Confederate "Heritage" Month 2021, April 24: HIstorians groaned over "The 1776 Report"

With crackpot history, there's always a judgment to be made as to whether professional refutations of it may serve to give it more publicity and even credibility than it deserves.

In the case of The 1776 Report pamphlet released by the Trump Administration as it was on it way out the door, ignoring it entirely wasn't really an option for historians. Because it was a kind of an oficial statement of the Trumpista white supremacist version of American history.

The intiial response from professional historians was understandly harshly critical. Gilliam Brockell provided an early roundup (‘A hack job,’ ‘outright lies’: Trump commission’s ‘1776 Report’ outrages historians Washington Post 01/20/2021):

The [1776] commission was created in September with a confusing news conference featuring Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson. The 45-page report is largely an attack on decades of historical scholarship, particularly when it comes to the nation’s 400-year-old legacy of slavery, and most of those listed as authors lack any credentials as historians. While claiming to present a nonpartisan history, it compares progressivism to fascism and claims the civil rights movement devolved into “preferential” identity politics “not unlike those advanced by [slavery defender John C.] Calhoun and his followers.” ...

“It’s very hard to find anything in here that stands as a historical claim, or as the work of a historian. Almost everything in it is wrong, just as a matter of fact,” said Eric Rauchway, a history professor at the University of California at Davis. “I may sound a little incoherent when trying to speak of this, because the report itself is not coherent. It’s like historical wackamole.” ...

Several historians said it was particularly offensive that the report was released on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and included several photos King and quotes they said were taken out of context. [my emphasis]

Of course, when trying to "own the libs" is always a high priority, being "particularly offensive" is considered a feature, not a bug. It may not be the whole point of it. Or then again, maybe it is!