Democrats and liberal groups distance themselves from far-left positions weeks before election

Many of the reversals have been done quietly, with the Black Lives Matter group eliminating a page on its website titled, “What We Believe,” which outlined proposals such as a “national defunding of police” and overturning the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” In June, the Republican Party released a television ad attacking Black Lives Matter as a Marxist group hellbent on “destroying America.”

Following a summer of civil unrest and rioting, voter approval of Black Lives Matter has dropped precipitously. In August, the group saw a 13% drop in support among Wisconsin residents, with just 48% backing Black Lives Matter-led protests in the state.

Those kinds of secret revisions also took place at the New York Times, which has faced criticism from both the Left and the Right over the 1619 Project, an editorially driven series reexamining the role of slavery in society. The central claim of 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones initially was that the “true founding” of the United States was when the first African slaves arrived on North American shores.

Hannah-Jones has argued slavery is inherently intertwined with Western capitalism and that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve the institution of slavery rather than gaining independence from Britain. Historians, including a number of Marxists, have criticized her premise.

Neither the New York Times nor Hannah-Jones now claims that 1619 represented the country’s “true founding.” The newspaper went as far as quietly deleting language from the online version of the essays. No editor’s note was given, nor has the paper commented on the substantial revision. Hannah-Jones now says the series of essays “never pretended to be history” despite the fact that she and the New York Times repeatedly described the project as such and is in the process of reaching a deal with textbook companies to distribute a version of the essay to public school students.

The changes came after Trump announced that the Department of Education will consider cutting funding to any schools using Hannah-Jones’s work in the curriculum. Earlier this month, the president also issued an executive order establishing the “1776 Commission” that would help bolster “patriotic education” in public schools.

And as progressive activists have called for the toppling of virtually any statues honoring the country’s founders, elected Democratic officials have taken a significantly stronger tone against rioting.

“We support peaceful demonstrations. We participate in them. They are part of the essence of our democracy. That does not include looting, starting fires, or rioting,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sept. 17. “They should be prosecuted. That is lawlessness.”

Pelosi’s words mirror those of the former vice president, who began calling for peace after billions of dollars of damage was dealt to businesses and public property in cities ranging from Los Angeles to Minneapolis.

“Yes, I do [condemn] violence, no matter who it is,” Biden said on Sept. 7 after being asked if he disavowed the far-left group antifa.

The pleading from Democrats, including Pelosi and Biden, seems to have caught the ears of some English department faculty members at the University of Chicago, which removed a statement from its homepage pledging to admit only graduate students who are interested in “working in and with Black studies.”

“English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness,” the statement read. “Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why.”