Exposing Every Lie In The New Anti-American Documentary From Ken Burns

Ken Burns is one of the most famous documentary filmmakers in the entire world. You might know him as the creator of a very well-done documentary on the U.S. Civil War, which came out back in 1990. Over the years, Burns has released several other successful documentaries, covering topics from “Prohibition” to “The Vietnam War” to “Baseball.” His calling card (other than his undying commitment to historical accuracy, allegedly) is that his documentaries take a very long time to produce, and in turn, they also take a long time to watch. Several of his films are more than 11 hours in length. And thanks to his deal with PBS, they’re often available for free to anyone who wants to watch them. A Ken Burns documentary, in other words, is something of an “event” in the world of nonfiction filmmaking. When Ken Burns comes out with something new, a lot of people pay attention. And your tax dollars, which are distributed to Burns via PBS, a public broadcaster, give his films the imprimatur of a legitimate, important historical record.

But his most recent project — a six-episode, 12-hour marathon called “The American Revolution” — is not, in fact, a legitimate or important historical record. It is, in many respects, a very well-produced piece of propaganda. Online, you may have seen some commentators dismiss the production as “woke” for one reason or another. But it’s actually far more insidious than that. If this was just another “woke” production, it’d be very easy to dismiss. When you think of a “woke” production, you think of rampant DEI casting and equity-focused writing, which makes the whole thing unwatchable. You think of a show that you can just write off, and forget about entirely. When you think of a woke film about the American Revolution in particular, you imagine something where George Washington is portrayed as a green haired bisexual. Something over the top and egregious and that nobody would take seriously.

That’s not the case with “The American Revolution.” Most of this documentary — I’d say around 70 to 80% of it — is actually quite good. Even if you’ve read a lot of books about the Revolutionary War, you’ll probably pick up a thing or two. You get a birds-eye tactical view of major battles in the war, complete with graphics showing troop movements. You get a lot of primary sources, including quotes from key figures, as well as a few interesting segments on the logistical challenges facing the combatants. You’ll learn about battles in the American south during the war, which most people don’t know anything about. The visuals and audio are pleasing enough. It’s a very solid effort, 80% of the time.

And that makes the remaining 20% of this documentary worth talking about. “The American Revolution” by Ken Burns is a masterclass in propaganda because it weaves complete nonsense — and I mean total garbage — into a very compelling and factually accurate narrative of the Revolutionary War.

So as best I can, I’m going to go through some of the more objectionable moments in the series in order.

We’ll start at the beginning, during the introduction of the very first episode. This is the moment that sets the tone, and makes it clear what Burns is going to attempt with this documentary.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

You heard that correctly. The six Indian tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy, according to the narrator, were a “thriving democracy.” And the Founding Fathers would go on to create a “similar union.” So the implication is that Ben Franklin saw what the Iroquois had achieved, and like a typical white colonialist demon, he cribbed their work for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Our system of government is based on the appropriation of marginalized people. That’s the idea. We owe our democracy to the Indians, basically. Which is the opening argument of this documentary. 

Nevermind the fact that the Iroquois didn’t even have a written language. Nevermind the fact that they didn’t hold any kind of election to choose their leaders. Nevermind the fact that “clan mothers” — the Indian elders who actually selected the leaders — obtained their power because of hereditary right, meaning their bloodline. Nevermind the fact that there wasn’t anything like a western democracy in any Indian tribe anywhere in the hemisphere. Despite all of this, we’re supposed to conclude that, because a bunch of tribes were able to band together and form a primitive confederacy, Ben Franklin was taking notes, and ultimately created a “similar” union. 

Notably, Burns doesn’t tell you what he’s basing this claim on, because the claim is obviously ridiculous. So I’ll tell you. I’ll give you the one piece of evidence — the only piece of evidence — that he’s relying on, to make this absurd argument. It’s this letter, which was sent by Ben Franklin to a man named James Parker in 1751 — more than 24 years before the American Revolution.

Credit: Benjamin Franklin

If that is difficult to read, here’s what Franklin wrote: 

It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union, and be able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.

So Franklin isn’t talking about war with Britain, or establishing an independent nation, or anything like that. Remember, this is decades before the American Revolution. And Franklin certainly isn’t praising any “thriving democracy” in the Iroquois Confederacy, because there isn’t one. Instead, he’s talking about a straightforward plan to unite the colonies so that they function more like a political unit, rather than 13 completely separate entities. And he’s saying, “If these savages can form a confederacy to function as a unit, then obviously we can do it, too.”

It’s a bit like coming across a pack of dogs on the street, and seeing how they’re all very quiet, and being very respectful of everyone who passes by. And then you turn to your children and say, “If those dogs can behave, you can too.” When you say that, you’re not telling your children that the dogs invented the concept of good behavior, or made you realize what good behavior looks like. You’re not saying that your kids should model their entire lives after the dogs. You’re saying that, if extremely primitive creatures can do something right, then we — as much more advanced creatures — have no excuse for failing in that regard.

As Rich Lowry writes in the New York Post, there are other major problems with the logic here as well: “The Iroquois have no role in our constitutional history. The scholar Robert Natelson has noted, the Iroquois don’t show up as a model in the 34-volume “Journals of the Continental Congress”; the three-volume collection “The Records of the Federal Convention” (in other words, the Constitutional Convention); or the more than 40-volume “Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.””

In other words, Burns deliberately left the viewer with the impression that the Indians — despite being illiterate savages — had somehow influenced Ben Franklin and the Founding Fathers, and laid the groundwork for our system of government. In reality, the Iroquois had created a loose confederacy, which was vaguely similar to many other similar confederacies throughout history — including the confederacy called the Delian League, which the Greeks established to resist the Persian Empire. (Except the Greeks actually had a written language, and great philosophers). And Franklin, decades before the Revolution, was blowing off steam in a letter to a friend. That’s the story here.

But we should move on, because the documentary only gets worse from here. But it’s bad in a subtle way. You have to take some time to decode the propaganda, which is what makes the propaganda so effective. For example, see if you notice anything odd about this moment from the first episode, around 20 minutes in.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

In general, whenever you hear the passive voice, you should ask yourself: Who’s the subject of this sentence? Think of it this way. If you hear someone say, “John was stabbed to death,” your first question is going to be: Well, who did it? It would be a lot more straightforward, and clear, if the sentence said, “Bob stabbed John to death.” Then you wouldn’t need to ask the question at all.

Ken Burns knows that. He’s a very good filmmaker. He’s an experienced writer. He’s intentionally omitting the subject of the sentence here. He’s willing to tell the viewer that “Tens of thousands” of blacks were “captured” as part of the slave trade. But he doesn’t tell you *who* did the capturing. It’s certainly an odd omission, when you’re talking about an act of extreme human cruelty. He’s completely omitting the identity of the people who captured millions of innocent black men, women and children, and put them in chains, and then sold them. Why would he do that?

The reason is pretty clear, actually. Ken Burns knows that these black people were enslaved by other black people. The Africans were enslaved by Africans. That’s the dirty little secret you’re not supposed to talk about. The white colonists needed labor because they were living in a vast new continent. And they bought slaves who had been captured by African kings. In some cases, those African kings sent ships as far away as Iceland and Ireland to capture white slaves too. But at this particular time period, for the most part, they were selling Africans to the colonists.

Now, you might be inclined to give Burns the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he just wrote the sentence poorly, for some inexplicable reason. But the problem is that he keeps doing it. He keeps making the same “mistake.” This is another sequence from later on in that same episode, about an hour in.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

Who stole this woman from West Africa? Why aren’t we entitled to that information? Again, it’s the passive voice. We’re only told that Phillis Wheatley was “stolen from West Africa” and sent to Massachusetts. It’s as if a ghost just snatched her up, out of nowhere. 

But ghosts didn’t snatch her up. In fact, African villagers enslaved her. And they enslaved her when she was seven years old. And Ken Burns knows that. But Ken Burns also knows he’s not allowed to say that out loud. And he’s certainly not allowed to say that, if she had remained in West Africa with the savages who enslaved her, Phillis Wheatley would not have become a published poet. She wouldn’t have been surrounded by kind-hearted Bostonians who taught her how to read and write, and how to read Latin and Greek, and how to interpret the most complicated passages in the Holy Bible. And Burns also isn’t allowed to say that, if she had stayed in West Africa, Phillis Wheatley would not have received praise from George Washington himself, and become a national celebrity.

Put simply, being sold to an American family was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to Phillis Wheatley, because it separated her from the savages who enslaved her, and introduced her to civilization. But all of that history is lost in this “documentary.” Instead, you’re simply told that someone — some unidentified person — “stole” this woman from West Africa. And the only credit the Americans get, in this whole story from Ken Burns, is that they “looked after” her education.

A total crock, in other words. Now, again, I’m only highlighting the worst parts of this documentary. You have to imagine that, in between these lies, there’s some genuine, good history here. But then, out of nowhere — I’d say it happens every 30 minutes or so — you just get hit with a massive woke bomb, out of nowhere. And some of them are so absurd that you can only conclude they were added in post-production, on a dare or something like that. This is probably the worst moment in that regard.

Watch:

Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

Did you catch that? If women hadn’t stopped buying things constantly, as a form of protest, then the American Revolution wouldn’t have gotten off the ground. So really, the women are the heroes of the American Revolution. Forget the men who, you know, got shot and died. Sure, that’s a significant sacrifice, by any measure. But it’s nothing compared to the pain that colonial women had to endure, by *not* buying things. They bravely put down their Visa credit cards. And in doing so, they single-handedly created America.

What’s great about this segment is that no one, at any point in this 5,000 hour documentary, comes back to this claim. They don’t support this claim in any way. It’s just hanging there, in the middle of the first episode. And we’re supposed to take it at face value, I guess, even though it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Again, that’s probably the most overt, ridiculous moment in the whole series. Most of the propaganda is a lot more subtle. Take this moment, for example, from Episode Two. For the most part, this is a good episode about the battle of Bunker Hill. It tells the story of that battle in a neutral, even-handed, factual way. It also talks about George Washington and — although it keeps mentioning that he owned slaves every now and then — there’s nothing too crazy. And then you get this moment.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

When I saw this, admittedly, I had never heard this particular story before. But my first thought was, even if this is true — and it’s probably not — this has to be the single lamest attack on George Washington that anyone could possibly make. They’re trying to find some way to smear our first president, a Founding Father and one of the most consequential men to ever live, anywhere, in world history. And the best hit they can come up with, apparently, is that a black kid said that George Washington was rude to him.

Even if it’s true that George Washington was indeed rude to this random six-year-old black kid in 1775, and suggested that he do some chores without pay, there is no possible way to express, in the English language, how little any sane person would possibly care. It’s like saying George Washington jaywalked once. And then you have the big intimidating, voice-of-God narrator trying to sell it, in his super-serious voice. Actually, no, I don’t care if George Washington jaywalked. And I don’t care if he was rude to a random kid.

But just out of curiosity, I decided to look into this particular claim. And it turns out, as you might have guessed, it’s complete nonsense. Supposedly this “incident” happened in 1775, but the story didn’t appear in print, in any form, until the 1870s, nearly a century later. And it appeared in some kind of “romanticized” history of the Vassall estate. And here’s the kicker. The first time it appeared in print, the “boy” was a guy named Tony Vassall, who was Darby’s father. But that didn’t make sense, because Tony would have been in his 60s in 1775 — so he definitely wasn’t a “boy swinging on a gate.” So they revised it, after-the-fact, and said Darby was swinging on the gate.

So this whole narrative is about as credible as any other modern race hoax, except there’s about a million more reasons to doubt it. But Ken Burns doesn’t mention any of these problems with the narrative. He makes it seem like it happened, definitively. 

And the lame hits on Washington didn’t end there.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

Again, we have the passive voice, saying the slave “was captured,” without saying who did it. Burns really doesn’t want to use the active voice, for some reason. And then we learn that a black slave fled Washington’s estate, because George Washington was a horrible person, who had slaves, like everyone else at the time.

What we didn’t learn from Ken Burns, strangely enough, is that Washington also employed a lot of white indentured servants, many of whom also ran away. And it’s a shame Ken Burns left this out, because it’s a fascinating piece of history that no one ever talks about.

This is a paragraph from NPR, of all places. It’s from a transcript of a 2008 interview with historian Michael Walsh: “Just on the week of Lexington, the beginning of your War of Independence, the Revolutionary War, there were ads in the Virginia Gazette for runaways. And I think there were – that week there were something like 11 for white runaways and three for black runaways. And two of the 11 white runaways were being advertised for by George Washington.”

Yes, the week the Revolutionary War began, the newspaper in Virginia had 11 ads seeking the return of white runaways, and 3 ads for black runaways. Did you know that? Did you have any idea that white indentured servants — who were treated worse than slaves in many cases, because they weren’t permanent investments — were fleeing George Washington’s estate? That’s the kind of thing that would be interesting to talk about here. But it goes unmentioned. 

In the next episode of this documentary, I’ll be honest, I began paying less attention to the interesting history, and started looking for the lies that Ken Burns would try to slip in, without anyone noticing. It became something of a game. And with that in mind, this moment stuck out to me. 

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

This is one of those claims that, as far as I knew, was accurate. I had never heard of this woman before, or her alleged act of heroism, or her pension. But the little sassy factoid they add at the end — about how the wounded woman only received half a pension, presumably because she’s a woman and the Americans are misogynists who don’t believe in Equal Pay — didn’t seem right to me. It seemed a lot like Ken Burns’ attempt to shoehorn a modern grievance into the narrative. 

If you think about it, it’s a strange claim. For one thing, even if they only gave her “half” a pension for life, it’s still quite a generous handout. She wasn’t a member of the military when she was wounded. She was there for love of the game, essentially. They didn’t owe her anything. And they voluntarily awarded her a very reasonable wage for the rest of her life.

And on top of that, there are reasons to doubt what Ken Burns is saying, once again. He didn’t provide any explanation for why she might only receive half-pay, which got me thinking that, once again, he was trying to lie by omission. He wanted us to fill in the blanks, and conclude that America’s founders simply hated women — even women who risked their lives on the battlefield.

So I looked into it. And here’s what I found, unsurprisingly enough. This was passed by the Continental Congress in 1776: “Resolved, That every commissioned officer, non-commissioned officer, and private soldier, who shall lose a limb in any engagement, or be so disabled in the service of the United States of America as to render him incapable afterwards of getting a livelihood, shall receive, during his life, of the continuance of such disability, the one half monthly pay from and after the time that his pay as an officer or soldier ceases.”

In other words, all wounded officers — including the men — received a pension equivalent to one-half of their regular pay. And that appears to be what Margaret Corbin received. I checked a variety of sources, including the National Museum of the US Army, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Wikipedia, and the Lehrman Institute of American History. None of them claimed that Margaret Corbin had been snubbed, or had her pension cut in half, because she was a woman. They didn’t mention anything like that. In fact, here’s what Congress did in 1779. They issued this resolution.

“Resolved, That Margaret Corbin, who was wounded and disabled in the attack on Fort Washington . . . do receive, during her natural life, or the continuance of the said disability, the one-half of the monthly pay drawn by a soldier in the service of these states; and that she now receive out of the public stores, one complete suit of cloaths.”

In other words, she gets new clothes, plus she gets one-half the pay of any active-duty soldier. Which, in turn, is the same pay that every disabled soldier gets.

As far as I can tell, Ken Burns derived his claim — that this woman was given half the pension of a wounded soldier — from this throwaway line from the website of the “National Women’s History Museum,” which stated, “In July 6, 1779, the Continental Congress, in recognition of her brave service, awarded her with a lifelong pension equivalent to half that of male combatants.”

But that appears to be false. It contradicts the primary source, which is what the Congress actually said. So what’s going on here? Is Ken Burns just quoting random lines from web pages now? What’s the support for his claim? He doesn’t say. The documentary just moves on.

I can’t emphasize enough how insidious and evil this kind of behavior is. A historian — especially one who’s paid with our tax dollars — is not supposed to lie to us. When he presents extremely dubious claims, he shouldn’t do so with confidence. He shouldn’t pretend it’s obviously true. He should show his work.

But the reason he doesn’t show his work is that he’s a propagandist. Ken Burns has become a Trump-obsessed weirdo who’s desperate to include racial politics in everything he does. Which, by the way, is how we got interviews like this one, in his latest documentary. 

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

It’s not hard to see what this “historian” is doing here, or what Ken Burns is trying to do by featuring this interview.

He wants you to think that this nation was founded on “diversity” — a modern buzzword that connotes multiculturalism, open borders, DEI, affirmative action, and so on — because the colonists were supposedly “diverse.” But the colonists weren’t “diverse” in the sense that modern Leftists use the word, and Ken Burns knows that. The colonists were overwhelmingly white and British. The fact that Indians were present on the continent, or that fact that 3% of slaves from the Trans-Atlantic slave trade ended up in this country, does not mean that the colonists themselves were “diverse,” in the sense that, say, New York City or Minneapolis are “diverse.”

The colonists, unlike the residents of Minneapolis or New York, spoke the same language, and shared similar ancestry. They might not have the same religion, or the same country of origin (although most did). But they still had far, far more in common with one another, than the typical modern-day American has in common with the so-called “newcomers” that are flooding our cities at the moment. And again, Burns knows that. He knows that a Dutch or German colonist had much more in common with an English-born colonist, than a Somali “asylum seeker” has in common with an American today. But we’re supposed to lump all of this together, using the buzzword of “diversity,” which in Ken Burns’ world, is a universal good.

We’ll end with just one more clip, from Episode Four. This is one final lie that, all things considered, may be one the most egregious.

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Credit: Ken Burns/Florentine Films/PBS

This is one of those claims that you’ll hear again and again, predominantly from Marxists and agitators who want to undermine our Christian tradition. They’ll tell you that the United States was founded by men who believed that God is totally indifferent to America’s success or failure, and that we should believe the same lie. In this case, Burns is pretty obvious about his intentions. He starts talking about all the Muslim influence in our founding, and how “Tolerance” is a foundational virtue — almost as if he’s being extremely lazy, and applying 2025 Leftist talking points to 18th century history.

The problem is that, in fact, America was not founded by Deists. You will not find a single reference to Deism in a single colonial law or charter. What you will find, if you do any amount of research — which many organizations, including the Christian Heritage Fellowship, have done — is that the Founders explicitly rejected the idea of an absent God, again and again. 

Ben Franklin presided over the state constitutional convention in Pennsylvania in 1776, during which members affirmed that, “I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration.”

The Massachusetts Constitution, which was drafted by John Adams, states that “the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and … cannot be generally discussed through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God.”

And then there’s the fact that, as the Christian Heritage Fellowship found, during the Second Continental Congress, as well as the Confederation Congress (which took place after the war ended), members of Congress issued a grand total of 16 spiritual proclamations, which, “asked the states to fast, pray, and give thanks to God.”

What Ken Burns and PBS are counting on, of course, is that you won’t look into any of the claims that he makes in this documentary. His narrator delivers every line — from the accurate, interesting factoids to the flagrant lies — with an equal degree of self-confidence. And that’s a deliberate tactic. It’s how history is taught now, in every context — whether you’re talking about public schools or the media.

It’s enough to make me think that, in the near future, I should make my own “true history” series, where I tell you what the “Ken Burns” types are leaving out. It wouldn’t be particularly difficult. All I’d have to do, in order to destroy Ken Burns’ documentary, is tell the truth. But there’s a clear need for a project like this, because obviously, no one in the mainstream media is willing to do it. 

If there’s anything we’ve learned from the past decade or so in American politics, it’s that the national media is willing to lie to us about everything — even things we can observe with our own eyes. They lie to us about Russiagate, and “climate change,” and “gender ideology,” and so on. If these lies can be effective in the 21st century, then imagine how many lies they’ve been telling us about ancient history. Imagine how many lies they’ve been telling us about slavery, and the Revolutionary War. Imagine how many lies they told us about the Civil War, or about Indian savagery, or about Nixon, or anything else.

My goal is that, very soon, you won’t have to ask these questions anymore. You’ll get the truth about our history — not the passive-aggressive innuendo of delusional activists like Ken Burns, but the actual truth. And if Ken Burns accomplished one thing with this bloated mess of a documentary on the American Revolution, he’s demonstrated, probably more than any other living person, the need for exactly that. So my two-word message for you, on the eve of Thanksgiving Day, is simply this: Stay tuned.