While the right’s war on history is distinct from its war on DEI, the two are connected. To justify the extermination of DEI efforts, the right is crafting a faerie tale version of history. One part of the strategy is to eliminate or downplay the history of racism, sexism and classism in the United States. If pressed, folks on the right might allow that slavery did exist or that, at one time, women could not vote. But they will also claim that slavery was not that bad (and even had good features) and some would even claim that it was good that women could not vote and that we should return to that practice. Those who admit the existence of past wrongs will assert that most (if not all) of the negative consequences remain in the past and that everything is mostly fine now. Crudely put, the narrative is that racism and sexism (if they ever existed or were even bad) have been solved. As an example, my adopted state of Florida passed a law restricting what schools can teach about systematic racism and a law forbidding General Education classes from teaching that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the U.S. “and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.” Ironically, one might point out that these laws serve as more evidence that what they seek to deny is true. These efforts are aimed at whitewashing history.
The second part of the war on history is to downplay the success, accomplishments and contributions of minorities and women. For example, people at the Pentagon purged thousands of images showing minority and women war heroes and military firsts. As if to illustrate the absurdity of the purge, images of the Enola Gay (the name of the B-29 that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan) were purged, perhaps because the plane was seen as woke. Under Hegseth (who has been accused of domestic violence), the Pentagon has also been purging the ranks of minorities and women. These efforts are aimed at creating an illusory “history” in which women and minorities lack ability and merit. If pressed, some will allow rare exceptions, such as Dr. King and Madam Curie. To be fair and balanced, the right does allow that a few women (such as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem) and a few minorities (such as Clarence Thomas and Stephen Miller) can have merit.
When these two fronts of this war on history are combined, it creates a counterfactual history in which any discrimination or oppression lie in the past (and were not really all that bad) and women and minorities have accomplished little, if anything. This narrative can then be used to attack DEI efforts. The “reasoning” is that there is no meaningful legacy of discrimination to address, no current discrimination to rectify, and that women and minorities have always received fair consideration. With the successes, accomplishments and contributions of women and minorities purged, it appears that they simply lacked merit. And, of course, still lack merit. Again, to be fair and balanced, those erasing history do allow that some select women and minorities do have merit, but they are the rare exceptions. They are either safely dead or, if alive, exist to serve and praise Trump.
Under this fiction, DEI was, at best, trying to solve non-existent problems and, at worst, aimed at discriminating against white men. And thus, the elimination of DEI is “justified” by a fictionalized history in which past discrimination against and the success of women and minorities is erased. The myth of merit is then advanced, with the Trump regime making the patently absurd claims that people like Trump and Hegseth earned their way through life by merit. Trump, of course, received millions from his father and Hegseth is widely regarded as unqualified by experts. One can also point to Dr. Oz, RFK Jr. and Linda McMahon as woefully unqualified officials in a regime that harps about “merit.” In closing, if there was any merit to their anti-DEI arguments, the right would not need to whitewash and erase history.