Manipulating “Uncomfortable Truths” to Control the Nation’s Narrative
“…Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past…” From 1984, by George Orwell
Too Much “Woke”
President Trump wrote these words on his recent social media post:
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,… This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the ‘HOTTEST’ Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.”
This statement should be for all Americans who value democracy, a “red flag” of the highest order. It may not get as much attention as ICE raids. Or, the hostility generated by the deployment of the American military and national guard to politically Democratic cities like Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and apparently soon Memphis. But, it’s impact can be just as profound. We need to have a shared understanding of this and other current attempts to revise or omit key “uncomfortable” parts of our national history, such as slavery, and why the President’s apparent intent is so bad for democracy.
No Small Matter
In this case, the desire for historical revisionism displayed in President Trump’s remarks is focused specifically on our history regarding chattel slavery. It raises the question about the motivations for shading our nation’s history about painful topics like slavery (of which there are many other such equally painful topics). Yet, it raises another perhaps even more important question. Why is it so important to a leader like Trump to want to change how our history like American slavery is presented, discussed, and portrayed?
Certainly, historical revisionism is insidious to democracy, whatever the specific historical topic that is being changed or erased. However, it’s paramount that a democracy’s citizens understand history like this clearly. Author George Orwell understood this importance in 1949 when he wrote his epic 1984 about the domination of a totalitarian regime led by “Big Brother”. A regime’s grip on a nation’s history controls not only its past, but it also control’s its present and its future.
Trump’s First Term Shows the GOP’s Intent to Revise Our History
Trump’s recent comments about the Smithsonian and slavery are not his “first rodeo” when it comes to revising our history. Just before the first Trump Administration ended, it released “The 1776 Report”. According to historian Heather Cox Richardson, “The 1776 Report” was written by right-wing activists and politicians, not historians and in the report “…highlighted the nation’s founding documents, especially the Declaration of Independence. It said that the principles written in the declaration “show how the American people have ever pursued freedom and justice.” The 1776 Report goes on to say, “…our history is…one of self-sacrifice, courage, and nobility.” No other nation, it said, had worked harder or done more to bring to life “the universal truths of equality, liberty, justice, and government by consent.”
And it wasn’t only Trump expressing the desire not to accurately teach American history. Then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and thirty-six Republicans sent a letter to the Secretary of Education with accusations related to that department’s attempt to “…advance a ‘politicized and divisive agenda’ in the teaching of American history.” They were concerned that the Department of Education might incorporate the 1619 Project spearheaded by the New York Times and the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History. The 1619 Project argues that the landing of the first Black Slaves in America marks the country’s very origins as it started a “barbaric system of chattel slavery that lasted for the next 250 years”.
Trump and his GOP showed even in Trump’s first presidential term that they had a problem with our nation’s slavery history, or for that matter, any other of our historical chapters that cast America in any light other than a positive one. Of course, the reality is history doesn’t work that way, unless one can manipulate it.
But, still the question remains- even now, why would Donald Trump go to all this trouble and bother to change how our history is presented?
The Answer
For an established or aspiring authoritarian, changing a nation’s history is more than just that. It’s about the government’s power and control over its citizens. Historian Rachel Lee Perez captures this fact saying:
“…Governments that attempt to rewrite history to avoid addressing uncomfortable truths, limit access to educational resources, and ban books in efforts to restrict information from their people are demonstrating the telltale markers of authoritarianism. These are key strategies—used by regimes like that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s—designed to control the narrative, weaken civil awareness and knowledge, and reshape not just what people know, but also how they think. Authoritarians rely on people not knowing or thinking critically about history...” (emphasis mine)
But it goes deeper than that. As Perez argues, Trump’s “…control over historical narratives extends beyond rewriting the past; it also involves controlling who has access to education and the resources that make learning possible. This is why the Trump Administration has aggressively sought to dismantle the federal agencies that provide necessary funds and resources to education nationwide.”
Historical Revisionism is Starting Early in the Second Trump Administration
On January 29, 2025, Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” In it, Trump alleged that American students “…have been indoctrinated by an educational system promoting “anti-American ideologies.” The January 29th order reinstated the 1776 Commission (mentioned earlier) from Trump’s first term. It’s forty five page “The 1776 Report,” is riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods about the founding of our nation.
Then, just two months later a follow-up Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” took the position that for the past decade, “…Americans have been indoctrinated by “distorted” and “revisionist” history that has caused them to cast a blind eye to our nation’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.”
So, Now Museums are Targeted
This explains why Trump recently targeted one of top museums in the U.S.- the Smithsonian and its National Museum of African American History and Culture. If, as our “unitary executive” style president (aka authoritarian) Trump wants to control the American mind by shaping how we critically think about our nation, then education and history, a central focus of many museums, become prime targets. Perez says it this way:
“…The study of history forces us to confront the successes and failures of the past so that we can create a better future. It compels us to evaluate and assess the consequences of injustice, war, and resistance. It fosters empathy by exposing us to diverse perspectives and lived experiences. But most importantly, in today’s political climate, studying history promotes critical thinking, produces the ability to identify propaganda, and empowers citizens to be informed.” (emphasis mine)
Undermining Our Historical Knowledge Undermines Democracy
A nation’s critical thinking and the historical knowledge it requires is the last thing an authoritarian wants his citizens to be able to do. The ability to know about a nation’s past events, analyze them for their veracity to determine fact from lie, as well as understand what really happened in the past and how it relates to the present and the future- those are things an authoritarian doesn’t want his (or her) citizens to know and intellectually grasp. They interfere with the authoritarian’s version of reality which is usually a “house of cards” alleging that the nation’s past is nothing but a “glorious” one, although that characterization is built on a foundation of lies, omissions, and inaccuracies. All authoritarian regimes worldwide engage in controlling, revising, and rewriting their national history in whole or in part for this very purpose. We are embarking on this path unless Americans see it for what it is and refuse to accept it.
However, we Americans have put ourselves at even greater risk as it relates to Trump’s efforts to recast our history. This is because it’s long been known that Americans’ historical literacy is horrible. As just one example of our poor national historical knowledge, one poll was conducted by a nationally recognized full-service analytic research firm which revealed an enormous lack of knowledge about facts related to the country’s founding:
· 72 percent of respondents either incorrectly identified or were not sure which states were part of the original 13 states.
· only 24 percent could correctly identify one thing that Benjamin Franklin was famous for, and 37 percent believed Franklin had invented the light bulb.
· only 24 percent knew the correct answer to the question as to why the colonists fought the British.
· two percent responded that climate change was the cause of the Cold War.
At the time of this survey in 2018, then President Arthur Levine of the Wilson Foundation (now the Institute for Citizens & Scholars), which sponsored the survey, commented:
“Unfortunately, this study found the average American citizen woefully uninformed regarding American’s history and incapable of passing the U.S. Citizenship Test. It would be an error to view these findings merely an embarrassment. Knowledge of the history is fundamental to maintaining a democratic society, which is imperiled today.” (emphasis mine)
Levine’s words were true then, and even more true now, putting our democracy in even greater danger as our president takes aim at historical subjects like American slavery. We can, and we must, do better if we plan to keep our democracy from being overrun by authoritarian mind control conducted via historical revisionism.
“How Bad Slavery Was”
But, let’s not forget where this conversation started- with Trump’s regrets about our supposed over emphasis at the Smithsonian on how bad slavery was. Really? Our President feels compelled to make this statement and ask this question? In that case, just how bad was slavery?
There are troves of solid historical accounts that lay out exactly how bad slavery was in infinite detail and clarity. America’s “original sin,” chattel slavery, was horrible and led to systemic racism. In fact, the word “horrible” barely does it justice in terms of describing the depth of cruelty, pain, and hardship it imposed on Africans captured and brought here as slaves. To put it plainly, “ when it comes to American chattel slavery, “The Half Has Never Been Told.” That’s the title of a book by Edward E. Baptist, with the subtitle “Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism.” Baptist’s historical account helps answer President Trump’s question as to how bad slavery actually was. It does this by showing, despite importation of slaves via the Trans-Atlantic African slave trade being outlawed in 1808, American slavery didn’t die. Rather, it blossomed, grew, and flourished until ending with the Civil War.
How Bad Was It Really?
How did it do that? It did it by “cotton fever.” It was found that cotton could grow very well in the newly vacated lands in what today we know as Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, and Louisiana. Much of this land was vacated by forced extradition of native Americans. It was turned into cotton production through slave labor camps called plantations. The slave labor required to grow all this cotton was gathered by slave sale, forcing the breakup of slave families in the older slave states like Virginia and Maryland. In the span of a single lifetime after the 1780s, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out plantations to a sub-continental empire. During that time enslavers moved more than a million slaves by force from the east coast to what we call today the “Old South.” By 1861 the number of slaves in the United States increased over five times as did cotton production.
This Is How Bad Slavery Was
But this description doesn’t tell the real tale as to the misery these slaves endured as they were moved to places like Mississippi to farm all this new cotton land to meet the world's increasing demand for cotton. These slaves were chained together in “coffles” and marched by foot often hundreds of miles from places like Maryland to Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi. Marching single file, the male slaves were chained together with the women and children slaves marching behind the men. Sex, age, or physical condition of the slaves didn’t matter. They had to march every day for weeks covering hundreds of miles arriving exhausted at their destination. A destination as a slave, which meant working six days a week in all types of weather from sunup to sundown cultivating and picking cotton by hand under the watchful eye of a slave overseer.
To accomplish this new demand created by these new and expanding cotton lands in the deep South, slave families living in their old east coast slave plantations were broken asunder and marched south. That’s how America’s slave trade grew and cotton production became America’s largest export by far, all the while with the trans-Atlantic slave trade stopped. The details of the cruelty of these marches is recorded in historical archives gathered in the 1930s as a part of one of FDR’s WPA employment projects which conducted interviews of former slaves who marched in these coffles.
That’s how bad slavery was Mr. President. There is much more historical evidence besides Baptist’s excellent historical work that lays out the depravity and cruelty of America’s slavery. These accounts existed even before the time period covered by Baptist’s work. Check out the advertisement above from 1760 selling 250 “Negroes” just brought in on a slave ship from Bance Island West Africa anchored just outside of Charleston so they didn’t have to risk exposing their precious “cargo” to smallpox.
These are just two accounts, but they answer the President’s false assertion that somehow the Smithsonian’s management has created a false picture of how bad slavery was. Far from it, and it is yet one more reason why this and other Trump Administration efforts to whitewash, erase, or revise our history must not only be resisted, but the accurate portrayal of our history must be provided to Americans.
That’s Why Truth and Accurate History Matters
Truth about our American historical triumphs and tragedies can only make a democracy stronger. Without it, democracy slides into authoritarianism and its false stories of greatness. The Smithsonian is not “out of control.” Instead, it is helping to prevent us from being controlled by a government intending to impair our critical thinking so we become compliant citizens that will accept the government’s dictates, no longer able to exercise our role in a democracy as “We the People.”
Time to Take This Seriously
We would do well to not take lightly this excerpt from Orwell’s 1984. In it the authoritarian regime Big Brother (BB) is torturing Orwell’s main character Winston Smith to “convince” him that what he actually knows about his nation’s history and government is false:
(BB) “…Does the past exist concretely in space? Is there somewhere or other place, a world of solid objects where the past is still happening?”
(Smith) “No.”
(BB) “Then where does the past exist, if at all?”
(Smith) “In records. It is written down.”
(BB) “In records. And- ?”
(Smith) “In the mind. In human memories.”
(BB) “In memory. Very well, then. We, the Party control all records and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?”
For democracy’s sake, we would be wise to take historical revisionism seriously.
Notes:
· 1984, by George Orwell, pg. 221, Copyright 1949, 1977, and 2023 for 75th Anniversary Edition, by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
· Trump Says Smithsonian Focuses Too Much on ‘How Bad Slavery Was’ - The New York Times
· Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, May 2, 2021, Copyright 2021
· Trump Doesn’t Want You to Know History - Progressive.org
· The Half Has Never Been Told, Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism,” by Edward E. Baptist, pp. xii-498, Copyright 2014 by Edward E. Baptist, by Basis Books, a member of Perseus Books, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103.
· “Most Americans Would Fail U.S. Citizenship Test, Study Finds,” by Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times, October 3, 2018, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/oct/3/most-americans-would-fail-citizenship-test-study/
· Ibid, //woodrow.org/news/national-survey-finds-just-1-in-3-americans-would-pass-citizenship-test/