“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
— Milan Kundera
“In the 35 years since the crackdown, all discussion of the incident has been heavily censored in China, as authorities have effectively attempted to erase it from history. Public commemoration or mere mention, online or off, of the Tiananmen crackdown is banned.”
— Amnesty International regarding China’s obliteration of the Tiananmen Square protests from its history.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.”
— George Orwell, 1984
History has been my most critical teacher. The harsh words I have spoken, the hurt(s) that I have inflicted, and my missteps have made for more than a few sleepless nights. I wish I could undo the most painful parts of my past, perhaps click a neurological delete button and make it all vanish into the ether.
Yet, I am wiser for the stumbles, more sensitive for the setbacks. Call it the evolving human condition, learning from one’s mistakes, maturing to the point where one comes to the realization that actions have consequences and the worst mistake one can make moving forward is to make the same mistake.
Donald Trump‘s ongoing takedown of our democracy relies on memory loss: the act of forgetting, as Milan Kundera writes. No wonder Trump and his dutiful agents of destruction have attacked any mention of DEI, or diversity, equality, and inclusion. To those carrying out his orders, DEI now means divisiveness, exclusion, and indoctrination.
Currently, all mention of DEI — the strength of our unique albeit imperfect union — is being erased from government websites. This censorship of America’s core values dovetails with such actions as Florida’s governor deleting numerous mentions of “climate change” from state documents and websites last year.
“Florida rejects the designs of the left to weaken our energy grid, pursue a radical climate agenda, and promote foreign adversaries,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at the time on X. “Radical green zealots want to impose their climate agenda on people through restrictions, regulations, and taxes.”
Donald Trump
Donald Trump claimed that the January 6 committee “has only served to further divide our country.” Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty
Trump’s erasure also syncs with increased book bans in libraries and schools across the country, targeting mentions of slavery, civil rights, LGBTQ+ issues, and pretty much any subjects that “offend” the highly sensitive, mostly Christian right. These books, many of them classics, award winners, and bestsellers, embody truths, some of them uncomfortable blemishes but truths nonetheless.
According to PEN America, there were more than 10,000 book bans last school year with 4,000 unique titles, “with about 45% of the bans occurring in Florida and 36% in Iowa.”
The establishment of our nation was hardly a pastoral narrative of courage, hard work, and a friendly, communal Thanksgiving repast with Indians. No, it was founded on the systematic genocide of Native Americans and on the scarred backs of enslaved human beings. To deny this aspect of our history is like denying that our planet is round.
This fear of truth puzzles me. These “scary” tomes have been around for decades and have not led to social collapse or an insurrection.
However, these books, whether on the Civil Rights movement, the unjust internment of thousands of Japanese Americans, the slave trade, or how a kid might feel if he or she has gender ambiguity, have given millions of readers a historical context and instructive life lessons. How un-American to ban these books.
No wonder the Trump administration is not only supporting the cleansing of our past, but also regurgitating the worst of our history with its punishing deportation scheme, as if this never happened before, as if we’ve learned nothing.
Do we want to follow the Chinese model of purging the history of the Tiananmen Square protests and its brutal punishment of those who uphold that history?
In its mad rush to eviscerate the dreaded DEI out of the federal system, Trump and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have now gone after our military veterans. Women and soldiers of color are the latest targets of the purge, and they are being disappeared from the website of our most sacred resting place: Arlington Cemetery.
(Note that Hegseth has also joined the book ban mob by restricting what books Department of Defense schools can offer. The Washington Post reports that, “Among the newly restricted material is a book chapter in a psychology course for advanced-placement high school students about gender and sexuality, a lesson for fifth-graders about how immigration affects the United States, and the book Becoming Nicole, a nonfiction work about a family coming to accept their transgender daughter.)
Arlington is hallowed ground, and the men and women buried there are heroes. Yet, the Trump censors want to segregate that heroism. According to Task & Purpose, “in recent weeks, the cemetery’s public website has scrubbed dozens of pages on gravesites and educational materials that include histories of prominent Black, Hispanic and female service members buried in the cemetery, along with educational material on dozens of Medal of Honor recipients and maps of prominent gravesites of Marine Corps veterans and other services.”
Across the entire military community some 100,000 images and posts are being culled for DEI content, reports the Associated Press. The word “gay” is problematic for the government.
“References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department.”
Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot said in a statement, “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms.” Imagine being proud of that.
These actions taken in the first two months of the Trump administration affect more than America’s minority populations. No matter which side of the political spectrum we inhabit we still share an American history taught in our schools, in our libraries and in our homes. We pass these truths on to each subsequent generation. If we create a gap, if those books and stories disappear, then what will we share as a nation? We will certainly be diminished.
Furthermore, to erase this past wipes out the hard lessons we once learned about our worst impulses. If history is our greatest teacher, who replaces that teacher? It certainly cannot be a politically- or religiously-motivated minority.
How to respond? There are several ways to push against the disposal of history’s truths. Aside from protests and letter writing, we can support our schools and libraries by populating their boards. Conservatives have been effectively doing just that for years, and it has led to much of the book banning I mentioned earlier. It is not always pleasant work to attend heated board meetings, but it is necessary to instill a more balanced dialogue.
Most importantly, the tradition of oral history, of story-telling, is more critical than ever. For example, I have family members who served in the Civil War, WWII, and the Korean War. My Jewish stepfather was one of the first soldiers to enter Auschwitz. (The Holocaust is another one of the targets of the Trump revisionists.) That’s where I first learned about that history. In turn, I passed it on to my daughter, who I hope will pass it on to her children.
We should not let the media or politicians spin our narratives for the benefit of ratings or partisan gain. Celebrate our past, the flawed and the flawless, the dispiriting and the uplifting. Only then can we move forward without a repeat of our mistakes.
And, in this way, we will not struggle to remember.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Globe Post.