Trump’s attack on the Smithsonian marks an astonishing new low

Decreeing by executive order that America’s most famous museum remove exhibits that present a ‘divisive narrative’ and ‘distorted ideology’ has echoes with the darkest moments in history, says Sean O’Grady

Donald Trump and his gang spend a good deal of time ranting about the obviously mythical “extreme radical-left Marxists” who’ve been running the United States for the past few decades. Yet the Maga movement is just as extreme and dogmatic as any socialist cult – and is currently engaged in a “long march through the institutions” of America.

In Trump’s latest executive order, he targets the Smithsonian Institution, a semi-autonomous cultural and scientific organisation in Washington, DC, that has offended the thought police of the White House.

So far from permitting the Smithsonian to go about its educational and research work as it sees fit, using the money Congress has voted for it to do so in that traditional, independent, non-partisan manner, Trump has signed a decree placing that noted scholar vice-president JD Vance in charge of “removing improper ideology” from its various works, from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, (which you imagine the Maga mob resent for even existing), to, presumably, the creatures in the zoo under threat of extinction from habitat loss and climate change. (Whoops, got a bit “improper” with the science there…).

It was the Italian-Marxist intellectual Antonio Gramsci who came up with the concept that it wasn’t enough for revolutionaries – and that is what Trumpites are – to just run the government. Instead, they have to extend their reach through every nook of cultural, business, educational, legal and social life. The phrase “long march” to describe this ideological struggle may have been coined by the German communist activist Rudi Dutschke in the European ferment of the late 1960s, and endorsed by Herbert Marcuse, another radical thinker, but it describes pretty accurately what the Trumpites are up to.

It is nothing less than the slow imposition of a totalitarian worldview on a nation, and you can hear it all the time – that to be anything other than Maga in America right now renders you unpatriotic or even a traitor.

You may recall, for example, Vance’s remark a few years ago, when he recalled Richard Nixon at his most paranoid, that “the professors are the enemy”. Last summer, Vance – in a way, a more formidable and consistently dangerous figure than the mercurial Trump – expressed his admiration for the authoritarian Viktor Orban in Hungary, and called for the “de-woke-ification” of schools: “Well, you do what Viktor Orban has done in Hungary, which is basically say: ‘You’re not allowed to teach critical race theory anymore, you’re not allowed to teach critical gender theory anymore … You’re not allowed to do those things and get a dollar of federal money or a dollar of state money.’”

Fair enough, you may think. And it is exactly the same mechanism – the power of the purse – that is being wielded, unconstitutionally, to coerce every agency across the American state. Yet what is really happening is a denial of free speech and the imposition of a kind of Maga ideology on people who don’t want or need it.

That, sadly, now includes the Smithsonian. In the tendentious words of Trump’s executive order: “Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology. This shift has promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”

What we are seeing here is an example of rule by decree, ie laws promulgated by one man, made without recourse to Congress or effective legal oversight, and seemingly without much resistance. In many cases, they have explicit ideological force and are presented and defended with the zeal of a revolutionary cadre. It is a takeover, one by one, of every conceivable centre of resistance, even criticism, to this lawless drive to authoritarian rule under the spurious guise of “the will of the people”.

The president has opened up so many fronts in his struggle for supremacy that it makes it impossible for the normal checks and balances of the constitution to operate. He’s attacked and cowed the media. He’s co-opted the tech giants to his project. As Joe Biden warned, America is becoming an oligarchy again. Sackings of the chiefs of the defence staff, inspectors general and justice department lawyers have tightened his regime of personal rule.

Trump denigrates independent judges by asking how many swing states they won – which is as absurd as it is effective. He has long since captured the Republican Party and, with it, the legislature. The Democrats are beaten and supine, and last year, as if in preparation for his return, conferred wide executive privilege on a president breaking the law in pursuit of his duties. Trump is not a dictator in the traditional sense, but he is developing a parallel, fourth, personal arm of government to those enshrined in the constitution, and driving an isolationist, protectionist, nativist, nationalist, populist agenda that resembles others in this modern breed of authoritarian – Orbán, Erdogan, Xi, the despots of the Gulf, and, indeed, Putin. He doesn’t need stormtroopers in jackboots, gulags, Nazi salutes or crude propaganda if he controls the political, economic and cultural life of the nation. Which, increasingly, he does.

In the words of one of Trump’s most chilling postings, made on his very own Orwellianly-named “Truth Social” platform – and echoing Napoleon, no less – “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

As America approaches its 250th birthday and Trump, grotesquely, commandeers the celebrations, it is losing its fine republic and gaining an elected monarch. One day, with luck, when this nightmare is over, the Smithsonian will put on an exhibition explaining how it happened.