When Stephen Ledbetter of Annandale, Virginia first set out to leave his mark on American museums, his main focus was combating what he called “overly woke retellings of history.”
“Museums don’t tell the true history of this nation anymore,” claims Ledbetter, although he stops short of explaining when he believes this change began. “American history has been corrupted by the woke mob. They want you to think we’ve always been a country of greedy, racist scumbags. It’s all ‘slavery this’ and ‘slavery that.’ Slavery was, like, a million years ago. We have to move on eventually, right?”
Ledbetter, who has risen to social media prominence as the mind behind the online #SaveOurMuseums movement, has recently changed course. While he still pledges to “stop the spread of woke history” as his X bio puts it, his latest uses of the #SaveOurMuseums hashtag take aim at a different part of American history.
“It has come to my attention that there are countless American museums seeking to make a fool of the white man,” said Ledbetter last month to his Instagram Live audience. “All across the country our buffoonery is being put on display. The International Museum of Dance credits us for inventing the hokey pokey. What’s worse, they have photographic evidence. The National Museum of American History contains a section on Pickett’s Charge. My ancestors did not recklessly run headfirst into the Union Army just to be ridiculed for it for almost two centuries. I will not stand for stupidity of this degree being paraded for all to see.”
Shortly after the livestream ended, Ledbetter took to social media to explain the revamped mission of the #SaveOurMuseums movement. “American history isn’t woke, and white history isn’t a joke,” he wrote on X. “This is a deliberate smear campaign by the waves of woke benefactors infecting our country’s museums with their ideology. Stop the jokes!”
Perhaps expectedly, Ledbetter’s request to “stop the jokes” on the Internet opened the door for an inexhaustible stream of them. “Tell me you’re embarrassed by your own history without telling me you’re embarrassed by your own history,” wrote one X user. “You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out,” wrote another.
In the days following, an undeterred Ledbetter used social media to accuse several American museums of “making a bitter mockery of the white race.” Among the listed offenses were the featuring of materials about the methods of plague doctors, the early history of the National Basketball Association, and rapper Vanilla Ice. “These all serve to memorialize and mock the very darkest moments of my people’s great history,” Ledbetter wrote in conclusion. “We cannot allow this disrespect to continue.”
After responding to our reporters’ requests for comment, Ledbetter was asked why he would want true history to be removed from museums. “Haven’t you experienced something you’d rather not remember?” Ledbetter asked. “I really don’t think I’m asking for much. I don’t want history to be rewritten. I just want it to stop haunting me.”
Featured image/photo by Olha Maliar on Unsplash.