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During the spring and summer of 1933, Nazi activists conducted a nationwide “cleansing” to root out so-called anti-German spirit by burning books in several cities across the country. Six years later, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland, sparking World War II, the deadliest conflict in history.
Studying history is becoming a lost art, and that is precisely how the Trump Administration wants it. The study of history forces us to confront the successes and failures of the past so that we can create a better future. It compels us to evaluate and assess the consequences of injustice, war, and resistance. It fosters empathy by exposing us to diverse perspectives and lived experiences. But most importantly, in today’s political climate, studying history promotes critical thinking, produces the ability to identify propaganda, and empowers citizens to be informed.
Governments that attempt to rewrite history to avoid addressing uncomfortable truths, limit access to educational resources, and ban books in efforts to restrict information from their people are demonstrating the telltale markers of authoritarianism. These are key strategies—used by regimes like that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s—designed to control the narrative, weaken civil awareness and knowledge, and reshape not just what people know, but also how they think. Authoritarians rely on people not knowing or thinking critically about history.
The Trump Administration is demonstrating many of these markers of historical authoritarian regimes, beginning with attempts to rewrite the past.
On January 29, 2025, among a slew of Executive Orders issued by the current administration was one titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” In this directive, the Trump Administration alleged that American students have been indoctrinated by an educational system promoting “anti-American ideologies.” Just two months later, a follow-up Executive Order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” purported that, for the past decade, Americans have been indoctrinated by “distorted” and “revisionist” history that has caused them to cast a blind eye to our nation’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.”
The January 29 order reinstated the 1776 Commission, a body that Trump established during his first term. Just two days before his first term ended in January 2021, the commission released “The 1776 Report,” a forty-five-page document rife with inaccuracies and falsehoods about the founding of our nation.
We know, of course, that Thomas Jefferson, even as he penned the infamous words “All men are created equal,” enslaved more than 600 people during his lifetime—a number greater than any other U.S. President. Critical thinking would tell us that this is blatant hypocrisy. Yet “The 1776 Report” frames Jefferson’s inclusion of these very words in the Declaration of Independence not as paradoxical, but as the moral seed that supposedly “set the stage for abolition”—despite abolition being a Black-led movement that was not achieved until nearly a century later. The report insists that many of the Founding Fathers opposed slavery, while downplaying the fact that many of these very men were themselves slaveholders.
In sum, “The 1776 Report” would have us ignore the fact that enslaved Black people built this nation through their brutal, unpaid labor, and instead have us view slavery as merely a “blight” in U.S. history. It entirely omits several other major injustices, such as the genocide and forced relocation of Native Americans, the racial violence of the Reconstruction Era, segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the disproportionate forced sterilization of Latinx women from 1907 to 1979. By omitting these events, the report “elevate[s] ignorance about the past to a civic virtue,” as the American Historical Association noted, joining dozens of other organizations that publicly condemned the report.
The core argument of “The 1776 Report” is that extensively studying injustices throughout U.S. history undermines the principles of equality, liberty, and justice upon which our nation was founded. But if we truly are a nation built on those ideals, isn’t it our responsibility to teach about the times when our country did not uphold them? Isn’t it our duty to demonstrate what the United States has done and what it still must do to right its wrongs?
This version of revisionist history that has been authored by allies of the Trump Administration is strategic and should be expected. Authoritarian regimes have long manipulated historical narratives to cast themselves in a favorable light, erase past atrocities, and instill a sense of loyalty, patriotism, and ideology in their people.
This control over historical narratives extends beyond rewriting the past; it also involves controlling who has access to education and the resources that make learning possible. This is why the Trump Administration has aggressively sought to dismantle the federal agencies that provide necessary funds and resources to education nationwide.
On March 20, 2025, an Executive Order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities” was issued with the explicit goal of abolishing the Department of Education. Administration officials claim that the federal government’s education department has failed the American people and that dismantling it is necessary to return educational control to the states.
This argument is misleading, as things like curriculums are already determined at the state level. The Department of Education primarily exists to manage financial aid, prohibit discrimination, and ensure equal access to education for all students, including racial minorities, women, and people with disabilities. Eliminating this agency is not about efficiency, cost savings, or returning any so-called control; it is about restricting access to education and whom the federal government deems to be worthy of it.
On March 14, 2025, Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” which targeted several entities, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This institute provides vital grants to museums and libraries across the country—many of which will not survive without federal funding. It provides funding for things like summer reading programs, Internet access, and online book lending databases—programs that some rural libraries are already losing at a rapid pace.
This reduced access to books and educational materials is detrimental to society, but it is also intentional. By limiting educational resources and controlling who receives them, the federal government can more easily promote its own ideology while suppressing educated, dissenting opinions.
This strategy is chillingly familiar. The Nazi regime followed a very similar blueprint. Throughout the 1930s in Germany and Austria, books and educational materials that did not align with Nazi ideology were systematically removed from libraries, bookstores, and universities. The Nazis held mass book burnings, ceremonial events that targeted works by Jewish authors, liberals, socialists, and anyone whose ideas challenged Nazi doctrine. Works by some of the world’s most well-known and respected minds—people like Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Sigmund Freud, and Helen Keller—were included in this cultural decimation.
Today, we are witnessing echoes of this strategy. Since the first Trump Administration, there have been nearly 16,000 book bans, with approximately 10,000 of those book bans in the 2023-2024 school year. This suggests a rapid acceleration in efforts to restrict diverse and critical perspectives. The dismantling of public education, combined with mass book bans, is a deliberate attempt to suppress the necessary tools to be informed, engaged citizens.
We should question a government that is afraid of books and an educated populace. We should be wary of a government that fears its people knowing its past.
Trump doesn’t want you to know history, because if you do, you will recognize the dangerous path down which he is leading our country. History shows us a familiar pattern: Regimes that revise their pasts, limit education, and ban books ultimately pave the way for decline and authoritarian control.
If history tells us anything about authoritarian governments, it’s that they must control the narrative. Authoritarian regimes rise not just through force, but through controlling ideas and silencing critical thought. When they cannot control the literature their subjects consume—even, and especially, materials about nationalism and history—they have lost control of everything. And by not knowing history, we as a people surrender the power to know any better.