Five Reasons Trump's Christian Nationalist History Program Is Fascist

Trump Is Following the Fascist Education Playbook

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion, fact depends entirely on the power of the man who can fabricate it.”

— Hannah Arendt,The Origins of Totalitarianism

Donald Trump is many things, but a historian is not one of them!

I don’t think anyone, even within Donald’s inner MAGA circle, would ever suggest that Mr. Trump is a historian of any kind. Presidents who are historians, even causally, usually make better Presidents. Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were serious historians, and both are rated by panels of Presidential Historians as pretty good presidents. Donald doesn’t come anywhere close to entering that echelon of presidents who are historians.

I know it might be too much to ask Mr. Trump to pick up the study of history right now you know, in between his busy schedule of tee times, so that he can learn the disastrous history of tariffs in the United States.

Let me help you out, Mr. President. Please, Donald, just read the next two paragraphs.

The tariffs of 1828 and 1832 almost resulted in an early round of Civil War thirty years before the real one. South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union over them because they decimated the cotton industry, while President Andrew Jackson threatened to go to South Carolina personally and hang all the traitors. Good times! In combination with the banking crisis of that era, the result was an economic depression known as the Panic of 1837.

Then, there was that time when the stock market crashed in 1929, and President Hoover signed protective tariffs to encourage US industries and agriculture. The Hawley-Smoot tariff helped to turn an already declining stock market into a catastrophe. Hence, the Great Depression put millions out of work and into poverty for years.

With virtually no understanding of economics or history, Mr. Trump is now wanting to not only unilaterally dictate tariff policy, which is disastrous and unconstitutional, but he also wants to dictate policy for how teachers and schools should teach history.

Seriously, I’m not making this up.

Trump Loves Executive Orders

The reason Donald Trump likes executive orders is because other people write them, he dosen’t have to read them, he doesn’t have to ask anyone else’s view or opinion of them, and all he needs to do is sign it and hold it up in front of television cameras, which is his favorite part. Then, he can go about his real agenda, which is to play golf.

Since taking office, Donald Trump has let his views be known on education and, specifically, the role of history through a series of executive orders. On January 29, the executive order “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” targeted what he believes (well, the folks behind Project 2025) are “radical” instructional practices in K-12 schools. The order aims to address concerns about the “indoctrination” of students with ideologies deemed “radical” and “anti-American.”

The order provides a clear picture of the Trump administration’s policy vision for a more “patriotic” K-12 education. It is based on his debunked and ill-fated report from 2021 called the 1776 Commission, which defines its version of history as “patriotic history.” That report itself is described by historians as an “ideological polemic.”

Who is really promoting indoctrination?

This new executive order defines “patriotic education” as the:

“presentation of the history of America grounded in: (i) an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling characterization of America’s founding and foundational principles; (ii) a clear examination of how the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble principles throughout its history; (iii) the concept that commitment to America’s aspirations is beneficial and justified; and (iv) the concept that celebration of America’s greatness and history is proper.”

In other words, it is an education with an agenda. It is indoctrination and propaganda designed to create little Christian Nationalist cheerleaders who are given a truncated view of the country’s history. No critical thinking is required; just listen to the stories of the great white American heroes and leaders and digest the founding myths that extol the virtue of great white men, and you will become a patriot.

That is NOT how patriots are formed, but it is how nationalists and fascists are created.

The premise of the executive order is wrong and deceptive. After two years of rigorous research and analysis, the American History Association definitively concluded that public school history teachers are engaged in no such indoctrination:

“Secondary US history teachers are professionals who are concerned mostly with helping their students learn central elements of our nation’s history. Teachers want students to read and understand founding documents to prepare them for informed civic engagement. They also want students to grapple with the complex history and legacy of racism and slavery. These goals are entirely compatible. We did not find indoctrination, politicization, or deliberate classroom malpractice.”

In the second paragraph of the executive order, what Trump describes as “patriotic education” devolves into demagoguery and demonization of transgender youth. Ah, now we see the actual argument of this delusional grifter. The order goes from defining patriotic education into a diatribe against make-believe educators’ attempts at “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement” and “allowing males access to private spaces designated for females.”

It builds on the old conspiracy trope that kids are getting transition surgery at school and coming home radically altered. It is nonsense with no evidence behind it, and it creates unnecessary fear and mistrust of the public school system. Unfortunately, many of the mega-faithful believe it.

Donald says it, I believe it, that settles it!

Both parts of this order are nonsensical and are designed to provide red meat for the Christian Nationalist crowd that makes up the core of Trump’s support. This is right out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

However, inconsistency and hypocrisy tarnish Mr. Trump’s second executive order on March 25, ending the life of the Department of Education. The stated goal is to “return power to the states and families for the education of young people.” Supposedly, education and history should be left to local states, school districts, and parents. Yet, dictating “patriotic history” from the White House while at the same time declaring that education is a state and parental function is nothing short of resounding hypocrisy.

Then, before the ink was dry on the order to dismantle the DOE, Trump issued yet another executive order on March 27 called “Restoring Truth & Sanity to American History.” It demands federal oversight of the history of the nation, placing conservancy of the historical narrative within the executive branch. So much for local control.

Here is the opening diatribe from that order:

“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light. Under this historical revision, our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness is reconstructed as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed. Rather than fostering unity and a deeper understanding of our shared past, the widespread effort to rewrite history deepens societal divides and fosters a sense of national shame, disregarding the progress America has made and the ideals that continue to inspire millions around the globe.”

There is so much to unpack here that is misleading, untrue, and patently contradictory. First and foremost, Trump fails to recognize that all history is constantly being revised, although I’m sure this truth escapes Trump’s attention due to his chip shot on the first hole. There is no such thing as a static-authoritative historical narrative unless you live in a fascist country. Governments don’t determine historical narrative, but historians and local educators do. New documents and evidence are continually being uncovered, and new perspectives, viewed through multiple lenses, bring fresh insights into focus. That is how history works. It is a dynamic and evolving process and discipline.

Trump desires to establish an official state interpretation of history that is unchanging and carries the weight of federal sanction. That is what fascist states do. Anytime there is an “official history” approved by the state, you can count on it being nothing more than propaganda to fuel loyalty to that fascist state.

Here are five more reasons these executive orders and the damage they will do to our education system should be opposed.

“Patriotic History” is Propagandistic History

Trump’s executive orders mandate its brand of ideological instruction and the politicization of history grounded in ahistorical thinking. The order draws upon the deeply flawed and roundly debunked 2021 report of the “President’s Advisory 1776 Commission”—a panel devoid of experts in the history of the United States—which the OAH (Organization of American Historians) characterized in 2020 as a partisan attempt to “restrict historical pedagogy, stifle deliberative discussion, and take us back to an earlier era characterized by a limited vision of the US past.”

The goal of Trump’s Project 2025 executive orders on education is an exercise in continuing the whitewashing of our nation’s past. Hiding certain events or downplaying them isn’t telling the full truth, and a partial history can never create patriots but only zealous nationalists armed with a propagandistic historical narrative. Using selective history to make ourselves feel better about our national origins, less responsible for our original sins, and more ignorant of the truth is the essence of propaganda.

History, as always, is much more complex and nuanced than being reduced to simple narratives of “good guys vs. bad guys,” “heroes vs. villans,” and “saint-like figures vs evil perpetrators of anti-freedom.” Sometimes, our founders fit into both categories. Simplistic explanations are always useful as propaganda if you are trying to garner votes.

National Origin Myths

Nations and groups of people who share a common religion or faith always create national origin myths. These are rarely based on objective historical truth, but they are designed to give purpose, meaning, and justification for the existence of that group.

Examples include the stories of the founding of the Jewish people in the Old Testament. Native American tribes developed founding myths to show their connection to the past and the land. The United States is no different.

What the Trump administration is attempting to do is set these foundational origin myths as historical absolute truths, even in the absence of historical evidence. We are all familiar with them. The founding of the nation was the result of the great struggle of Euro-Americans to break free from the bonds of British tyranny. It was great white Euro-Americans who led not only North America but the whole world toward democratic freedom.

These mythical stories contain a kernel of truth, but they leave out other important truths. The fight for Euro-American freedom came at the expense of the needs and freedom of other groups: enslaved people, native tribes, women, and Hispanics. These same groups led their own heroic campaigns and efforts to gain freedom within American culture and society.

These founding myths attempt to sanitize and simplify the founding of the nation, which was, in reality, complicated, messy, uneven, and costly to many groups of people. Only a historical study that includes critical thinking and analysis of the complexity of these events is worthy of the K-12 education system.

But not for Donald Trump.

Great (White) Man Theory

The Trumpian vision of history relies on the 19th-century philosophy of the “Great Man Theory.” Although I’m certain that Trump isn’t aware of the origins of this idea the great man theory, based on the Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, is an approach that posits that history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes. Those heroes have superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities, or divine inspiration, and have a decisive historical effect.

In American history, the ‘great men’ were all white. It attempts to create patriots by looking solely to the example of great white Euro-Americans. But wait, what about non-white people or those from lower classes? Many of them were heroic, too. What about the mass movements of history, such as the Civil Rights Movement, that gave birth to massive social change? The great man theory has been proven inadequate by most credible historians today and has long been abandoned.

It is easy to see why Trump likes the “great man” view of history since in his ego-driven, narcissistic view of himself, he sees himself in those terms. David Brooks writes in the New York Times (March 6, 2025) in a column titled, An Angry Little Boy on a Great White Horse, that Trump thinks he is a historical “magnanimous man” who has greatness and virtue wrapped up together in one package. Brooks writes:

“Of course, one problem for Trump is that he is not the admirable version of the magnanimous man; he is a made-for-TV simulacrum of one. A truly magnanimous man — whether Pericles, Alexander the Great, de Gaulle, George Washington, George Patton or Winston Churchill — has earned his self-estimation. He has made himself wise, courageous, prudent and virtuous through hard study and a life of service. Trump, by contrast, has merely swooped up his hair.”

Trump’s Program Hides Our National “Family Secrets”

I am reading a remarkable book right now called Hush Child: Finding My Voice and Breaking the Silence by Dale Lykins. It is Lykins’s memoir of growing up under the shadow of family secrets that plagued him for 50 years until he was able to seek help through therapy. In therapy, Lykins was able to confront his past and the family secrets that tormented him and begin a healing journey.

Herein is the point. Family secrets create pain and trauma, and hiding them only makes them worse and keeps individuals and families from healing. The same is true for our national family secrets. Hiding the true story of the Atlantic slave trade, the real story of slave auctions, of state-sanctioned human trafficking, and native tribal land colonization and genocide only perpetuates a national trauma that can never heal unless we turn on the light of truth.

It may be understandable that many who want to associate the United States with national greatness and purpose will oppose the truth of the entire story. But we will never move toward greater unity and healing without confronting those national family secrets. Trump says he wants the “true and accurate history” to be told and to create national unity through the study of history. However, erasing the history of the marginalized and oppressed only prolongs the trauma, continues the disunity, and is not a true or accurate account of our history. Trump’s fascist history program will never achieve its stated goals.

This leads me to the fifth reason to oppose Trump’s mandates for teaching history:

True Patriots Confront Our History

Mr. Trump has it backward. Presenting only a whitewashed, great man historical narrative based on exaggerated national origin myths that try to hide our national sins doesn’t produce patriots. It can only create mindless nationalist drones who have no grounding in the truth of the real history of the United States. It is the type of history favored by tyrants and fascists who want to associate themselves with some manufactured and deified glorious past that doesn’t really exist, so that it enhances their autocratic power.

Trump’s fascist program of teaching history is tantamount to government indoctrination of American students and, in the process, elevating ignorance about the past to a civic virtue. Yes, according to Trump, ignorance is virtue. But that is true of all fascist tyrants.

True patriots are those who confront the complete American story, tell the whole narrative from the bottom up, and show how the story of the United States is indeed an exceptional one, not because it is unblemished or gloriously positive. The United States is not exceptional because it is greater than any other country or because American culture is superior. It is exceptional because the United States can change and evolve ever nearer to our aspirational ideals through hard work, sacrifice, and through the courage of those groups of people who risk their lives for freedom.

American exceptionalism isn’t based on myths that glorify American greatness at the expense of historical truth. It is the result of confronting the truth and taking actions to include more people in the story, extend rights to more people, and, hopefully, make amends to those marginalized groups who have suffered under the heavy hand of America’s mistakes.

That is true American exceptionalism.

If you want the study of history to reinforce patriotism, then teach ALL of it: the good, the bad, the worse, and the ugly. What is remarkable is the struggle of those of all ethnicities and backgrounds to fight for and find their place in the American story: white people, black people, Hispanics, native Americans, women, gays and lesbians, transgender people, people with disabilities, non-Christians, and any other group who loves the idea of freedom. The ability to incorporate all of those disparate elements into one nation is truly the remarkable and exceptional nature of the American story.

Trump’s history program will only propagate and extend the story of white supremacy. It is un-American.

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