Tad Stoermer- "Jefferson made a tactical choice in 1776 to put the blame on a single figure"

American academic Tad Stoermer has been putting out some terrific content over the past few years, almost "iconoclastic" in nature, challenging the usual mythological narratives about the Declaration of Independence. He's rapid-fire and content-rich. 

He's in blistering form in this one, showing that (contrary to what the Declaration said), it was the London Parliament that was the problem, having eroded rights and liberties over the previous 16 years. The election of 1774 made everything worse. Most political leaders in America and Britain knew that.

However, the PR campaign needed a villain, and a simple story... so they pinned it on the King. But the system was the real issue.

As Stoermer says "Jefferson made a tactical choice in 1776 to put the blame on a single figure because the patriots needed a story for two audiences who could not be sold the real one. And that choice worked..."

He also points out how institutional, corporate, history – what he calls in this video liberal nationalism - skews storytelling to comply with the cultural gatekeepers' already-defined orthodoxies. Jump to 5:55 for this section –

"...The distinction between Parliament doing the thing and the King doing the thing is the point, then and now. Pointing the patriots at the King when the problem was Parliament masked the structure of power for people who needed to see it.

Pointing you at Trump when the problem is the regime around Trump is doing the same exact thing. Misdirection then misdirection now. The harm's the same.

Can't fight a problem you've been trained not to see. Think about what got the patriots to independence. Right? It was not their first move. It was not where they started. 

For more than a decade, they tried to work in, with, through, around, and against the imperial system. Petitions, protests, boycotts, congresses, pamphlets, legal arguments, constitutional arguments, appeals to British rights, appeals to the empire's own functioning rules - now, the monarch and the monarchy (notable absences in much of that escalation after 1763). The resistance instead grew through permitted channels, until those channels stopped working and then were shut down altogether.

One of the last straws came when the patriots pinned their hopes on an election. 

The fall 1774 British general election was supposed to change everything. A hostile Parliament and ministry they hoped might be replaced. The Coercive Acts might be reversed. The empire might be pulled back from the edge. That's not what happened. The election returned Lord North and his allies with a working majority and a mandate to enforce the Coercive Acts.

Now for form, the Continental Congress sent the Olive Branch Petition directly to George III a few months later. Now he refused it, but it's not because he woke up that morning with a special hatred of the Colonies, but because by then the King, the ministry, Parliament closed ranks. The British state had chosen coercion and King George backed it because that's what he thought he was supposed to do – back parliament.

Independence was not the patriot's first move. 

It was what was left for many of them after every other move failed..."

• You can subscribe to Tad Stoermer's YouTube channel; his forthcoming book A Resistance History of the United States will be published by Penguin Random House next month.