Aerial view of the National Museum of American History Photo: LOC
“There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.”
—Bob Avakian, Basics 1:1
On July 4th, the fascist Trump regime published a major “Report”—Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage.
The Smithsonian is a network of 21 museums in Washington, DC and around the U.S.—the largest such network in the world. Over 2 million people visit the National Museum of American History every year and it plays an important role in setting an orientation for American cultural and educational institutions.
The Smithsonian is supposed to be independent of government interference, but the fascist regime clearly feels it is too important for them to allow that. In fact, the attack on the Smithsonian is a major spearhead of an effort to impose a fascist narrative of U.S. history on society broadly. This is a narrative that denies, downplays or prettifies the massive world-historic crimes on which the U.S. was founded, especially the enslavement of millions of Africans and the genocide and land-theft of millions of native people, as well as the conquest of Mexico and other monumental outrages. By doing so it hopes to also cover up the continued reign of exploitation, white supremacy and plunder that are the bedrock features of U.S. capitalism-imperialism, and to deny or justify the continued oppression to which tens of millions are subjected.
So there is a great need to expose and oppose this, not only as an outrageous distortion of the past, but as a serious struggle over what the future will be.
A Major Report Aiming to Deny and Cover Up Historic Crimes
From the American Crime series:
From the American Crime series:
This “Report” claims that the Smithsonian’s American History museum has been “captured” and become a tool of “radical ideology.” Basically the Report’s accusation is that the Museum is blowing the history of oppression of Black, Native American and others wildly out of proportion, with the objective of “erasing” America’s “true” heritage as the fountain of individual rights, freedom and democracy.
This Report is the latest in a series of attacks by the regime, starting with Trump’s March 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which claimed that the leadership of the Smithsonian Institute had “come under the influence of race-centered ideology.”1 Then on August 19, 2025, Trump posted a Truth Social attack which claimed “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how bad our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,”and warned that “I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made. [Italics added]2”
And now this July 4th Report denounces the Museum for abandoning its “true mission” of casting American history as “the victory of freedom and genius of our country,” and instead presents
America as a problematic country irredeemably conceived, founded by deeply flawed men, and still operating today as an instrument of systemic racism and oppression. In the Museum’s current telling, the country is, above all, defined by white supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and systemic injustice. (Report page 2)
Despite the simple fact that that is the truth about America, the fascist report contrasts this with what the regime sees as the “mission” of the Museum—to paint a picture of “the victory of freedom and genius of our country.” (Report page 2)
It particularly targets Anthea Hartig—the first woman to head the museum (who is named 229 times in the report!). This is a way of intimidating not just one person, but anyone in a leadership position who opposes this fascist “vision” for the Smithsonian as an institute of blind American patriotism.
Importantly, this Report designates Vice President JD Vance as a Regent (a high ranking official) of the whole Smithsonian and mandates that he take strong measures to put a stop to this so-called attack on “America’s Heritage.”
The Report presents itself as an indictment of the Smithsonian for allegedly ignoring or twisting reality to serve their “anti-white” and “anti-American” ideology. But if you look through the Report it is actually a self-indictment of the regime, revealing its white supremacist determination to erase the real history of the U.S. with the lie that white people are the "victims." [For more on the white supremacist actions of this fascist regime, see below.]
See
RACISM—WHITE KIDS NEED TO LEARN ABOUT IT, by Bob Avakian.
These fascists are offended by the truth about the truly unspeakable horrors of the slave system, which for over two centuries shaped America’s rising power and wealth and its emerging culture. They are offended by the truth about the genocide of Native Americans, and other massive crimes of this country. They are offended by the truth about the founders of this country, many of whom owned human beings and built their wealth on a system of slavery and capitalist exploitation.
The fascist Report complains bitterly that the Smithsonian depicts Christopher Columbus (long glorified in the U.S. for “discovering” a land that was already inhabited by millions of people) as a “slaver” as well as a “killer,” “murderer” and “thief.” But, again, these are simple historical facts—Columbus both owned and traded slaves and then spearheaded the genocide that decimated the people and civilizations that he “discovered.”
The Report also makes these more sweeping denunciations:
In the Museum’s current telling, the country [the U.S.] is, above all, defined by white supremacy, slavery, conquest, exclusion, hierarchy, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and systemic injustice.…
And
[The museum paints a picture in which] the U.S. is not an enormous force for good but is rather an oppressive, imperialist nation that was “founded on the backs of African and…Indian slavery and genocide”… built on stolen land … and is irredeemably infected with “systemic racism” (See page 14 of report).
The fact is that the above characterizations accurately and truthfully describe extremely important, and in some ways defining, features of the U.S. from the time of its foundation right up to the present. The fascist Report cannot deny or refute this with truth, but they are attempting to crush this through threats, lies and force.
WHY Are the Fascists So Intent on Rewriting History?
This is not just a question of racism—though Trump is racist to the bone. (See Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist, by Bob Avakian.) There is something much deeper at work.
In “Humanity on the Brink,” (in the section subtitled The Problem: Capitalism-Imperialism—Confining and Force-Marching Humanity to Disaster, which deals with the many crises generated by this system and which this system is incapable of resolving in a positive way) the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian makes the following point:
Faced with a huge crisis of that very system [of capitalism-imperialism], the fascist section of this imperialist ruling class—Trump, Miller, Vance and all the rest—are on a mission to save that system through a fascist form of rule. In their view, a fascist form of rule—one rooted in blatant, open and violent white supremacy, in male domination of women and repression of LGBT people, and in open hatred and massive scapegoating of those they consider “foreigners”; one saturated in anti-scientific ignorance and theocratic fundamentalist Christianity; and one in which due process and civil liberties are essentially wiped out—[this in their view] is the only thing that can save the empire.
The rewriting of history is an ideological spearpoint of the drive to reorganize society on an OPENLY white supremacist, male supremacist basis. To realign society so that those who are not white Christian men are dehumanized, terrorized, and forced into a subservient position. This regime is working to create a society where the fascist leaders get to say what is “true” and then all the relevant institutions—colleges, museums, schools, news programs—fall in line or are forced in line. And there is a white supremacist fascist core that's being unleashed to enforce this new order. Further, if they succeed in consolidating fascism it will be their white washed history that generations will learn and come to believe.
Decent people really have to recognize what is being hammered into place in front of our very eyes, and how dangerous it is. And on that basis, to defend these institutions, and the various people who are trying to seriously engage U.S. history in the face of fascist attack.
In doing so, those same decent people need to stop clinging to their own myths about the history, and true nature, of America. In defiance of Trump's moves to rewrite history, we encourage and invite all those who hate Trump's vicious enforced ignorance to do some reading through our American Crime series. Go deeply into the truth the powers-that-be don't want you to know.
From THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (And Related Questions): INVENTIONS AND DISTORTIONS OF REALITY AND HISTORY—IN THE SERVICE OF REAL AND REPEATED ATROCITY, by Bob Avakian.
Read the full series HERE. The following is from Part 1: Profound Inequality, Brutal Oppression—and Crude Distortion of the Actual Foundation and Nature of this Country.
This is a fascist regime which is carrying out an all-sided attack against the changes that have been brought about as a result of the fight against white supremacy and segregation over the past 70 years and more—an attack which recently involved a decision by the Supreme Court that effectively gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
This is a fascist regime which actively spreads, and brazenly acts on, the ridiculous and outrageous lie that the real victims of discrimination in this country are somehow white people—when the reality (ceaselessly demonstrated in everyday life, and through countless scientific studies and investigations) is that segregation, discrimination and overall racist oppression continue, and continue to have terrible consequences, for Black people and others who have suffered the systemic, and often murderous, racism of this system—in housing, education, employment, health care, with police, courts and prisons—in every part of society.
This is a fascist regime which is using its power to blackmail and bludgeon universities and other institutions into doing away with programs (generally under the heading of DEI) whose stated purpose is to counter the effects of actual discrimination and racism.
This is a fascist regime that is aggressively restoring monuments to the Confederacy and reviving the celebration of Confederate “heroes”—which are nothing but monuments to and celebrations of slavery and lynch-mob white supremacy.
This is a fascist regime headed by Donald Trump—a crude white supremacist, whose history of blatant racism goes back decades, including discrimination against Black people in housing owned by his family. (In a series written during the first Trump regime, Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist,
This is the fascist regime in which Clarence Thomas is not merely a willing servant but an active force, overall and specifically in his role on the Supreme Court—with its rulings backing and facilitating white supremacy, as well as male supremacy (including with the overturning of the right to abortion), assaults on LGBT rights, and other outrageous rulings, including attacks on immigrants and on the separation of church and state, in the service of white Christian nationalism/fascism.