From Lie to Myth: How January 6, 2021, Is Being Rewritten

Five years after the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021, is already being reframed. Once documented as an unprecedented attack on American democracy—captured in real-time video, congressional testimony, and thousands of contemporaneous reports—it is increasingly portrayed not as a factual event but as a malleable symbol in the service of ideology. Through selective memory, amplification of distortions, and the cultivation of doubt, some narratives depict the day as a “patriotic protest” or a “routine political demonstration gone awry,” erasing violence, shootings, and clear attempts to overturn a certified election.

This phenomenon mirrors a long-standing pattern in U.S. history education. Scholars such as James Loewen have documented how American history textbooks frequently sanitize or mythologize the past. In works like Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America, Loewen demonstrates that slavery, genocide, systemic oppression, and the struggles of marginalized peoples are often minimized, distorted, or omitted entirely. Textbooks present events in palatable, ideologically convenient ways, softening uncomfortable truths and creating myths that can shape generations’ understanding of history.

The parallels are striking. Episodes of slavery, genocide, and the oppression of indigenous peoples have long faced pressures to be simplified, sanitized, or celebrated as part of a “progressive” or patriotic narrative. These distortions often appear in children’s textbooks, turning lived suffering into background context or moral lessons rather than acknowledging systemic cruelty and resistance. The pattern establishes a precedent for reframing contemporary events, like January 6, in ways that normalize myth over fact.

This process is already visible in Texas and Florida. In Texas, the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) standards were revised for 2024–2025, requiring students to study slavery and sectionalism. Critics, however, note that Texas textbooks historically minimized slavery as a cause of the Civil War and that initiatives like the 1836 Project promote celebratory narratives of state history, often downplaying oppression and Indigenous dispossession. In Florida, recent social-studies standards have described enslaved people as developing “skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” a characterization widely criticized for sanitizing the brutality and systemic oppression of slavery. Florida has also rejected textbooks containing material deemed inconsistent with state standards on “social justice” or critical race theory. As a result, textbooks may present sanitized, recontextualized versions of history that obscure systemic injustice and human suffering.

The consequences are profound. When textbooks mythologize slavery, genocide, or oppression, they normalize the selective telling of history. Students may internalize incomplete or sanitized narratives, making it easier for future events to be reframed or mythologized. Once historical facts are treated as optional or negotiable, myth replaces reality; ideology displaces context; collective memory becomes selective. The rewriting of January 6 is only the latest iteration of a long-standing educational trend documented by Loewen and others: the molding of history to comfort, persuade, or conceal rather than to illuminate.

For educators, historians, journalists, and concerned citizens, the challenge is urgent. Preserving factual records, teaching critical thinking, and highlighting the mechanics of mythmaking are essential to resisting the erasure and distortion of history. January 6, like slavery, genocide, and other atrocities, demonstrates that when truth is optional, democracy itself is at risk. Recognizing the difference between lie, myth, and historical reality is not merely academic—it is central to defending memory, civic understanding, and the integrity of public discourse.

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Sources

1. Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press, 1995.

2. Loewen, James. Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. New York: The New Press, 1999.

3. Texas State Board of Education. 2024–2025 TEKS Social Studies Crosswalk (Kindergarten–Grade 8).

4. “How some Texas parents and historians say a new state curriculum glosses over slavery and racism,” Texas Tribune, Nov. 18, 2024.

5. Thomas B. Fordham Institute critique of 2010–2014 Texas history standards.

6. “Florida’s new social‑studies standards on Black history stir outrage over embrace of ‘benefits,’” TIME, July 2023.

7. Reporting on textbook rejections and curriculum restrictions in Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis.

8. Wikipedia: The 1836 Project — background and aims.

9. Studies and critiques of bias in curricula and textbooks — how history can be whitewashed, sanitized, or mythologized in official education materials.