Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth has been working additional time to revive the U.S. historical past that matches his—and MAGA’s—agenda.
And whereas Hegseth stated he and the remainder of the Trump administration are “proud of our history” and that they’re “done” with “tearing stuff down,” plainly solely applies to historical past that’s white, male, and straight.
Hegseth’s most up-to-date restoration push entails two monuments specifically: the Reconciliation Monument and a statue celebrating Accomplice Gen. Albert Pike.
Moses Ezekiel’s Reconciliation Monument, which was faraway from Arlington Cemetery in 2023, was erected in 1914, almost 50 years after the Civil Struggle ended, as a approach to commemorate the reconciliation between the North and the South. Nevertheless, critics have discovered the bronze statue’s carvings depicting slavery lower than heartwarming.
As for Pike’s statue, it was faraway from a Washington park in 2020 after being toppled by protesters however the Trump administration introduced on Tuesday that will probably be reinstalled.
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Hegseth has additionally restored the names of navy bases that after glorified Accomplice leaders, a few of whom have been slave house owners. Among the bases embody Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Benning in Georgia, and Fort Hood in Texas.
However at the same time as he has labored to revive the names of navy bases and controversial statues that critics say make gentle of slavery, Hegseth is attempting to erase historical past in different methods.
As Every day Kos has beforehand reported, Hegseth received straight to work after his controversial Senate affirmation to make it possible for the U.S. navy scrubbed its social media and web sites of any traces of range, fairness, and inclusion.
In flip, years of historic content material that includes girls and other people of colour vanished from official information within the identify of anti-DEI efforts.
However it wasn’t simply latest on-line content material that received the ax. In early March, the administration eliminated a picture of the historic B-29 bomber Enola Homosexual—simply because it included the phrase “Gay” within the identify.
The historic airplane pictured on the Pentagon’s web site dropped the primary atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, throughout World Struggle II.
In different phrases, as Hegseth complains concerning the left “erasing” historical past, the Trump administration is busy doing simply that.
