Trump Wants Us to "Review" Slavery. What’s Next? A Defense of Pedophilia?
Fascists don’t want history to be remembered for what it was, they want history turned into a bedtime story where the oppressed deserved it, the oppressors were visionaries, and the whole thing is just too complicated for mere mortals to judge.
Once again, Donald Trump has decided to educate us all about history. This time, the man who thinks Frederick Douglass is "doing an amazing job" now believes that the Smithsonian needs to stop being so negative about slavery. His actual concern? That museums might tell the truth a little too bluntly about a system that treated human beings like cattle, ripped families apart, and built the American economy on blood and chains.
According to Trump, we need to think carefully about “how bad” slavery really was, because apparently it’s rude to point out that America was founded on centuries of violent exploitation. Maybe, in his mind, slavery was just a “bad internship” that got a little out of hand. A character-building experience, if you will. After all, nothing says “land of the free” quite like forced labor camps and legal torture.
But let’s be honest: this is no accident. This is the classic authoritarian playbook. Fascists don’t want history to be remembered for what it was, they want history turned into a bedtime story where the oppressed deserved it, the oppressors were visionaries, and the whole thing is just too complicated for mere mortals to judge. They want “heritage” instead of facts — a glossy postcard instead of the truth.
And really, if Trump is going to stand at a podium and ask museums to massage slavery into something “less divisive,” where does that end? Should we teach kids that Jim Crow was just about “different lifestyles”? Maybe the Holocaust was simply an ambitious urban renewal project? At the rate Trump’s going, don’t be surprised if his next line is that pedophilia or sexual assault “aren’t always so bad” and that we should be more open to different “perspectives.”
This isn’t just tone-deaf. It’s dangerous. It’s an effort to warp collective memory so that white supremacy and cruelty can be rebranded as harmless quirks of history. It’s about telling future generations that the real crime isn’t slavery — it’s daring to say slavery was as monstrous as it was.
So no, we don’t need museums to “review” how bad slavery was. We need them to push even harder, to show every ugly detail, every whip mark, every broken family, every name and story that was buried under centuries of silence. If Trump finds that “too negative,” then all the better. Because history isn’t supposed to soothe the feelings of the oppressors. It’s supposed to honor the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the powerful.
Raquel Coronell Uribe