The Trump administration’s marketing campaign to whitewash American historical past and advance white supremacy took one other step ahead with the discharge of its report attacking the Smithsonian Nationwide Museum of American Historical past on Sunday.
The report, titled “Saving America’s Story,” claims that the broadly celebrated museum has been the topic of “ideological seize” and says the establishment is responsible of erasing “our heritage.”
The language utilized by the administration echoes language lengthy used by white supremacist actions each in america and overseas. These teams usually invoke “heritage” as a stand-in for white tradition, whereas Germany’s Nazi social gathering often invoked “degeneracy” as a part of their campaign in opposition to Jewish folks—rhetoric that ultimately led to the Holocaust.
And in reality, the official White Home Speedy Response social media account accuses the Smithsonian of working as “a car for Radical Left propaganda and degeneracy.”
Among the many purported offenses on the museum are reveals acknowledging the historical past of transgender folks, who’ve lengthy been oppressed and marginalized in america. The administration additionally complains that the museum has reveals on homosexual folks, drag tradition, and an Leisure Weekly journal cowl exhibiting the musical group The Chicks (then often called the Dixie Chicks) expressing their opposition to the Iraq Conflict. The Trump staff decries these as “sick, express content material.”
The report additionally complains that the museum’s reveals mirror previous and ongoing racist affect on American tradition. The Trump administration expresses anger that cultural icons like Mickey Mouse are linked to racist minstrelsy—however that is in reality a documented historic truth that occurred and is part of the American story.
The administration describes correct representations of colonialism as a key affect within the founding of America as derogatory (it’s factual), and complains that slavery is even mentioned within the context of America’s Founding Fathers.
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What the report makes clear is that the aim of the administration in kicking off this whole course of final March is to whitewash historical past and advance white supremacy. This has been one of many driving elements behind Trump’s two presidencies and has been turbocharged in his second time period.
Trump needs historical past rewritten to excuse abuses by white supremacy. In his presidency, the contributions of Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, LGBTQ+, ladies, and others who’ve been traditionally sidelined, marginalized, and oppressed are to be ignored. As an alternative, Trump has sought to hail figures and establishments just like the pro-slavery Confederacy.
The report is the newest entrance in a full-on conflict in opposition to historical past and actuality, and the conflict continues.
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