are not grounded in fact. Humanity the world over possesses mythology, but history is a cultural rarity. 

Wood, Peter, 1953- author. 1620 : a Critical Response to the 1619 Project. New York, New York :Encounter Books, 2020.

By Wood explaining the difference between history and mythology, the main takeaway I had from this is while yes it is apparent that Wood does not agree with the majority of the 1619 project and the majority of the novel is spent looking at the inaccuracies and contradictions, Wood is making an example of the project. He makes it clear at the end of this novel that he does believe that black Americans have a right to be upset about the oppression that they have faced and that the country is responsible for its wrongdoings but people should accurately know their history and not rewrite it to fit a narrative that they want to believe.

For my book report I will be analyzing Paul Hollander’s From Benito Mussolini To Hugo Chavez: Intellectuals And A Century Of Political Hero Worship. This book evaluates how political dictators were not only popular within their own countries ,but also how they were admired by highly educated Western intellectuals. Hero worship of dictator examples that the book includes but is not limited to include: Benito Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez. The overall goal of this book seeks to understand the sources of the political misjudgments and misperceptions of intellectuals to idealize dictators. It also discusses their affinity for wishful thinking and how they were influenced by the charisma of the dictators. It helps us better understand the political disposition of western intellectuals and also the personality of those political leaders who encouraged or helped design the cult surrounding their rise to dictatorship. Another goal of the book is to understand the relationship between the personal and political realms as well as the spirituality associated with  modernity.

An overarching theme that the book tackles is the “cult of personality.” It claims that we are more likely to have positive sentiments about the political system if the person that represents it has a charismatic personality. It then talks about how this admiration can turn into hero worship. He also clarifies that the intellectual class are not the only ones that have admired dictators, they were popular among ordinary people as well. Believe in a utopian social system of the future. 

A contradiction that the book tackles is: how could intellectuals that are people who value free expression admire dictators that limited free expression? Questions that the book seeks to answer: Is the admiration of dictators by intellectuals similar or different from the admiration by ordinary ppl (non-intellectuals)? Do intellectuals admire dictators because of their personality, ideas, or the political system they symbolize and represent? What particular attributes of the dictators do intellectuals find the most appealing? How do we justify the admiration of dictators in light of dissonance between their supposed commitment to free expression and the policies they pursued? How can we explain these conflicting attitudes? Do larger cultural political trends account for them or are they rooted in the nature or personality of intellectuals in their shared attributes that include ambivalence about their social role, identity problems, and an unease about being thinkers and talkers rather than doers? What is it in the nature of many intellectuals, especially the public or political intellectuals, that makes them susceptible to the appeal of dictators and the political systems they represent?

 To answer these questions one needs to recognize that they are chronically dissatisfied with their own society. Gouldner also discusses this sense of alienation in a broader social historical context. He claims that this isolation is not a recent event and has directly blocked intellectuals’ ability for upward mobility. Therefore, many Western intellectuals believed in idealized totalitarian dictatorships because they thought it would solve their identity issues and they would be more integrated into society. They yearned for guaranteed authenticity and integration and thought that these systems would achieve this. They were also influenced by their hatred of capitalism so this resulted in hero worshiping the perceived enemies of capitalism. 

A common thread among dictators was their proclaimed commitment to secular-religious beliefs. Many of their speeches had religious undertones and religion was often a source of motivation for their agendas. Crimes committed in socialism were forgiven and not punished because that would be an example of  “bad faith.”  In many cases ints and socialism fused together with religious hope. Another theme was the disillusionment with or questioning of modernity. In an attempt to rebel against modernity intellectuals sought refuge in radical alternatives that challenged modernity.

Hollander then goes on to note the similarities among facsism and communism. Both had the goal of creating a utopian society. Also much of their support came from economic difficulties and low morale after WWI. After losing the war there was a decline in social cohesion which made life seem meaningless. Another appeal was their adversity for modernity, yet there was a contradiction here.Dictators often flaunted their technological accomplishments as sources of legitimacy. Both fascist italy and nazi germany introduced economic policies that were more efficient than former policies. 

The personalities of the leaders themselves was a major reason for their success in rising to power. Charismatic leaders typically arise in times of severe political and economic crises when people are longing for a quick solution. Intellectuals were wishful thinkers who thought that these dictators were capable of producing this change. They viewed dictators as sacred and put them on a pedestal to worship them. Collins also talks about the affinity for intellectuals to view certain objects or people as sacred. He claims that intellectuals produce sacred objects in the attempt to enhance their own status in the intellectual community. I think this directly relates to how intellectuals sacralized dictators in an attempt to guarantee their own social status. 

In regards to specific dictators a lot of Hitler’s following from Western intellectuals came from the fact that he was an artist. The new position of the artist under National Socialism resonated with the longings of alienated intellectuals who dreamed of becoming integrated into a communitarian socialist society. He was also very charismatic and was able to connect to the masses and was viewed as a selfless individual trying to bring salvation to Germany. The admiration of Stalin came from his “success” with the rapid industrialization of an underdeveloped country. Unlike Hitler, he was not charismatic and rarely spoke to crowds. He resembled a father-figure and  had a remarkable ability to deceive those that he met. Westerners admired Stalin because they admired a political leader with accomplishments and personal qualities that were better than leaders in their own country. Castro appealed to the New Left because he was a young, handsome, powerful speaker, a genuine revolutionary and guerilla fighter who overthrew an oppressive government. There was a strong appeal for Castro from westerners because they considered him a victim of American imperialism. He also gained popularity in the U.S. from his famous interview with the New York Times. There was also a historical trend associated with his rise to power. By the time he rose to power the soviet system was largely discredited.

In more recent times there have been many notable new dictators that have risen to fame and performed progressive communism. North Korea specifically is developed and institutionalized with modifications of extreme quasi religious cults of its leaders. Western intellectuals have sympathy for North Korea because of the “unfriendliness” of the U.S. They also praise the alleged accomplishments of the regime such as “free education and health care to everyone.” Hugo Chavez of Venezuela became popular partly because of his close relations with Castro. He thought like other dictators that he was carrying out an earthly mission guided by a superhuman force. Westerners admire that he provided substantial economic assistance to Cuba. Yet westerners are unaware  that ~1.3 million venezuelans left the country after his rise to power. They also were unaware of serious deterioration of public safety and high crime levels. 

Overall an overarching theme of this book was the lack and resistance of knowledge of the true policies that these dictators represented. Intellectuals were  not anxious to gain access to information  that would have undermined their own beliefs. They also were influenced by their alienation from society and tendency for wishful thinking. This allowed for the persisting and predisposition to misjudge both the character and policies of these dictators throughout history.