The War On History Continues
In his current war on history, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, launched his latest salvo at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC.
As a follow-up to his executive order last March, entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, in which he accused the Smithsonian of coming under the influence of a “divisive, race-centered ideology”, Mr. Trump, on July 24, issued another executive order titled “Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution”.
The order mandates that the Interior Department install signs in front of the famed museum warning visitors of what he believes is an ideological bias that presents history as a divisive force that obscures America’s true historical greatness.
The signs, projected to cost American taxpayers $84,000, have yet to be posted. Nor has their content been revealed. However, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who is heading this endeavor, has publicly stated that the Smithsonian and its curators have of a history of “racial focus” and exhibiting an “anti-white animus”.
Mr. Trump has often stated that the Smithsonian has focused too much on the country’s slavery and Jim Crow Eras and the subsequent Civil Rights Era, and not enough of on the country’s founding and its “shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated.” He added instead the museum “views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and radical transformation of society.” He has often called for more “patriotic” exhibits.
Current Smithsonian director, Anthea Hartig, defended the museum in front of two, at times hostile, House committee hearings this summer. She stated: “Our work is governed by the Smithsonian’s standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence, and non-partisanship. The museum does not take sides in America’s political debates. We preserve and document the evidence of American life in all its breadth, so that the public can encounter the past and draw their own conclusions.”
The prospect of warning signs in front of the Smithsonian are the latest in a near two-year assault on the museum’s integrity.
Last year, the White House ramped up its pressure on the Smithsonian to change or whitewash history to fit a more singular narrative of American greatness established by (predominately white) heroes. Mr. Trump has even demanded that the Smithsonian replace its iconic abstract sculpture that has fronted the museum for decades with a 30 foot statue of George Washington whose statue already appears inside the museum along with dozens of other tributes.
Amping up pressure on the museum, the White House demanded the Smithsonian turn over records and documents concerning eight of the its 21 museums, as it pressured the Smithsonian director to present a strictly positive view of American history, and jettison what the administration has called too much emphasis on slavery and civil rights’ struggles.
Despite receiving government funding, which this administration has threatened to cut off, the Smithsonian is independent of the executive branch.
The executive branch has no say in its operations or in its personnel.
Hence the mandated warning signs.
As noted in a related article in RARE’s summer newsletter, the attempts to sanitize countries’ histories have coincided with a recent rise in authoritarian-led governments whose leaders have promulgated mythical pasts in their countries that focus on a non-existent singular, uniform past heralding heroic figures of a singular culture or group. Often as a ploy to help them maintain and exercise power.
As noted earlier, Southern whites in the nineteenth century whitewashed history by downplaying one of humanities’ greatest horrors and helping them justify the disenfranchisement of Black citizens and potential voters.
In his 2024 book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, Yale University professor Jason Stanley cites another of humanities’ most horrendous episodes which was abetted by a successful attack on a country’s history. In the book’s preface, Stanley told of his Jewish grandmother, born in Berlin in 1902 in the shadow of one of Berlin’s largest synagogues. By 1920, Ilse Stanley thrived in a Berlin where the arts flourished— a Berlin that was one of the “great capitals of the world, home to a renowned university.” Ilse trained in theater and acted in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Within a few years, Ilse’s German Jewish family was “ejected from cosmopolitan paradise”. What happened?
The Nazis came to power and placed at the “center of their political movement, a fictional view of the country and its people: a land inhabited by a pure race of Aryans which had been infiltrated by Jewish foreigners, who sought to undermine German institutions and topple the dominance of the German race.
Thus, creating an “Us versus Them” ploy often used by authoritarians that is designed to evoke fear and to gain or retain power.
It is hard to conceive of anything as horrific as the Third Reich coming to pass in present day America. Yet when there are attempts to stifle history and suppress education and to ban books, it is imperative that Americans take note.
The erasing of history often coincides with the erasing of people’s stories, people’s importance, and at times, people themselves.
It is of the greatest importance that people’s experiences and their legacies be passed on to future generations, whether in museums, books, or spoken by one generation to the next.
The freedoms celebrated by this country for its 250 years and for 161 years after Emancipation—freedoms stated in the Constitution, including the right to vote – are not to be taken for granted and should be embraced, celebrated, and defended.
Always.
