Authoritarians Love Whitewashing History. Trump’s Coming for Slavery First.

Slavery was America’s original sin. Erasing it is the hallmark of a regime, not a republic.

Donald Trump wants to make slavery great again. In a rant on Truth Social, Trump fumed:

The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of “WOKE.” The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen, and I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE. We have the “HOTTEST” Country in the World, and we want people to talk about it, including in our Museums.

I can’t believe I have to write this, but yes, slavery really was that bad. Worse than bad. It was a centuries-long system of forced labor, racial terrorism, family separation, rape, murder, and dehumanization. It was chattel slavery—the commodification of human beings—on a scale unmatched in the Western world. It was, without exaggeration, the greatest moral stain on American history. Saying otherwise only displays your ignorance and bigotry.

Moreover, we are still living with its consequences 160 years after Appomattox. From structural racism in housing and education, to disparities in wealth and health, to the persistence of white supremacist violence—the echoes of slavery are loud and clear today.

What Trump is demanding is historical erasure. He wants museums to present a sanitized story of America—one of “brightness” and “success,” stripped of the painful truths that don’t flatter his worldview. But history without its hard edges is propaganda. Museums don’t exist to flatter politicians. They exist to teach us who we were, so we can understand who we are, and chart a more honest course to who we want to be.

Contrary to what Trump wants you to believe, telling the truth about slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and ongoing racial injustice doesn’t diminish America’s story. It enriches it. Because the other side of that history is also resilience, survival, resistance, and the ongoing fight for freedom and equality. That story belongs in the Smithsonian too.

But Trump doesn’t want the full story told. He wants a whitewashed version, a Disneyland of national greatness where slavery was a footnote and the enslaved are invisible. In his mind, America’s museums should celebrate the “hottest country in the world” and keep quiet about the horrors that built its foundation.

That’s not patriotism. That’s dystopian authoritarianism.

When leaders start dictating which histories can be told and which must be buried, it’s not about museums anymore. It’s about controlling collective memory. It’s about shaping a future where the next generation forgets the crimes of the past—and is doomed to repeat them.

Here’s the dystopian truth: once a nation lets its leaders decide which truths can be spoken, history becomes whatever the strongman says it is. Today, it’s slavery being softened and sanitized. Then, it’s the Civil Rights Movement. Next, it’s January 6th recast as “patriotism.” The Holocaust never happened. The Earth is only 6,000 years old. And then one morning, we’ll wake up in a country where history isn’t a mirror but a weapon—wielded by those in power to keep us obedient, ignorant, and silent.

Slavery was horrible. To say otherwise is to engage in racist denialism in service of dangerous authoritarian power.

History should unsettle us. It should make us uncomfortable. It should remind us of our failures so we can live up to our ideals. That’s what it means to reckon honestly with the past. That’s what the Smithsonian does. And that’s exactly why Trump wants to shut it up.

We are backsliding at an alarming rate. If you aren’t horrified by it, you need to ask yourself—why not?