The Conservative Disinformation Campaign Against Nikole Hannah-Jones

This article is part of the Free Speech Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech. The answer seems to lie in conservative disinformation campaigns against Hannah-Jones, her influential 1619 Project, and the very idea of critical race theory. In the past six months in particular, conservative think tanks, commentators, and news media have waged an all-out disinformation war on their version of critical race theory, which is a catch-all for diversity efforts, anti-racist education, “cancel culture,” and unconscious bias training—or any talk of racial inequality at all. Conservatives have also cynically embraced widespread social concern over “polarization” and “declining trust” to cast Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 1619 Project, and critical race theory as grave threats to American society. It is unsurprising that the disinformation campaigns against the 1619 Project and critical race theory come directly after 2020, a year in which many Americans explicitly grappled with police brutality, anti-Blackness, and white privilege.