The 1776 Commission proposed by President Trump to counter the New York Times’ 1619 Project and other “narratives about America being pushed by the far left”, is not the equivalent of Australia’s conservative versus liberal history wars. It is about something far more dark.
At the speciously labelled ‘White House Conference on American History’, Trump defended “the legacy of America’s founding, the virtue of America’s heroes, and the nobility of the American character”. He attacked the “twisted web of lies in [America’s] schools and classrooms” pushed by radical-left forces. Declaring the US Constitution in 1787 was “the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization”, he told his audience, it was “the product of centuries of tradition, wisdom, and experience”. He warned of “the left-wing cultural revolution [that] is designed to overthrow the American Revolution”.
In his attack on teaching of history in American schools, Trump singled out Jewish-American historian Howard Zinn, claiming his books made “students ashamed of their own history”. The “narratives about America being pushed by the far-left”, he said, bear “a striking resemblance to the anti-American propaganda of our adversaries — because both groups want to see America weakened, derided, and totally diminished”.
Critical race theory, and the 1619 Project, Trump proclaimed, were “toxic propaganda, ideological poison that, if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together. It will destroy our country”. It is “urgent that [America] finally restore patriotic education to our schools”; education that ensures “[America’s] youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all of their soul”.
It’s clear that Trump’s project is not about history at all. It is a denial of history. It is not about identifying and interpreting historical evidence; the process of posing questions, research, analysis, hypothesis forming, and intellectual debate and scrutiny in an effort to understand the past.
He won’t find works for his new patriotic canon among the scholarly literature. His absurd contention that “America’s founding set in motion the unstoppable chain of events that abolished slavery, secured civil rights, defeated communism and fascism” won’t find any support from legitimate academics. Quite the contrary. But, Trump is unlikely to care as facticity is not his concern.
The most recent works on the history of the South, including slavery, post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow segregation and miscegeny laws, and the civil rights movement would not fit his purpose. Nor would much of the history of the West, especially the Indian Wars and native dispossession, or the popularity of laws banning Chinese and Japanese immigration. Studies of issues like segregation of the armed forces during WW2 or the widespread resort to lynching would be avoided. Certainly works on the US enthusiasm for eugenics in the late-19th and early 20th centuries would be shunned.
The well-documented histories of the Reconstruction, Gilded Age, Progressive, Cold War and post-Cold War periods don’t accord with Trump’s view. Post-war historians have increasingly moved racism, sexism, class, imperialism, and nativism to the centre of the American story, alongside the white male capitalists, soldiers, and politicians. In fact, very little, if any, of the scholarly work written since the Second World War would make Trump’s syllabus.
Trump’s address, however, hits on a number of themes that are not explicit but which are there for those who are predisposed to look for and to find them. Because schools teach American history from a similar set of textbooks, the conspiracy theorists will believe this is evidence of behind the scenes coordination with malign intent by some improbably well-organised, ubiquitous, insidious “left”.
White supremacists will hear words sympathetic to their cause in Trump’s criticism of race studies and his downplaying of slavery’s lasting impact on American society and law. Extreme nationalists will respond to the appeal to “Western Civilization”, and to the proposition that anyone who doesn’t agree with Trump’s version of patriotism are as good as in league with foreigners and enemies. The call to “restore patriotic education” will appeal to those who feel that the US has fallen from some more glorious past and who seek a restoration. Trump appeals to a minority, but a non-trivial and active one.
In the short-term Trump’s project is about cementing-in the various elements of these core supporters in advance of the election. In the longer term it’s about the future not the past. Trump is surveying the battlefield and planting the landmines for the future struggle, where enemies will be marked by political, racial and class differences, and patriotism is evidenced in a belief in conspiracies, and displayed in repression of dissent. Even if he loses the election, the 1776 Commission is evidence that America will remain deeply and passionately divided beyond Trump’s presidency.
For non-Americans, the 1776 Commission is the denouement of all the bizarre notions that have populated Trump’s seemingly random and disjointed dialogue throughout the four years of his performance as president. His announcement was a not very well-disguised panegyric for a white nationalist agenda that denies systemic racism and vilifies those who pursue truth as unpatriotic. The address cleverly inverts ideas of dissent and free speech to denigrate those who oppose his ideological approach to brainwashing children, and which adopts the mantle of victimhood for the dominant class.
The histories that Trump doesn’t want everyone to read detail why and how the US is different and unique, but not in a way he would appreciate. In fact one such book, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (2020) by Heather Cox Richardson, sets out an historical explanation of the phenomenon of Trump and his ideology.
Trump’s defeat won’t stop the struggle for America. History will continue to be a crucial weapon in overcoming the threat his ideas pose.
Mike Scrafton was a Deputy Secretary in the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment, senior Defence executive, CEO of a state statutory body, and chief of staff and ministerial adviser to the minister for defence.
Comments
9 responses to “Will Trump’s rejection of history divide America?”
Sir,
Thank you once again for such an excellent article. I have truly wondered whether Trump and others of his ilk in Australia who appeal to Western Civilisation for self-aggrandizement ever really immerse themselves in the study of Western Civilisation and glean from them the essence of what is best about their own culture. I would say, from the perspective of an Easterner with perhaps a leg (or more) in the Western world, that one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilisation was the historical battle for the right to dissent. This is in direct contradiction to the ideas about Western Civilisation of those who appeal to it. Without dissenting voices, there would be no Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment. Among the dissenting voices were ecclesiastical ones like Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther. In the world of science there was Copernicus and Galileo. For a great book on that subject, I would recommend a book titled “The First Freedom: A History of Free Speech” by Robert Hargreaves (2002).
I really believe that a civilisation dies when there is no new and fresh ideas. I also believe that the US has only been rich and powerful because it had a constant flow of migrants into the country bringing new ideas and talent. Parochialism is like incest. It weakens the intellectual ability of the host, making navel-gazing its sole preoccupation; regarding any ideas that are different as threatening and unpatriotic.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
So, will Trump begin the process by burning certain books?
Burning liberal pseudo-history literature is eminently worth doing. No. Hang on. Lets be environmentally friendly – lets pulp them and re-fashion them into egg-cartons. That will be a better use of their paper.
Please enlighten us on what you think liberal pseudo history is.
Leon,
Like you I wish to ask Mary Joy what is liberal pseudo history? One of my undergrad majors was history. I taught High school/college history for 3 decades.This sort of nonsense coming from the extreme right in the U.S. and here in Australia worries me . Please stop trying to re invent history!
Just ONE classic contemporary example of liberal pseudo-history is Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe. There is not one strand of Aboriginality in the Pascoe DNA, nor, as Geoffrey Blainey has declared, is there one shred of evidence in Pascoe’s claim for Aboriginal. It is all a farrago of lies. And the liberal Professors have been completely duped by it – to be Politically Correct.
Sorry Mary Joy but I am still lost?
This response by Mary Joy exemplifies that about which Mike writes. There is historical evidence to support Bruce Pascoe’s “Dark Emu”. Furthermore, Pascoe’s aboriginality is not the issue and it does not reflect credit upon anyone to comment upon it in this context, especially as the validity of historical scholarship is not contingent upon the ethnicity of the researcher. The question is whether the work is sufficiently researched and sourced to draw valid conclusions – which it clearly is.
Also, “The Biggest Estate on Earth” by Bill Gammage was acknowledged by Pascoe in writing and researching “Black Emu”. Both of these award winning works consult historical documents to draw out the nature of aboriginal land management that was evident during and after early settlement by Europeans.
Humanity has a short memory – it all happened before