In a recent newsletter, Paul Krugman compared the Trump administration’s anti-DEI (i.e., pro-racism & misogyny) efforts to China’s cultural revolution under Mao.
Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.
The Cultural Revolution was, of course, a huge disaster for China. It inflicted vast suffering on its targets and also devastated the economy. But the Maoists didn’t care. Revenge was their priority, never mind the effects on GDP.
As we’ve seen, China’s efforts failed–albeit not without years of unnecessary suffering. As I’ve previously opined, changing a nation’s culture rarely if ever works. But our would-be king–unhampered by anything suggesting intellect or competent appointees within his “administration,” is certainly trying to fulfill the most ardent wish of his MAGA base–taking American society back to the 1950s (or perhaps before), when women were pushing out babies and doing the dishes in the kitchen, and Black Americans were subject to segregation and confined to subservient positions.
That effort requires eliminating evidence of the worth and competence of women and Blacks. Accordingly, I did a search for federal websites that have been scrubbed of references to the contributions of women and black people.
Here’s what I found.
The Department of Defense undertook a significant purge of DEI-related content, resulting in the removal of profiles and articles about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, a Black Medal of Honor recipient; the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team; the Navajo Code Talkers (including profiles of Indigenous veterans; women veterans such as Lisa Jaster, the first female Army Reserve graduate of Ranger School); historical figures like Jackie Robinson, who served in the Army during World War II; the Tuskegee Airmen and Women Airforce Service Pilots; and notable gravesites of Hispanic and Black service members at Arlington National Cemetery.
Some content has been restored following public outcry, but many of those pages remain inaccessible .
NASA removed profiles of women and people of color from its website. The profile of Rose Ferreira, a Dominican-American intern, was taken down and later reinstated after public backlash. However, the restoration led to harassment directed at Ferreira, highlighting the challenges faced by individuals whose stories were previously celebrated .
The National Park Service revised its content to align with the administration’s directives. Those erasures included the removal of mentions of transgender individuals from articles about the suffragist movement; changing terminology from “LGBT” to “LGB” and omitting the word “queer;” altering language in articles about the Underground Railroad, including removing a quote and image of Harriet Tubman and the term “slavery.”
The Small Business Administration removed a photograph from its website depicting a diverse group of individuals, including women and people of color, in front of a whiteboard.
Other federal agencies that have complied include the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has removed content related to LGBTQ+ veterans; the Federal Trade Commission, which has deleted over 300 posts, including those reporting on antitrust actions against tech giants; and the State Department, which altered the language in international travel advisories, replacing “LGBTQ+” with “LGB” and omitting references to safety concerns for transgender Americans abroad.
I have no idea how many Americans visit these sites; certainly, the information that has been deleted is widely available elsewhere. (In the age of the Internet, erasure of information previously available is a pipe dream…) That said, these alterations provide additional evidence (as if we needed it) of the central preoccupation of the White Christian Nationalists and other assorted bigots who form the majority of MAGA adherents.
It remains to be seen whether those who supported Trump because he promised to reward their racism–to return them to social dominance– will be steadfast in that support despite the chaos and damage being done to the economy, public health, science, education and the rule of law, among other elements of accelerating collateral damage.
As Krugman admonished readers, looking for rational strategy in Trump’s hysterical assault on DEI and “woke-ism” (aka equality and humanity) is a fool’s errand. “Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.”
Mao couldn’t change his culture. I don’t think Trump will change America’s, either. But we’ll suffer while he tries.
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