Right-wing nationalists are marching into the future by rewriting the past
Just weeks before losing his bid for reelection, President Donald Trump went to the National Archives to launch his quixotic 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic” education. There, he styled himself as the defender of “centuries of tradition” that culminated in the U.S. Constitution, which was “the fulfillment of a thousand years of Western civilization.” That tradition was under assault, he said, by an all-pervasive radical left, including corporate boardrooms, statue-smashing “mobs” of protesters on the streets and insidious educators in classrooms who “try to make students ashamed of their own history.”
“We are here today to declare that we will never submit to tyranny,” Trump said. “We will reclaim our history and our country.”
The 1776 Commission, widely derided by American historians, was unceremoniously scrapped the moment Trump left the White House. But Trump’s grandstanding over U.S. history is now a central plank in the GOP strategy to reclaim Congress in this year’s midterm elections. It has already helped Republicans to victories, notably in Virginia, where new Gov. Glenn Youngkin has promised to purge schools of “divisive” attempts to examine the legacies of racial injustice and white supremacy in U.S. history.
And well beyond the United States, nationalists of various stripes are seeking ammunition in the past for their battles in the present. The question of history — or, more precisely, how it should be remembered — courses through global politics. The context varies in each country, but increasing numbers of right-wing parties and nationalist leaders are staking their claims to power as defenders of a glorious past under attack from enemies within.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinions-right-wing-nationalists-are-marching-into-the-future-by-rewriting-the-past/ar-AATK3xx
