We have finally reached the point in fascism where human atrocities are too bad to be mentioned in history books, but not that bad at all. This week, Herr President raised an issue with the Smithsonian, a bastion of American curation, depicting slavery as bad. The question still remains, if slavery was not bad, if the theft, rape and forced labor of millions of people for several centuries is not bad, then what perhaps is?
Well, dead school children isn’t that bad according to the actions of Republicans, either, so who really knows where the bar sits.
White politicians actually know slavery is that bad. They even know slavery was a mistake, but to acknowledge the nefariousness of slavery would put a question mark behind ‘white leadership,’ instead of where a period normally goes. It would be questioned if white people being the default leaders is just. While Ron DeSantis is calling slaves “helpers” and Oklahoma is making new teachers from out of state, specifically California and New York, pledge their allegiance to conservatism, the United States is not even in the top 10 in literacy. They aren’t actually focusing on education, but rather miseducation.
White conservative lawmakers are making reading that much more difficult, because they don’t like what happens when people read the past under white leadership and question the future under it. Imagine telling the Smithsonian that they are focusing too much on the Holocaust being bad. The argument that slavery, a pernicious bitch with offspring just as terrible as their mother, isn’t so bad is also an attempt to diminish the calls for reparations while simultaneously preserving the traditions and the legacy of the Confederacy.
What part of slavery is good?
When white people use, “go back to Africa,” as some sort of insult, it is a glaring reminder that not only do they think they have the right to dictate where Black people belong, but that they are doing Black people some sort of favor due to the less than favorable conditions of certain African countries, leaving out the part where these countries were decimated and are still being negatively affected by colonization. Trump’s argument that the Smithsonian is focusing too much on the bad parts of slavery leaves room for someone to think there were good parts of slavery. There is no good part of human trafficking. There is no good part of rape. There is no good part of forced labor. There is no good part of genocide. Trump’s dictatorship and assault on academia started with him pulling millions in funding from colleges and universities he deemed “too woke,” essentially punishing any institution of higher learning or knowledge that has the potential to hold a mirror up to his face.
Trump isn’t the only despotic loser leader in history who has taken umbrage with museums and other institutions where academia and art meld. It is widely known that Hitler didn’t get into art school, and that among many things was part of his villain origin story. He was really a hater in many facets.
During his reign of terror, he collected more than 20,000 works of art and toured them around Germany. Now, one might think this was actually a display of supporting the arts, but in actuality, the tour, named Entartete Kunst, Degenerate Art, was an attempt to mock contemporary artists of the time and to dictate what he thought was suitable German culture. He and Trump are not alone, and attacking museums and art is keenly fascist. According to the Guardian, Stalin executed Ukrainian folk poets and required art to be of cultural allegiance to Russia. Pinochet of Chile arrested, tortured and exiled muralists.
Art has always been the greatest mouthpiece of the oppressed; you can’t hear someone’s voice if you’ve covered their mouth.
