The Wall Street Journal announced that despite pleas from the left it will not end its tradition of publishing Thanksgiving editorials.

Background: Since 1961, The Wall Street Journal has published a pair of Thanksgiving editorials. One editorial is a recount of the 1620 first Thanksgiving and the other is a mid-20th century “contemporary contrast” of American progress.

Far-left liberals have claimed that Thanksgiving is now a holiday that celebrates racism and the murder of Native Americans and has urged The wall Street Journal to abandon the tradition.


What Happened: In a Monday op-ed, the board said it will continue with the Thanksgiving editorials and refused to “bend to political demands for censorship.”

“No doubt it was only a matter of time. The progressives have come for our annual Thanksgiving editorials. They won’t succeed, but we thought we’d share the tale with readers for an insight into the politicization of everything, even Thanksgiving,” the board wrote. 

“But we live in a new era when the left sees nearly everything through the reductive lens of identity politics. It sees much of American history as a racist project that should be erased,” the board wrote, before noting that the motivation to censor the Pilgrim editorial was being driven by a petition on left-wing site Change.org. 

What Liberals Say: The Change.org petition claims that “it’s time to stop publishing 17th century racism” in 2021. It also complains that the editorial refers to Native Americans as “wilde men” and says that the Pilgrims were separate from “all the civil parts of the world.”

Why It Matters: The Wall Street Journal’s decision to move ahead with the Thanksgiving editorial despite the left’s threats to “cancel” them marks a time when a large company stood in the face of “woke-ism” and refused to cater to their demands.

“We don’t mind giving critics a chance to make their case, but we won’t bend to political demands for censorship. We will run the editorials as usual this week,” it added.

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