“America First" is a nativist political
slogan and foreign policy doctrine that advocates prioritizing right wing economic,
political, and ideological interests of the United States above those of other
nations. The slogan dates back to the isolationist polices of Charles Lindburgh
and his America First Committee. In the lead-up to World War II, Lindburgh’s organization
supported Nazi Germany and wanted America to remain neutral.
The slogan has again gained wide acceptance in
the Trump administration. It is invoked to frame MAGA positions on immigration,
trade, international relations, and more recently, American history.
The MAGA concept of “America First” is being
utilized to bring about the end of accurate and honest portrayals of American history.
Historical narratives that do not support the MAGA “America (and Trump) can do
no wrong” agenda including the slaughter/displacement of Native Americans,
slavery, Jim-Crow laws, Japanese internment, “Black Lives Matter,” and “LGBTQ+
History” are being deliberately erased
from the public record.
Federal venues under the control of the Trump
administration have been sanitized of exhibits and documentation that reject the
nativist ideology of “America First.” Erroneous history has taken its place.
Recently on Truth Social, Trump announced: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL.
Everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and
how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been. 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.”
In addition, the conservative Heritage Foundation,
which has provided the Trump presidency with a detailed road map for his authoritarian
actions, has attacked the Smithsonian Museums for being a “disgrace to American
History.”
Political thinkers have long identified the
conditions that allow established democracies to transform into dictatorships. Unvarnished
modern history (the type Trump is attempting to eradicate) has taught us to
expect censorship of past events when an authoritarian regime gains power and
begins to remold society. The message is clear – the past does not repeat, but
it does instruct.
In the years preceding the
French Revolution, the French philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
was a fierce critic of unjust rule and was fundamentally against the absolute
rule by a single person. For Rousseau, a social contract, popular sovereignty, and equality were foundational to democracy. In his
Discourse on Inequality (1775) Rousseau gave us some prescient advice. He
argued that the progression of
inequality, fueled by greed, ultimately leads to despotism, a state where a
single ruler unjustly controls everyone.
Rousseau explains that “the many” are disadvantaged against “the
few” because they lack a single voice with which to protest. The many falls
into a trap because they come to feel they have no choice, that it is already
too late to resist. Rousseau understood that when the status quo gets you fed
and gives you protection, you have to be very brave to resist or to walk away. As Rousseau predicted, few Americans are
protesting Trump’s efforts to rewrite history.
Regarding the doctrine and foreign policy, in 1941, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt confronted Lindburgh’s America First Committee and its isolationist,
fascist, and anti-immigration policies with a better vision for the world. FDR
supported the founding principles of the United States with a commitment to
fight for freedom. He battled fierce conservative and
wealthy resistance as he sought to provide military support for Great Britain.
On October 22,
1941, Roosevelt gave a speech in opposition to America First, “We have wished
to avoid shooting, but the shooting has started. And history has recorded who
fired the first shot. All of us Americans are faced with the choice between the
kind of world we want to live in and the kind of world which Hitler and his
hordes would impose on us.” On December 7, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and
Germany declared war.
The former Yale
University historian Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom has
written extensively about Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of Russian history to support
his “Russian First” doctrine. Synder reports that Putin's regime systematically
distorts and suppresses the past to legitimize its rule. To enforce his version of history,
Putin's regime destroys Ukrainian archives. Russia has also passed "memory
laws" that criminalize honest discussion of the Soviet past, including
Stalin's crimes.
Putin invokes
the Stalin period to inaccurately paint Russia as a perpetual defender against
Nazism. This narrative is then used to frame modern-day Ukraine as a neo-Nazi
threat, despite its Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump was correct that something is out of control. However,
it is not our institutions of higher learning or our museums that cultivate
America’s fullest understanding
of itself. It is the threat of domestic authoritarianism on the one hand and a
return to failed nativist foreign policies on the other.
Trump’s America First is doing more than reshaping the
narrative of American history. Demanding a “patriotic civics education” that
emphasizes fictional American exceptionalism would be bad enough. However, the
Trump administration is also seeking to whitewash the President’s own sordid history
as the twice impeached instigator of the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol,
who became a convicted felon while out of office.
America First will prevent young students from developing a
truthful understanding of the past and its complexities. Before MAGA is done, the
damage will only intensify.
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