The latest example of liberal Hollywood spin will turn American history on its head by radically reimagining the Southern states as victors of the Civil War (1861-1865), with slavery continuing to flourish into the present-day.  David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, creators of HBO’s award-winning adventure series Game of Thrones (2011-), have just been given the green light to produce a controversial new series titled Confederate.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

The show’s historically distorted storyline will follow “a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone -- freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.”

Frankly, I’m not surprised that one of the network’s next big pet projects will be to completely rewrite the most divisive chapter in American history.  And for what?  To promote more divisiveness?  If the industry’s declining reputation for actually entertaining audiences is any indication, then you can count on Confederate to stoke the flames of racial division.  Malcom Spellman (Empire), who is on-board as both executive producer and writer, explained it best during an interview:

“It’s deeply personal because we are the offspring of this history.  We deal with it directly and have for our entire lives.  We deal with it in Hollywood, we deal with it in the real world when we’re dealing with friends and family members.…As people of color and minorities in general are starting to get a voice, I think there’s a duty to force this discussion.”

A “duty to force” the discussion?  America already had this forced discussion.  It was called the Civil War -- the real one.  It cost some 600,000 lives and the life of a U.S. President.  Slavery was abolished.  For Hollywood’s limousine elites to play the victim card as if they personally experienced the painful horrors of real slavery is a shameful affront to every person who actually did.

Later, Spellman was asked about his concerns over the possibility that the show’s slave premise might prove to be “wish-fulfillment for white supremacists and the alt-right.” He said, “Everyone knows that with Trump coming into power, a bunch of sh-- that had always been there got resurfaced.”

Maybe it’s just me, but Mr. Spellman seems more interested in inciting racism and keeping in concert with Hollywood groupthink than offering his own honest critique of race relations setbacks, most notably of the last 8 years under President Obama.  Incredibly, he doesn’t say a peep about it.

Racial tensions between police and the black community skyrocketed following Obama’s infamous “police acted stupidly” line in 2009.  For example, we saw the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, tragic shootings of young black men, destructive riots, and even random executions of police officers.  According to a July 2016 Rasmussen Report, over 60 percent of likely voters thought race relations overall had deteriorated since the election of President Obama in 2007.  That’s an 18-point jump from the previous poll in 2014.  To completely ignore the obvious is a poor attempt at providing political cover to the Democratic Party for years of failed policies.

Naturally, this makes me wonder whether the show’s creators, who both claim to be history buffs, plan to incorporate any vitally important historical facts into their slave drama.  Most relevant, of course, is that slavery was an institution supported by the Democratic Party.  One only has to look at the Congressional Record of 1865 to see who voted for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that officially abolished slavery.  Of the 118 Republicans in Congress at the time, all 118 voted in favor of the legislation, while only 19 of 82 Northern Democrats voted likewise (House and Senate).  If you’re wondering about Southern Democrats, they had already seceded from the Union and formed the “Slaveholding” Confederate States of America.  While I would be happy to consult with Confederate producers about these pesky little facts, something tells me they’re going to brush them aside anyway.

It’s hardly a secret that many on the Left regard America as an illegitimate, racist country precisely because of slavery.  Students have been taught this for decades, usually in isolation from a vastly more complex and broader world history.  The result is a younger and far less informed generation that thinks about racism in the most petty terms, including “culturally appropriating” Hawaiian shirts, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, even BBQ.  Their reality is so twisted that they’re totally ignorant about real racism, let alone real slavery. HBO’s Confederate, with its alternate reality premise, risks creating even more confusion and disconnect.

HBO Programming President Casey Bloys

Perhaps this is the true motivation behind Confederate: condition impressionable youth into a particular way of thinking about America that helps to better facilitate radical political agendas.  In no time they will join Leftist’s calls to “fundamentally transform America.”  And into what -- a more socialist state?  Communism?  Ironically, slavery has continued to flourish under both socialism and communism, including North Korea, Venezuela, and parts of Africa.

America, on the other hand, has no slavery.  Unless, of course, you include the psychosomatic state of the Democratic Party’s far Left who can’t help but to hypocritically culturally appropriate from those around the world who still suffer from real slavery.

If HBO really wants to put forward a series about slavery for the noble purpose of making a cultural impact rather than just mere propaganda, perhaps they should focus on one of the many other countries that has continued the practice, not the country that abolished it.

Kimberly Bloom Jackson is a cultural/media anthropologist and author of White Identity Crisis: Inside the Movie and TV Industry’s Dash to Diversity and What It Means for America (Summer 2017).  She can be found at SnoopingAnthropologist.com.