Thanksgiving: The Propaganda Holiday

It's essential we unlearn imperialist myths.

Growing up in America, we hear a lot about how citizens of other nations are subjected to the absurd propaganda of their autocratic rulers. When I was a kid, the President told me 9/11 happened because “Muslims hate our freedom,” and my English teacher assigned me Animal Farm to educate me on the brutalities of communism. For some odd reason, she forgot to mention that the Central Intelligence Agency had bought Orwell’s story and removed its anticapitalist message. In addition to leading me to distrust different societies, my early education gave the impression that we, the almighty Americans, were free from government propaganda. Unlike people governed by dastardly socialists, I could live my life unconstrained by state-approved narratives.

But government-altered literature and creation-adjacent science textbooks weren’t the only things my teachers gave me. My elementary arts and crafts career produced dozens of construction paper feathered headdresses and buckled pilgrim hats crisscrossed with crayon streaks and dots of Elmer’s glue. My later education saw frequent field trips to Plymouth Rock, a few dozen miles from my south coast Massachusetts hometown. During these activities, I was “taught” about Thanksgiving, a holiday celebrating the first feast where the Indigenous tribes and Euro-American settlers broke bread and established a harmonious, peaceful co-existence. I didn’t learn much else about Native Americans. As November passed, they slipped into the background as our lessons focused on Historical Facts, such as how America created freedom in 1776, single-handedly defeated fascism in 1945, ended racism in 1964, and spread democracy to the Middle East in 2003.

A quantitive result of American propaganda: Following WWII, most French people rightfully attributed the defeat of Nazism to the Soviets. Over the course of a century, propaganda changed their minds.

You can probably sense the sarcasm dripping off every letter I type. Despite our condemnations of foreigners, Americans are not free of propaganda. On the contrary. K through 12 education, particularly the subjects of history, civics, and government studies, is rife with lies, deception, and half-truths designed to plant a false worldview in the minds of impressionable youths. Given our national identity continues to be centered on these fabled mythos (“Make American Great Again” and the retort of “America is Already Great” come to mind), it’s fair to say American propaganda is amongst the most effective of any modern government.

This project, which has convinced many intelligent Americans that we are The Best Country Ever, cannot be understood without reconciling the myth of our national beginning, a myth promoted by the government through this week’s holiday, Thanksgiving.

The Real Thanksgiving

While many Americans still willingly believe in Thanksgiving's imagined essence, most realize it’s a fable. If pressed, they’ll agree that life between early colonists and indigenous Americans was far from peaceful. Yet, they’ll insist the multiracial cooperative spirit was present in our nation’s birth story. Made uneasy by this cognitive dissonance, many cling to the kernel of truth at the heart of our national holiday.

It’s a historical fact that in 1621, the Wampanoag tribe and pre-American settlers joined for a feast in what is now southern Massachusetts. But it was far from friendly.¹ The groups had allied in a defense pact against other Indigenous tribes, the divide-and-conquer tactic still used by modern settler-colonial states. When the Europeans shot their guns to celebrate a successful harvest, Wampanoag warriors raced to join them, fearing they were under attack. Finding no fight, the groups dined together, creating the Hallmark image of Thanksgiving we inject into the undeveloped minds of our children. Over the following half-century, the defensive pact was broken again and again as the colonists expanded into Wampanoag land, stole their resources, and spread diseases that devastated the vulnerable natives. By 1675, the parties were in open conflict, erroneously dubbed King Phillips War.

Chief Metacomet, also known as “King Phillip.”

While this one-off feast birthed the image of Thanksgiving we recognize today, the term “Thanksgiving” didn’t appear in the historical record until 1637. After colonial troops massacred seven hundred members of the Pequot tribe, Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop declared a “thanksgiving celebration.”² The name reached national popularity in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln encouraged the national holiday to unify Northerners, Confederates, and indigenous tribes around a shared identity. While the desire to rectify the Civil War belligerents is self-explanatory, Lincoln also sought to quell indigenous discontent with his government.

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While the United States broke on the issues of slavery, North and South were perfectly aligned on the genocide of Native Americans, a multi-generational project that did not pause during the Civil War. As the American Empire colonized the ancestral land of the Dakota and Sioux people in the early half of the 19^th century, the tribes entered into coerced treaties with the government. When Minnesota became a state in 1858, the Dakota tribe lost vast swaths of land they had relied on for hunting, fishing, and gathering. In return, the U.S. pledged cash and food to keep them alive. As was common in such agreements, the agents in charge of distributing this aid stole the money and food for themselves. Receiving reports of abuse, Washington dispatched special commissioner George E.H. Day to observe and report on the state of the Minnesota natives. His letter to Lincoln provides a damning first-hand account.³

“I have discovered numerous violations of law & many frauds committed by past Agents & a superintendent. I think I can establish frauds to the amount from 20 to 100 thousand dollars & satisfy any reasonable, intelligent man that the Indians whom I have visited in this state & Wisconsin have been defrauded of more than 100 thousand dollars* in or during the four years past. The Superintendent Major Cullen, alone, has saved, as all his friends say, more than 100 thousand in four years out of a salary of 2 thousand a year, and all the Agents whose salaries are 15 hundred a year have become rich. The Indians are decreasing in numbers & yet their payments never increase, but year after year have also decreased to each person & in the aggregate. The whole system is defective & must be revised, or your red children, as they call themselves, will continue to be wronged & outraged & the just vengeance of heaven will continue to be poured out & visited upon this nation for its abuses & cruelty to the Indian.” 

*$100,000 in 1863 equates to over $3,125,000 in 2024.

"Report on Indian affairs in Minnesota," from George E.H. Day to Abraham Lincoln, 01/01/1862

When Day’s warning fell on deaf ears, conflict was inevitable. The Dakota War broke out as the impoverished tribes fought for enough food to stay alive. When the dust settled, Lincoln personally signed off on the hanging of thirty-eight Dakota-Sioux warriors.⁴ The sentence was carried out on December 26^th, 1862. It remains the largest mass execution in American history. A year later, seeking to bring the distrustful indigenous tribes and the rebellious Southerners back under a national banner, Lincoln announced the observance of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November. The day became official in 1870 when President Ulysses S. Grant made Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day federal holidays.⁵

“I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States… to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving.” - Abraham Lincoln, 1863.

Contrary to what my 1st grade teacher told me, the relationship between European settlers and indigenous tribes was much closer to Parks and Rec’s rendition than the kumbaya paintings hung on our classroom walls.

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Ending Propaganda

I hope you don’t think I’m recalling the barbaric history of American Thanksgiving to ruin your holiday. While the true story of Thanksgiving is emblematic of every crime the United States has committed against the continent’s original inhabitants, I welcome any day off for workers (though even this is being rolled back as many folks are called in for early morning shifts on America’s true holiday, Black Friday). But while we will all enjoy the ceremonial food, cocktails, and football, an honest, nationwide recount of Thanksgiving is direly needed. Not just to reconcile, repent, and repair the damage we have done to indigenous populations, but to knock Americans off our high horse once and for all.

Americans are no different from any other citizenry: we are subjected to, and far too often, willingly submit to the false narratives pushed by our undemocratic and imperialist government. It is a part of our national DNA, ingrained into the psyche of our children before they even learn to read. The national myth of The United States of America — that we are the product of liberty-seeking religious refugees who sought to materialize Enlightenment values of fraternity, equality, and democracy into a New World political project — is a lie. America’s founders didn’t “misinterpret” the doctrine of equality, nor is the U.S. an “imperfect” manifestation of egalitarian ideals. Since the first European boot set foot on North American soil, Christian White Supremacy has been the central operating procedure. It was this belief, that European Whites were God’s chosen people and America was the land He gifted us, that enslaved Africans, massacred the Indigenous population, and produced Manifest Destiny, the ideological engine of colonization. When the United States was formed, Christian White supremacy was implicitly and explicitly codified into law. Oppressed persons had their humanity stripped in the America’s founding document, a refutation of any notion that this is “the land of the free.” As Cousin Greg awkwardly recounts in Succession, Indigenous Americans are still struggling with the impacts of a colonial state that only recently recognized they were human beings.

I did not write this to make you feel guilty; I wrote it to make you informed. Once informed, you can act, but the knowledge of what you seek to change must remain crystal-clear and paramount. Any political movement must be based in fact. If we try to better the United States without correctly identifying its history, tactics, and original doctrines, our efforts are doomed to fail, like an attempt to renovate a houseboat without prioritizing the ability of the new fittings to withstand the tides.

I hope you enjoy your day off — you deserve it. But when you return to your daily life and political activism, do so with a proper understanding of the imperialist beast we seek to tame.

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Thank you, and enjoy your day off. In Solidarity — Joe

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Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about America’s founding mythos and how they have been weaponized to promote capitalist imperialism, I suggest you check out A People’s History of the United States and The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.

These works were instrumental for me in unlearning American propaganda, so I’m sure they’ll help you as well.

1. https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2020/11/25/the-true-dark-history-of-thanksgiving/

2. https://www.delish.com/holiday-recipes/a33984895/native-american-thanksgiving-holiday/

3. https://www.usdakotawar.org/history/multimedia/george-eh-day-abraham-lincoln

4. https://www.history.com/news/abraham-lincoln-native-americans

5. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/did-ulysses-s-grant-pawn-his-watch-to-purchase-christmas-gifts-for-his-children.htm#:~:text=Grant%20signed%20a%20bill%20into,Year's%20Day%20as%20federal%20holidays.