#historical-revisionism

#historical-revisionism

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) accused President Donald Trump on Thursday of trying to whitewash history after workers removed slavery exhibits near Philadelphia's Independence Hall. That afternoon, workers from the National Park Service were seen dismantling exhibits at the President's House in Independence National Historical Park. Those exhibits, as many have pointed out, all involved the subject of slavery. The National Park Service has started dismantling exhibits about slavery at the President's House in Independence National Historical Park.

A new vision for the United States is being forced into place - one rooted not in liberty or justice, but in subjugation and the quiet normalization and acceptance of fascism. You can see it in the memes, the slogans, and the curated nostalgia flooding social media accounts aligned with the Trump administration. You can see it in the way frontier and 1950s iconographies have returned not as history but as aspiration.

In recent weeks China has released a series of statements, articles and photos, that analysts say signal an escalation in the ruling Chinese Communist Party's approach to Taiwan. Beijing claims Taiwan as a province and has vowed to annex it under what it terms reunification. China's military is not believed to be capable of a full invasion yet, but senior officials have recently started using sharper language.

Although a lot of medieval history is murky, the whys and wherefores - not to mention the timeline - of the Hundred Years' War are firmly nailed down. Or are they? This week, Danièle speaks with Michael Livingston about why the Hundred Years' War should actually be called the Two Hundred Years' War, what actually touched off the conflict, and why we should question everything.

The big picture: The decision follows the Trump administration's re-interpretation of civil rights laws and history to focus on " anti-white racism". The administration has been purging and rewriting federal web pages' stories about slavery and discrimination, and President Trump has ordered a review of Smithsonian museums. Trump issued a March executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," to fight "concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history," as he argues.

Eight months ago, if you said that the second coming of MAGA would, in broad daylight, wheel the Confederacy back in, you would have been called an alarmist. It would have seemed like overblown anxieties typical of the antiracist wingnuts or the woke to say that those who sought to make America great again would, like the first MAGA movement, the Redeemers, attempt to re-stage slavery.

Trump said that the "Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL" on Truth Social earlier this week.

"There are very few people alive today who experienced the war in any of these countries, but I do not think they will ever stop talking about it because it is an effective tool with which to bash Japan," said Hiromichi Moteki, chairman of the Tokyo-based Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact, which promotes an alternative narrative of Japan's actions during World War II.

Historians and researchers who have seen early drafts say the new texts gloss over these events, and also appear to downplay and omit major human rights violations, including the killings of up to half a million suspected communists from 1965-6, and mass rapes targeting ethnic Chinese during the riots that led to the fall of Suharto in 1998.

"This is an attempt to rewrite history, whitewash history. Eliminate the stories of critical contributors to history," said Dennis Arguelles with the National Parks Conservation Association.