The New York Times: In his first term, President Trump took issue with some actors, arts funding and the media. In his second, he has hit the accelerator. Changing what Americans see and hear at their national museums, their performance spaces and on television is now at the core of his agenda. Mr. Trump views it as an effort to return to a lost vision of national greatness, one that seeks to “remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage.” Critics regard it as a nostalgic, reductive whitewashing. Here are five areas where the Trump administration has tried to reshape American culture.
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A hallmark of fascist regimes over the course of history has been the effort by the state to control arts and media. Museums, architecture, TV, and theater are all mediums of free expression that, for a totalitarian regime, become liabilities for resistance messaging. Revising the historical narrative, and then controlling the narrative that is currently evolving, is the most important tactic for maintaining in control of people in a fascist regime and silencing dissenting voices. As the attack on media and culture continues to evolve in this country, its important to recognize what you’re looking at and recognize propaganda. Its also important to know who made what you’re looking at, who funded it, and who it is meant for. In a similar vein, I think its incredibly important that individuals keep creating independently and collaborating within their communities. It is very important that independent art continue to be created a shared, so that propagandized and controlled media does not become the only voice.
I mean I think it's no surprise that Trump and his administration has been so aggressively attacking arts and media in America. Art and media have always been key ways of influencing people and shaping narratives in our society. I think about George Orwell's novel, 1984, and how a huge part of the dictatorship and totalitarian government revolved around controlling media and narratives, especially ones about history and art. Art is especially threatening to governments that seek to control their citizens because art has always been a type of free expression and free expression means people disagreeing with you. I think the Trump administration's attack on the Federal Communications Commission is especially telling of their need for controlling the narrative. We are in an age of mass instant communication, which means it's becoming easier and easier for people to disagree with the government and I think that scares the Trump Administration so they are attacking Arts to try and regain control of their constituents. I think the current Administration is desperate for control because they know that they're losing constituents fast and they are grasping at straws to keep their constituents loyal.
The United States is really in a tumultuous period in its history. Aside from the atrocities the current administration is committing, they also seek to control the narrative around those atrocities. One of the administration’s key goals has certainly been to change the landscape of American media and culture, slowly turning once grand institutions like the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian Institution into disgraces as he forces their administrators to adopt their fascist agenda. While this won’t kill American theatre and free speech within America, it will certainly harm it. The real impact here isn’t how much art is getting made across the country, the impact is the smothering of the spread of art. It will continue to circulate within communities that actively seek it out, but the general public will be exposed less to ideas that the government doesn’t want to spread. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.
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