{"id":4238,"date":"2026-08-01T12:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4238"},"modified":"2026-08-01T12:37:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:37:07","slug":"the-surreal-plot-behind-trumps-new-smithsonian-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4238","title":{"rendered":"The surreal plot behind Trump\u2019s new Smithsonian labels"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cWho controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.\u201d
\u2014 George Orwell, 1984<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Trump Treasury secretary torn apart for leaving out \u2018to-do\u2019 list \u2018on-purpose\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

It seemed so trivial. Trump ordered the Interior Department to post signs along the walkways leading up to several of the museums that make up the Smithsonian system in Washington, DC warning people that they\u2019d find \u201cinaccurate information\u201d therein. It was based on a bizarre \u201creport\u201d written by the White House\u2019s Domestic Policy Council and released without fanfare on the 4th of July.<\/p>\n

The Council itself was packed with Trump with leftovers from rightwing think tanks and activist groups like American Compass, Heritage, the Manhattan Institute, and Stephen Miller\u2019s America First Policy Institute. <\/p>\n

It claims that the American Museum of American History has displays that cover the fights for women\u2019s and civil rights and to end slavery along with the positive role immigrants, women, and queer people have played in our country, which it finds deplorable and un-American. It wrote that Smithsonian leadership and museum curators:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026have directed the museum\u2019s mission away from historical education and scholarship of a shared national inheritance to be celebrated, and toward extreme political activism, rooted in Marxism, to divide, dispirit and discourage Americans. \u2026 [And have] denigrated and displaced whites, males, Christians and Americans\u201d while focusing on \u201crace in areas where it has little to no historical relevance.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wild, over-the-top complaints that our museums are accurately portraying American history notwithstanding, this is far more sinister and dire than it seems.<\/p>\n

Pretty much every dictator in history, both ancient and modern, has rewritten his nation\u2019s history because, as Orwell noted, those who control the past can use it to reprogram the future.<\/p>\n

Dictators and wannabe dictators rewrite the past to legitimize their rule, typically portraying themselves as representing the inevitable culmination of history, as the nation\u2019s savior (\u201cI, alone, can fix it!\u201d), and as the rightful heir to a mythical glorious tradition like Trump is doing by trying to reinvent America as an exclusively white Christian nation.<\/p>\n

In the process, they typically erase their rivals (Trump has replaced Biden\u2019s picture in the White House with a photo of an autopen), reframe negatively their political opponents (ditto), and use the threat of erasure from history as a weapon against their own allies to keep them bowing and scraping (ditto).<\/p>\n

Dictatorial regimes frequently use rewritten history to justify wars of aggression, suppress minorities, and gut civil liberties. Modern American examples include how Sam Alito cited a 17th century witch-hanging British judge to justify ripping the right to abortion away from women, or how Trump has reinvented (with extensive lies) Obama\u2019s peace deal with Iran to justify his and Netanyahu\u2019s illegal war.<\/p>\n

They rewrite history to bind themselves to the country\u2019s majority group with simplified stories of the nation\u2019s \u201cglorious\u201d past, claiming members of that group must rally around them to maintain national unity, strength, and a shared destiny. Diversity, in this context, is seen as a weakness as it doesn\u2019t support this kind of dictatorial framing, which is why Trump called Kamala Harris \u201ca DEI hire\u201d on the campaign trail and has essentially criminalized the phrase.<\/p>\n

Read more Brutal CNN supercut lays bare Trump team\u2019s \u2018brazen lies\u2019 \u2014 that just blew up in court<\/a><\/p>\n

Rewriting history is also a powerful way to shift the Overton Window to the right, causing the previously unthinkable to become \u201ccommon sense.\u201d When the history of protest, democratic movements, and civil rights efforts are reframed as chaos or crises in the nation\u2019s history, young people are less likely to engage in them. When citizens fail to learn about successful alternatives to authoritarian rule, it can make democracy or pluralism seem unnatural or even impossible, particularly to young people.<\/p>\n

\u2014 When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BCE, he rewrote Egyptian history to make himself the son of the god Amun, the seniormost of the gods and arguably the one we acknowledge to this day when we end a prayer by invoking his name.
\u2014 Joseph Stalin removed purged officials from photographs, rewrote textbooks, and reshaped official government accounts of the Russian Revolution and WWI to magnify his own role.
\u2014 Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime taught a racialized version of German history that portrayed Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and other racial and political minority groups as enemies and Germany as the victim of a \u201cstabbed in the back\u201d betrayal after World War I.
\u2014 Mao Zedong oversaw repeated revisions of Chinese history, especially after the Cultural Revolution, with history textbooks and official records regularly being edited or radically changed to meet his political needs. To this day, for example, they\u2019ve elided the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
\u2014 Even small-timers like Saddam Hussein do this; he linked himself to ancient Mesopotamian rulers and promoted a personality cult through museums, monuments, giant banners with his face on them hanging from federal buildings, and school curricula.<\/p>\n

The simple reality is that in democracies it\u2019s historians, journalists, courts, archives, universities, and scholars who write history and can challenge official narratives. Debate is expected, and interpretations can change as new evidence comes to light, like we saw here recently with the 1619 Project.<\/p>\n

In dictatorships, on the other hand, the state typically monopolizes education, media, and archives, suppresses competing interpretations of history, and punishes those who publicly contradict the official version.<\/p>\n

All of which is why it\u2019s so important that we don\u2019t treat the efforts by Trump and his neofascist lickspittles to rewrite America\u2019s history into a sanitized white male supremacist mold as if it\u2019s just some sort of aberration or sick joke. <\/p>\n

This is serious stuff, and serious people within this administration are dedicated to destroying our and \u2014 particularly \u2014 our children\u2019s<\/em> understanding of the truly revolutionary and progressive history of this nation. <\/p>\n

They\u2019re trying to induce a national amnesia, stretching back through the history of the Klan, the Civil War, and even the American Revolution.<\/p>\n

We must push back against them boldly and loudly, and when they\u2019re gone we\u2019re going to have a huge job cleaning up the fascist mess they\u2019re making.<\/p>\n

Read more Iowa Republican\u2019s \u2018humble\u2019 fa\u00e7ade crumbles under extravagant mansions and a private jet<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump targets the Smithsonian with warnings of “inaccurate information,” deploying a classic authoritarian tactic to rewrite American history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe surreal plot behind Trump\u2019s new Smithsonian labels - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4238\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The surreal plot behind Trump\u2019s new Smithsonian labels - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trump targets the Smithsonian with warnings of "inaccurate information," deploying a classic authoritarian tactic to rewrite American history.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=4238\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-01T12:37:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/a4840e0eb2094ec31aed2107d53108b3\"},\"headline\":\"The surreal plot behind Trump\u2019s new Smithsonian labels\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-01T12:37:07+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238\"},\"wordCount\":1057,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/4745b2ffee386455ce331f9ffc120d9b.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/nextaddressamerica.com\\\/?p=4238\",\"name\":\"The surreal plot behind Trump\u2019s new Smithsonian labels - 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