Donald Trump’s Cultural Revolution

NB: This is what the US did repeatedly to the rest of the world, remember? Whether led by Republican or Democratic Presidents. Now the land of hope and glory is self-destructing. Remember Joe BIden’s 30 billion dollars of arms aid to Israel and the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed with American bombs. Trump is the monster American nurtured in its sleeve. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame (Revelation 16:15). DS

The difference between this revolution and those in Germany, China, or Iran, is not of kind, but of degree, and only so far.

Ed Simon

Following the Trump administration’s May announcement that all international students at Harvard University — fully 27% of the student body — must either transfer or face deportation, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered an address justifying the government’s actions. There were eerie historical echoes to her statement blaming so-called anti-American radicalism at the nation’s colleges and universities; Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made a comparable remark about Iran’s institutions of higher education in 1980.

Similarly, it would be easy to imagine Iranian Minister of the Interior Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani’s 1980 declaration that there should be a ban on “activities of all political groups in universities” being uttered today by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy. Khomeini, in a 1981 radio address following his order to purge Iranian universities of “heretics,” thundered that “It is incumbent on both teachers and students … to do their best to identify corrupt elements and to cleanse schools of the dirt of these people.” And though it’s better composed than most Trump Truth Social posts, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that appearing on the president’s social media page.

The similarities between the sentiments of extremists in Iran’s government 45 years ago and the United States today are obvious, so much so that the chilling statement by Kevin Roberts, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation — that “we are in the process of a second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be” — is perfectly in the spirit of Khomeini.

Whether Otto von Bismarck’s Prussian Kulturkampf from 1871 to 1878 or Chairman Mao Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976, governments of both the right and left have occasionally implemented sweeping, oppressive, and frequently violent state-mandated social rebellions. Rather than simply altering political arrangements, a cultural revolution sees a nation go to war with itself. Under such a state, the government targets universities and media, museums and memorials. Marked by the negation and destruction of a nation’s institutions, such a process is by definition nihilistic. It is by nature anti-tradition, even if pursued by those on the right, whose conservatism has traded conservation for fervent authoritarianism.

Finally, despite being controlled by a central power, cultural revolutions are inevitably chaotic. Though Trump and Mao are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and few would confuse the United States president with the supreme leader of Iran, there are certainly leadership similarities. In The Cultural Revolution: A People’s History, 1962–1976 (2016), Frank Dikötter described Mao as “erratic, whimsical and fitful, thriving in willed chaos,” a leader who governed by instinct and improvization and who relished a “game in which he could constantly rewrite the rules … [where] people scrambled to prove their loyalty.” Sound familiar?

But Dikötter also writes that Mao was “cold and calculating,” as indeed the mavens of the Trump administration are, whether Bondi, Miller, or Roberts (or any number of others). Such disarray serves a purpose: A radical restructuring of all elements of America’s cultural life from higher education to the media. As legal battles are fought over words, so are cultural revolutions fought over aesthetics and imagery, over art. This is a noted departure from Trump’s first administration, wherein American cultural institutions, at least, functioned largely unhampered.

The second Trump administration has an even more apocalyptic orientation. The 900-page Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 labels those who disagree with its sweeping proposals to expand draconian laws policing individual liberties at the expense of welfare, including assaults on women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, labor rights, and free speech as “anti-American.” Its primary author, Russell Vought, the current and inordinately powerful director of the Office of Management and Budget, has bragged about how he wants those who fall under that label to feel “trauma.” The difference between this cultural revolution and those in Germany, China, or Iran, is not of kind, but of degree, and only so far….

After the truth-shower

Philosophy, history, literature, current affairs, and other stuff. Posted by Dilip Simeon

Donald Trump’s Cultural Revolution

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