The push to #whitewash recent history carries a disconcerting echo of countless autocratic regimes,
from the Chinese Communist Party’s memory-holing of the Tiananmen Square massacre
to the Argentine military junta’s “disappearing” of dissidents in the 1970s.
It comes at the same time as the administration is also seeking to whitewash the teaching of American history, more generally:
Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 29 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling”
that threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that teach that the country is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory”
and instructs the government to
“prioritize federal resources, consistent with applicable law, to promote patriotic education.”
One wonders:
Would teaching the 1921 Tulsa massacre be allowed?
Further, the removal of a Department of Justice database is troubling for another reason, too:
It undermines our ability to consider the events of Jan. 6 in all their complexity and particularity.
https://www.propublica.org/article/january-6-erasure-doj-database-trump-history