{"id":40184,"date":"2025-08-20T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=40184"},"modified":"2025-08-21T03:57:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T03:57:16","slug":"the-orwellian-echoes-in-trumps-push-for-americanism-at-the-smithsonian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-orwellian-echoes-in-trumps-push-for-americanism-at-the-smithsonian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Orwellian echoes in Trump\u2019s push for \u2018Americanism\u2019 at the Smithsonian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Laura Beers<\/a>, American University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When people use the term \u201cOrwellian,\u201d it\u2019s not a good sign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America\u2019s official history<\/a> to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, \u201creflect a glorified narrative<\/a> \u2026 while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a \u201cDEI agenda<\/a>\u201d from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as \u201cwoke\u201d universities, which culminated in Columbia University\u2019s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers<\/a>, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian\u2019s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House<\/a> announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution\u2019s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The review\u2019s stated aim<\/a> is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects \u201cAmericanism\u201d through a commitment to \u201ccelebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian<\/a>. \u201cThe Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was\u2026\u201d he wrote in a Truth Social post. \u201cNothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here\u2019s how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A screenshot of President Donald Trump\u2019s Aug.19, 2025 Truth Social post about the Smithsonian. Truth Social Donald Trump account<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Winners write the history<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a \u201chistorical impulse<\/a>,\u201d or \u201cthe desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Orwell wrote in \u201c1984<\/a>,\u201d his final, dystopian novel, \u201cWho controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America\u2019s bicentennial celebrations<\/a> that took place in 1976. Then, she says, \u201cAmericans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration \u2026 using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. \u201cBy contrast,\u201d writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, \u201cthe 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.\u201d The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ministry of Truth<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith\u2019s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in \u201c1984.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to determine whether \u2018public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties \u2026 have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.\u2019 Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or \u201cthought crime,\u201d is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it also controls the past. As the party\u2019s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down \u201cmemory holes,\u201d where they are \u201cwiped \u2026 out of existence and out of memory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell\u2019s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Down the memory hole<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation\u2019s official history<\/a>, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative<\/a> down Orwellian memory holes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay<\/a>, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to \u201cgay\u201d and LGBTQ+ content<\/a> on government websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
As part of efforts to purge references to gay people, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the removal of gay rights advocate Harvey Milk\u2019s name from a Navy ship. Screenshot, Military.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Other erasures have included the deletion of content<\/a> on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman<\/a> who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public outcry led to the<\/a> restoration of most of the deleted content<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its \u201cdivisive, race-centered ideology<\/a>,\u201d staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump\u2019s two impeachment trials<\/a> from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump\u2019s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that<\/a> the placard\u2019s removal was not in response to political pressure: \u201cThe placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum\u2019s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Repressing thought<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984\u201d ends with an appendix on the history of \u201cNewspeak,\u201d Oceania\u2019s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded \u201cOldspeak\u201d or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the appendix, \u201cThe purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: \u201cThe word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as \u2018This dog is free from lice\u2019 or \u2018This field is free from weeds.\u2019 \u2026 political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has become a clich\u00e9 that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This story is an updated version of an article originally published<\/a> on June 9, 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura Beers<\/a>, Professor of History, American University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laura Beers, American University When people use the term \u201cOrwellian,\u201d it\u2019s not a good sign. It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power. It\u2019s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":40185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,8025,46,295,10,25,296,4,38],"tags":[16781,539,14721,479,3738,191,885,891,886,860,16783,16785,16782,16214,16784],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40184"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40189,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40184\/revisions\/40189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}