Trump’s America Is Orwell’s 1984: Dismantling Libraries and Museums to Control the Narrative
By Janet Kira Lessin with Minerva
In George Orwell’s 1984, truth is not objective. Facts are rewritten. History is erased. And language is weaponized to manipulate minds and manufacture consent. In Donald Trump’s America, we are watching that dystopia unfold—not on a page, but in real time.
The recent executive order by Trump to dismantle agencies like the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) isn’t just a budgetary move. It’s a calculated assault on memory. On knowledge. On reality itself.
The Past Must Be Forgotten
In 1984, the Ministry of Truth does the opposite of its name: it falsifies records, rewrites history, and deletes any trace of inconvenient truths. Trump’s attempt to shutter public institutions that archive, preserve, and teach history is chillingly similar.
Libraries hold our books, newspapers, and digital records—testimonies to who we are and where we’ve been. Museums house artifacts and exhibits that ground us in cultural memory. If you want to control a society, what better place to start than by erasing its past?
Who Controls the Past…
Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Trump’s movement is obsessed with controlling the present narrative: banning books, censoring school curricula, and eliminating institutions that preserve context. This is not coincidental—it’s the strategy of totalitarianism.
If the population has no access to accurate history, they become more susceptible to propaganda. People forget what was promised, what was violated, and what was lost. Reality becomes whatever the powerful say it is.
Doublespeak in Action
Trump doesn’t need a Ministry of Truth. He is the Ministry. His contradictions—”I love the Constitution” while calling for its suspension—are pure doublespeak. When he praises libraries one week and slashes their funding the next, he trains the public to accept cognitive dissonance as normal. Language becomes a smokescreen.
His supporters repeat phrases like “election integrity,” “patriotism,” and “freedom,” while cheering actions that undermine democratic institutions, civil rights, and historical understanding. These words no longer mean what they once did. They are Orwellian shells—familiar on the outside, hollow within.
Erasing Culture to Install a New One
The goal of Orwell’s Party was not only to control people but to replace human values with blind obedience. By defunding arts, education, and memory-keeping institutions, Trump’s administration opens the way for ideological indoctrination. When people don’t know their roots, they’re easier to reprogram.
This is not simply ignorance. This is engineered amnesia.
Resistance Is Remembering
We must fight not just to keep these institutions alive, but to recognize what their destruction represents. Every library closed is a wall built in the Ministry of Truth. Every museum shuttered is a memory erased. Every curriculum censored is a future rewritten.
This isn’t theoretical. This is now.
History is under attack. Memory is being deleted. But we are the counterforce.
So remember this: The future depends on those who preserve the past.
Related Articles in This Series – The Deadly Cost of MAGA Rule:
- More Proof Trump Is a Draco: Only an Alien Would Dismantle Libraries and Museums
- We the People vs. the New Kings: Standing Up to Modern Tyranny
- The Billionaire Class vs. the Working World: A New Age of Servitude
- MAGA’s War on Women: From Rights to Reproductive Chains
- Modern-Day Plantation: Prisons, Profits, and the New Slavery
- Who Owns America? The Battle Over Land, Labor, and Law
- Book Burners and Truth Killers: The Assault on Knowledge
- The Second Civil War Is Psychological: How MAGA Broke Reality
Tags: Trump, Orwell, 1984, authoritarianism, doublespeak, MAGA, censorship, libraries, museums, historical memory, Ministry of Truth, reality control, propaganda, resistance
References:
- Orwell, George. 1984. Harvill Secker, 1949.
- Reuters: Trump’s attempt to dismantle federal agencies halted
- Politico: Trump executive order to eliminate cultural agencies