For generations most of what Americans have been taught in schools about their own history has been patently false. A deception aimed at socially engineering a public to willfully accept the mechanisms of authoritarianism.
“History is a set of lies agreed upon.” These were the words of the infamous French dictator and military strategist Napoleon Bonaparte.
It is a well-known concept that history is often written by the victor—that when two cultures or ideologies clash, the one that prevails and gains more power and influence is the one whose side of the story the record favors. Yet, despite this being a fairly common idiom, it is often overlooked just how profoundly it shapes our understanding of the present—or, more aptly, our misunderstandings.
Many still fail to grasp that the history they cling to so fervently—often as a cornerstone of political or national identity—is a carefully curated fable, designed to secure their allegiance through misbelief. Likewise, few recognize how the formalized education system of the early 20th century was deliberately shaped by the robber barons of the predator class, particularly Rockefeller and Carnegie, not as institutions of higher learning, but as tools for controlling the public and molding the minds of the masses to serve their interests.
Reverend Frederick T. Gates, the business advisor to John D. Rockefeller Sr. who helped him found the General Education Board in 1902, elaborated their vision in his book The Country School Of Tomorrow —
“In our dream we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from among them lawyers, doctors, preachers, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply.
For the task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are.”
In the context of modern American society, much of the mythology that makes up the concept of “American exceptionalism” is in fact a fabrication in line with this agenda, creating the docile public of Rockefeller’s vision.
Much of the contention we see in American discourse is, at least in part, a byproduct of this scholastic propaganda—pitting those who still believe the lies of their schooling against those attempting to reconcile with the truth.
A prime example is the celebration of Christopher Columbus—less than a week behind us at the time of this writing—which stands in stark contrast to the growing recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This tension has become yet another flashpoint in the manufactured culture war, framed within the broader illusion of the fake left-versus-right political paradigm.
One of the earliest pieces of propaganda we are exposed to as children is the myth that Christopher Columbus was an American hero. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
Columbus became a key figure in American schooling around the turn of the 20th century, with a national holiday dedicated to him only in 1937.
Imagine if, for the past century, school curriculums were based not on mythologized biographies, but on the actual diaries and logs of Columbus and his crew—firsthand accounts. You would read entries describing horrific atrocities: how Columbus viewed the kind and naïve Indigenous people as easy to enslave; how girls as young as nine were taken as sex slaves; how brutal mutilations were carried out for petty or no offenses; and how, after being worked to death in the search for gold, Native bodies were fed to dogs. Columbus and his men even boasted about hunting Indigenous people for sport—a gruesome practice known as la montería infernal (“the hellish hunt”), in which war dogs, trained to crave human flesh, were used to tear apart captives for the Spaniards’ sick amusement.
Bartolome De Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapas arrived in Hispaniola shortly after the start of its conquest and spent the next several years traveling between Spain and the Indies. Speaking of the atrocities he witnessed he wrote in his A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies —
“Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight as no age can parallel”
In 1500, after numerous official complaints were filed against Columbus for his mistreatment of both Indigenous peoples and Spaniards, he was arrested and brought back to Spain in shackles. Although he successfully appealed his arrest, he was permanently stripped of his governorship and all associated titles.
The romanticization of Columbus remains one of the most persistent myths in American education—chief among them, the false claim that he was the first European to “discover” America. In truth, Columbus never set foot on the continental mainland. Historical records show that the first European to reach North America was a Viking explorer from Greenland, Leif Erikson, who landed in what is now Newfoundland, Canada, around the year 1000—nearly 500 years before Columbus’s voyage. This is backed by archaeological evidence, including the remains of a Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows.
Much like the myth of 1492, another aspect often overlooked in American education is not only the subsequent genocide of Indigenous peoples, but also the underlying motivation behind it. It is typically taught that European colonization was driven by the search for new land—but this is a deliberate half-truth. The deeper motivation was rooted in religious domination.
In line with yet another falsehood, the idea that the United States is a strictly Christian nation, is the refusal to acknowledge perhaps the most destructive proclamation of all time — the Doctrine of Discovery.
On June 18, 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued a papal bull—an official proclamation—titled Dum Diversas, addressed to King Alfonso V of Portugal. This decree formally authorized the conquest, subjugation, and enslavement of Africans, Muslims, and “pagans.”
The Church later reaffirmed and expanded this doctrine through additional proclamations: Romanus Pontifex (Nicholas V, 1455), Inter Caetera I (Calixtus III, 1456), and Inter Caetera II (Alexander VI, 1493). These edicts laid the foundation for European colonialism and imperial expansion, sanctioned by the Church under the belief that non-white, non-Christian peoples were subhuman. As a result, the seizure of their lands and their forced conversion—or death—was framed as a righteous mission in the eyes of God. This ideology ultimately fueled the transatlantic slave trade and the genocide of Indigenous populations.
In the annals of American history, the Doctrine of Discovery would eventually be formalized into American law in 1823 — the same year the expansionist Monroe Doctrine was established — setting the precedent for the atrocities that followed, such as the Indian Removal Act of 1830
The Doctrine of Discovery was only finally formally repudiated by the Vatican in 2023.
The countless lies taught to Americans about the “discovery” of the continent and the founding of a nation built on genocide and slavery only scratch the surface of the propaganda imposed on the minds of American youth.
From the earliest ages, Americans are made to believe lies about nearly every facet of life.
“Patriotism” is rooted in the false sense of national superiority, ingrained by a militaristic ideology sustained by imperialist expansionism.
Every day for at least 12 years, we are taught to place our hands over our hearts and pledge allegiance to the nation—in other words, loyalty to the government. More specifically, given the origins of the pledge, this act reinforces indoctrination rooted in colonialism, Anglo-American ethno-nationalism, and, later, the belief in U.S. political and religious moral superiority inherent in government and its systemic norms.
We are taught to believe that everything America stands for is right and just, and that all who question such notion are morally corrupt, traitorous scoundrels worthy of condemnation.
Never is it mentioned in formal schooling that essentially all of America’s military conflicts have been based on lies. From the so-called civil war, a disastrous conflict rooted in the centralization of federal power and economic control disguised as a humanitarian crusade to end chattel slavery, to the invasion of Iraq with the aim of establishing western hegemony in the Middle East, and everything between. Each conflict has had its ulterior motives.
Perhaps none better encapsulates this than the mythology of World War 2, framed as the noble cause to defeat fascism, which it was in part, yet often omitted from American history textbooks are a number of inconvenient truths that cause one to pause and rethink American involvement in the conflict.
Some may be aware that Adolf Hitler openly admitted his ethnic cleansing campaign was directly inspired by the American eugenics movement. For decades, the United States enforced forced sterilization laws, marriage restrictions, and segregation during the early to mid-1900s aimed at wiping out entire bloodlines of those deemed “unfit”. Ultimately, the campaign destroyed the lives of tens of thousands of people, a dark chapter of American history that has been so thoroughly swept under the rug that most people today are unaware it ever happened.
What many are probably much less aware of is the extent to which the United States government and corporate elites tacitly supported the rise of the Nazi regime. Financially, big businesses such as IBM, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Standard Oil, and Chase Bank provided discrete funding for the Nazis both before and during the war, reports professor Anthony C Sutton in his book Wall Street and the rise of Hitler. Meanwhile, Anglo-American intelligence assets were hard at work insuring Hitler was firmly propped up and put in place, documented by authors Jim Macgregor and John O’Dowd in their work Two World Wars and Hitler: Who Was Responsible? Anglo-American Money, Foreign Agents and Geopolitics.
The Nazi machine was, by any real measure, America’s Frankenstein monster. Simultaneously, the US government was diligently plotting another façade on the other side of the planet, the provocation of the Japanese empire — culminating in an attack on Pearl Harbor, which the Roosevelt administration not only knew about beforehand but deliberately facilitated as a pretext to enter the war.
While war making is certainly a favorite pastime of the American empire, economic manipulation has been just as essential to maintaining its chokehold on power.
While the myth of America portrays it as a land of opportunity—a capitalist paradise where anyone can achieve prosperity through hard work—the reality is far less flattering. At their core economics should be based on voluntary systems, and while free markets offer individuals the chance to build their own success, the American model is far more anti-capitalist than many are led to believe. Where true free markets rely on voluntary exchange, the U.S. economy is rife with government intervention, cronyism, and corporatism. This fusion of public and private power distorts the market into a monopolistic system that exploits the working class for the benefit of a predatory elite, concentrating wealth in the hands of the top one percent.
This is the result of what economist Murray Rothbard referred to as state-capitalism, defined in his 1972 essay Capitalism Versus Statism:
“If we are to keep the term ‘capitalism’ at all, then, we must distinguish between ‘free-market capitalism’ on the one hand, and ‘state capitalism’ on the other. The two are as different as day and night in their nature and consequences. Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive apparatus of the government — the State — to accumulate capital for themselves by expropriating the production of others by force and violence.”
The American empire, since it’s very founding, has systemically rigged its economy to benefit the powerful; through the issuance of unconstitutional fiat currency, any number of inflationary policies, and the devaluation scam that was the Federal Reserve act of 1913 — The education system, however, ensures that American school children are never taught this truth. Intent on keeping them the docile worker bees of Rockefeller’s vision.
Beyond the grandiose myths of militarism and monetary fraud, the American curriculum rarely dares to broach subjects such as the history of unethical experimentation on its own citizens, the CIA’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the FBI’s assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., or the false flag attacks in Oklahoma City (1995) and on September 11, 2001—events in which our government was complicit.
But perhaps the most perverse indoctrination of all is that which brainwashes children into accepting the myth of “authority” in the first place.
In a just society, it should be understood that true authority arises only through informed consent—that no person holds an inherent right to control or command another against their will. Interactions between individuals ought to be voluntary, not based on coercion. Yet schools often condition children to accept a top-down model of authoritarianism: never question who’s in charge, never talk back, never challenge the official narrative—and if you do, you will be punished. Creativity is stifled, thinking outside the box is discouraged, and individuality and self-expression are sacrificed in favor of conformity to systemic standards.
As children are trained to fall in line with the police state, schools often resemble prisons more than places of learning. This dynamic contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline, which conveniently serves the demands of the prison-industrial complex and helps produce the docile, compliant public previously mentioned.
So, what’s the solution? Coincidentally—or perhaps ironically—the answer is more education. Real education. Not the watered-down, morally bankrupt propaganda often disguised as learning, but genuine education that involves both learning and unlearning. It means unschooling—dismantling the systemic lies we’ve been taught and that continue to be passed on to our children. This involves embracing open-source education, building and connecting with communities that encourage true critical thinking, and taking an active role in fostering honest conversations with ourselves, our peers, and—perhaps most importantly—our children. Only then can we help them grow into sovereign, independent human beings.
As the Spanish philosopher George Santayana once said: “A child only educated at school is an uneducated child.”
The topics explored in this article are numerous, yet they only begin to unravel the vast web of perilous falsehoods we are conditioned to accept. As such, readers are strongly encouraged to take the next step in deepening their understanding by exploring the recommended reading list below.
• A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W Loewen
• An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
• Black AF History: An Un-whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
• Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 by William Blum
• The Creature From Jekyll Island: A Second Look At The Federal Reserve by G Edward Griffin
• Battlefield America: The War on the American People by John W Whitehead
• “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law