Clarence Page: Is the Smithsonian racist? MAGA makes a case in Newspeak

If you haven't heard that the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History is a hotbed of "anti-White activism," "illegal alien activism," and "transgender activism," the Trump administration and its MAGA allies in Congress have some news for you.

You can read all about it in what news accounts have called a “scathing” 162-page report released July 4 by the White House. It accuses the museum and its leaders of presenting a "radical view" of American history.

Such was the language used by Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, in his opening remarks to a hearing titled “Rewriting American History: Examining the Smithsonian’s Efforts to Reshape the Past,” although the “reshaping” amounted to a few choice sound bites.

Burchett claimed the National Museum is pushing radical left-wing narratives, a view that echoed President Donald Trump’s earlier claims, but I cannot confirm that Trump has ever read a book, including his own.

Burchett also noted that these narratives are driven by National Museum Director Anthea Hartig, who believes that history is a “prime tool of social justice” — as if that’s a bad thing.

MAGA's rhetorical lexicon is full of terms the movement has appropriated from the left, such as “social justice,” which they endow with axiomatically bad connotations. “Social justice warriors” rank next to “wokeness” among the threats supposedly posed by the left.

Seeing lawmakers meet to decide whose version of history is permissible reminds me of what the scholarly Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about censorship. It “reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime.” Heaven help us.

Although the Smithsonian Institution oversees dozens of museums and libraries, plus galleries, historical landmarks and the national zoo, the White House report particularly takes aim at its National Museum of American History.

The report accuses the museum’s leadership of adopting "an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens."

That’s pretty grim, and I’m sure President Trump approves. It's quite a novel way to look at the institution, in my view, and I say that having made countless visits with friends and family over the years.

The report is written in language designed to conceal as much it reveals. It reminds me, as bureaucratic documents often do, of the rules and manufactured “truth” decreed by Big Brother in the authoritarian “Newspeak” of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

Gems like "anti-White activism" and "illegal alien activism" don't rise to Orwell's artfulness, but they are Newspeak nonetheless.

It's nonsense. But it excites cohorts of voters to your side, and depending on how you play it and which podcasters you enlist in the effort, it can gel into a political orthodoxy.

And when your polls are sinking, as Trump’s have been, and midterm calamity appears to be coming for the ruling party, another insult will do in a pinch.

Museum Director Hartig cordially answered questions from two separate House committees about what the report describes as the “ideological capture” of the Smithsonian. More Newspeak.

To their credit, some Democrats pushed back on the GOP Newspeak with blazing rhetoric of their own.

“Welcome to the Republicans’ white pride rally disguised as a Congressional hearing,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas declared at the proceeding.

Alas, such frankness is why a lot of Republicans were happy to see her gerrymandered out of her district. Straight talk has its value — when people are ready to hear it.

History is to be argued, a scholarly history teacher taught us in grade school. A lot of Americans, for example, still believe the South won the Civil War, she said. Or should have.

And that’s why, even if the study and practice of historical scholarship is inherently political, it should not follow rules set by hardball partisan politics. Historical debates between scholars can be contentious enough without the interference of the House DOGE Subcommittee.

Diversity is our strength, as I long have long maintained, although MAGA militants deem that little chestnut to be heresy. (Are you listening, Stephen Miller?)

A lot of my diverse fellow Americans believe a wide variety of versions of history. The challenge of maintaining the peace between all those views is enormous and never-ending, especially in these times when the internet offers cheap and accessible platforms to all manner of supposed authorities, whether in reality they are charlatans or actual scholars.

"For more than 180 years, the Smithsonian has served the American public with nonpartisan and independent scholarship, and we remain committed to doing so," a museum spokesperson said.

Good. History is about the future, wise teachers have told me, not just the next election.

(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)