The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.
Authoritarianism cannot exist with free thought. It must dominate the societal discourse and prevent debate. That means it must also dictate history. The Nazis knew this. In April 1933, two months after Hitler became Germany’s chancellor, Joseph Goebbels, his propaganda chief, proclaimed that “the year 1789” would be “expunged from history”—meaning that the animating ideas of the French Revolution, such as liberty, civic equality, and human rights, were to be crushed. Germany, under Hitler’s rule, was to be tied in narrative to a millennium that skipped recent European history and stretched back to the Viking era and the earlier Greek and Roman empires. The Soviets routinely photoshopped out-of-favor officials from official accounts, literally erasing inconvenient history. George Orwell, naturally, put it well in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
There’s much spewing out of Donald Trump’s firehose of chaos and destruction these days: his war on government, the rule of law, and decency; his reckless tariffs that threaten the economy here and abroad; his revenge-a-thon attacks on universities and law firms; his annihilation of the public health and biomedical research communities; his assault on American allies; and his effort to end the Russia-Ukraine war in Vladimir Putin’s favor. These all have dire and concrete consequences. Trump’s demolition of USAID certainly led to more deaths in Myanmar following the tragic earthquake, given that in previous years this agency would have been on the ground offering assistance within days of the disaster. Yet we also need to pay heed to Trump’s more abstract efforts, such as his war on culture and history.
Late last month, Trump signed an executive order falsely titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” The document declared:
Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.
Republicans, who slammed both Barack Obama and Joe Biden for governing through executive orders, have not muttered a word of concern about Trump’s unending flood of EOs.
Trump was referring to long-standing attempts to explore the dark veins of American history—racism, sexism, genocide, and other nasty business—that have been crucial components of the national story. He called for a sole focus on the nation’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” and assailed this wider perspective for deepening “societal divides” and fostering “a sense of national shame.”
The order essentially declared that Trump is the ultimate arbiter of US history and had the right to police thought.
Conservatives who once upon a time howled about the suppression of free thought and groused that Big Government was telling people what to think voiced no objections. Just as Republicans, who slammed both Barack Obama and Joe Biden for governing through executive orders, have not muttered a word of concern about Trump’s unending flood of EOs.
Trump’s diktat targeted specific examples, including a Smithsonian American Art Museum sculpture exhibit that noted the United States has “used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” But what’s inaccurate about that statement? That’s precisely what slavery did. Serving the right-wing theology of anti-wokeness, Trump seeks to white-out the nation’s original sin.
In the order, Trump stated, “It is the policy of my Administration to restore Federal sites dedicated to history, including parks and museums, to solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.” In other words, no dirty laundry—no references to the mass murder of Indigenous people, the suppression of workers, Jim Crow, the incarceration of Japanese Americans, the mistreatment of Chinese laborers, ugly interventions in Latin America and elsewhere, and so on. Only the glories of the United States shall be acknowledged—that is, worshipped.
Racism—and anti-anti-racism—runs through Trump’s executive order.
Trump named Vice President JD Vance as head of an effort to whitewash US history, most notably by vetting exhibits and programs at the various Smithsonian entities. He also directed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to review whether public monuments, memorials, statues, or markers have “been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history” or “inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures.” In short, bring back the Confederate heroes.
This past week, the Trump administration forced the cancellation of most of the grants made by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which provides funding for museums, historical sites, scholarship, and various cultural and historical projects, including books, films, and radio programs, such as Ken Burns’ 1990 documentary The Civil War. Grantees were told the agency would be “repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda.” And, no doubt, in furtherance of Dear Leader’s self-serving claptrap about the nation’s past.
Racism—and anti-anti-racism—runs through Trump’s executive order. The document denounced the view “that race is not a biological reality but a social construct.” But this approach to race has become the general consensus. Those who have pushed the idea that race is a biological matter have often done so to establish a hierarchy of races. Guess which race they put at the top? And, yes, we can turn to the Nazis for further edification on this point.
Trump has launched a crusade not only against public servants, legal and governmental norms, commonsense economics, science, higher education, DEI programs, and his critics and political rivals, as he vies for wide-ranging power that will allow him to rule as an autocrat. He is striving to become the Big Brother who determines which parts of the American story are legitimate and which are to be suppressed and deleted.
Like other authoritarians, Trump seeks to manipulate and define reality—of the present and of the past.
During the 2024 election, Trump’s campaign was more a disinformation machine than a political operation. He peddled a fictitious tale: The nation was being overrun by violent migrants who ate cats and dogs and who were taking over entire towns in Middle America, while schools were performing transition operations on kids without informing parents and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were purposefully flooding the country with dangerous criminals and mental patients released out of prisons and hospitals…and while the US economy was collapsing. If a voter believed this false narrative, he or she really had no choice but to pull the lever for Trump.
As president, Trump is still running a disinformation con. Now it’s just bigger. Like other authoritarians, he seeks to manipulate and define reality—of the present and of the past. He is attempting to stymie the sometime messy and occasionally disturbing business of history and, to borrow a term once deployed by conservative hero Allan Bloom, close the American mind.
Trump has never been a fan of the truth. For him, reality is whatever works to his benefit. In his multi-front war on American society, he is applying his well-developed lying ways to the nation’s story—and following in the footsteps of despots who realized that the robust pursuit of history is a vital component of democracy and, thus, a threat to tyranny.
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.