By BRIAN CRAWFORD

Donald Trump signed Executive Order #14253 with the stated intention of restoring “Truth and Sanity to American History.” Considering that he is estranged from the truth and his sanity is in question, if one did not know better, they would take this as a piece of political satire. But in the tragic-comic period in which we live, the absurdity must be taken seriously. The order, signed last year, sanitized U.S. history just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In Philadelphia the administration removed plaques from an exhibit depicting the lives of the slaves who lived in the household of George and Martha Washington and replaced them with signs that minimized their oppression. George Washington was one of nine slaveholding presidents. The removal of the exhibit was dictated by the administration’s ideological drive not only to remove all vestiges of what it considers DEI but also to control the telling of history.

History is a lesson learned not only for understanding the past but also the present and prospects for the future. What is past is prologue. The working class and oppressed are locked in a loop, fighting the same battles. While history is full of markers by which we can measure progress or regression, the state always attempts to craft a national narrative of triumphalism to cultivate a collective memory absent its crimes. The effort to eradicate “wokeness” from history and culture is part and parcel of controlling knowledge and corralling class consciousness.

History books, libraries, national parks, museums, federal websites and documents are being purged to erase the memory of blood and death from which the nation was forged. It’s replaced by a form of sanitized patriotism. But what is to be made of the “middle passage” slave auctions, family separations, slave patrols, segregation, and lynching? In this new telling of history, they don’t exist.

How can you narrate the civil rights movement without its essential motivation? Why was Rosa Parks asked to move to the back of the bus? The Montgomery Bus boycott, Freedom Summer, the assassinations of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King would have no context, nor would the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act without the factor of racial oppression. Removing it leaves blank pages in history.

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, states began to pass laws banning “Critical Race Theory.” Florida made discussion of certain topics a criminal offense. The Louisiana legislature proposed banning discussions of race from the classroom. Even National Parks are being censored.

Right-wing telling of history would omit the role of enslaved labor in the expansion of capitalism. The wealth of the nation was built on the backs of slave labor. Try as they will, the Trump administration cannot change this truth. Their white nationalist revival has taken hold of federal power, wielding its authority to recreate a mythic past which never existed.

The slaves were not happy. The institution was not some form of vocational training. Blacks in the segregated South were not content. Slave rebellions from Denmark Vessey to Nat Turner disturbed the sleep of the planter class, who conjured more draconian laws and barbarous forms of torture and execution. Lynchings became spectacle, and a source of entertainment for the white mob.

A vigorous struggle was waged in the 1960s to establish ethnic studies programs in schools with the intention of filling in the gaps of history. The effort spread nationally; it took great effort for African American History to become part of the academic curriculum, and eventually there were departments dedicated to the discipline. That progress is being swept away by the coercive force of the federal government under Trump.

The history of falsifying history is long. Over a century ago, the United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded to champion the “Lost Cause,” as they characterized the Civil War. They compiled a list with recommendations for school curricula. Any textbooks that argued that slavery was the root cause of the Civil War were to be rejected. They propagated the lie that enslaved Blacks willingly served on plantations.

Furthermore, the UDC not only defends the Confederacy and its veterans but is responsible for the monuments celebrating Confederate generals. Protesters in 2020 toppled many of these symbols, and in Virginia the office of the UDC was torched. Currently, the Trump administration intends to resurrect these monuments in its own efforts to enshrine white supremacy as an essential component of the national identity.

The Confederate cause cannot be defended, but neither can Trump’s incitement of his supporters who attacked the Capitol building in January 2021. But like the Confederates, they are pardoned and free to terrorize another day. There is no truth or sanity.

If we confine ourselves to a national perspective, it misses the scope of the right-wing administration’s imperialist vision of the world. Last February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared before the Munich Security Conference and delivered a speech that was less abrasive than the one that J.D. Vance had delivered a year earlier. Rubio recalibrated his remarks away from the mercurial nature of Trump in order to settle nerves and persuade European leaders to follow the U.S. administration’s vision.

Rubio celebrated conquest and imperialism. In line with the quintessential white Christian nationalist world view, he stated that Europe “gave the world the rule of law, universities, and the scientific revolution.” All of which existed millennia before there was a “Europe!” Falsification of history, declaring the right to rule, and criminalizing opposition are reoccurring themes in the speeches of the U.S. secretary of state.

Rubio’s speech illustrated the rewriting of history to justify enslavement, colonialism, and genocide. It legitimized racial hierarchy. And yet his message was received with a standing ovation. Europe’s ruling class would appear to be on the same historical page as the Trump administration.

The fight for the historical narrative is essential. The ruling-class strategy of divide and rule is perpetuated by the control of the historical narrative. A relentless campaign for academic freedom, freedom of speech, and democracy is needed.

(Photo) A protest rally outside the President’s House in Independence National Park in Philadelphia, soon after the Trump administration removed displays documenting the oppression of Black slaves in President George Washington’s household. (Emma Lee / WHYY)

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