The war on words: How the Trump administration is rewriting reality
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
The first month of the second Trump administration has been unpredictable. From threatened tariffs to the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, threats to seize Greenland, and a very real shift in international policy that has the potential to recast U.S.-European relationship the most profoundly since the end of WWII, it can be hard to know what to take seriously from the U.S. Government, and what not to. Destabilisation is part of the point.
From history to the present: Lessons from Athens, Rome, and Orwell
As a Classicist who often turns to historical events as frameworks for understanding the present, I have found myself at a loss, worrying we will end up at Sullan, or Augustan proscriptions when Roman leaders used their power to outlaw their rivals, have them murdered, and confiscate their wealth. To an extent, a closer model is the reign of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens from 403-403 BC when oligarchs friendly to Sparta ruled Athens as an interim government.
Empowered by the victors of the Peloponnesian war to make a new constitution for Athens, the Thirty killed their fellow citizens and drove many into exile to seize their property and prevent them from challenging them in the city again. The Thirty focused on metoikoi, or an Athenian version of “resident aliens”, as vividly recounted by the orator Lysias who lost his brother Polemarchus in the reign of terror.
These models fail to capture what is happening in the United States because we are not yet at the point of such internecine violence –although President Trump’s spate of pardons for participants in the January 6th insurrection certainly may encourage partisan attacks.
The victims of the first wave of reprisals are marginalised groups and institutions. In particular, the Trump Administration has education in its metaphorical crosshairs.
Education under siege: The weaponisation of policy and language
In addition to threatening to undermine the way we fund science research in the United States by decreasing the indirect costs paid out by grants from the National Institute of Health, President Trump released several executive orders aimed at restricting or controlling education across the board.
The spirit of these orders is cruel, and the language is dangerous because it seems to be one thing when it is really another: the President has ordered us to “eradicate anti-Christian bias”, to “expand educational freedom for families”, to “end radical indoctrination in K-12 Schooling and Promote Patriotic Education” and to “defend women from Gender Ideology Extremism,” among other things.
On their surface–and here I mean just the words themselves–many of these ideas seem anodyne. Who wouldn’t eradicate bias, or expand freedom? But almost every order follows the totalitarian logic that has long permeated Trumpist rhetoric: when President Trump implicitly or explicitly accuses others of crimes, he is usually twisting language to cover what he is doing himself.
I was thinking about this again over the past weekend when the world of education was abuzz with a recent “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education, basically accusing the entire apparatus of American education “of discriminating against students on the basis of race” and asserting that schools have “toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon “systemic and structural racism” and advanced discriminatory policies and practices”.
This letter broadly bars all activities that might be considered part of diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs from the level of the classroom all the way to the board room. It has the potential to bankrupt higher ed.
The fragility of democracy: When words lose their meaning
The inversion of the meaning of words themselves will remind many of George Orwell’s 1984. But it makes me think of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. In book 3 (starting at section 81), Thucydides describes the breakdown in public life at the onset of civil war in Corcyra. The Corcyreans turned in violence on each other, disregarding their laws and institutions, even their familial bonds. What we would consider the basic social contract was abandoned.
The part that chills me is Thucydides’ focus on what he considered human nature during a revolution. Thucydides suggests that scarcity brings out the worst in people and leads to excess in their deprivation. In describing the civil conflict that moved from city to city, Thucydides wrote that, “the regular meaning of words changed to fit the state-of-affairs. Insane risk was now bravery; forethought was cowardice…it was simply the same whether you stopped someone from doing wrong or you discovered a new opportunity for doing wrong yourself” (3.82.4-6 my translation).What was the cause of this madness? According to Thucydides it was “lust for power rooted in greed and ambition” as those in power “sought rewards for themselves from the interests of the public they pretended to serve” (3.82.8). The leaders of ancient Greece sought to enrich themselves and ensure their continued power, regardless of the impact it had on others. And they incited violence through the manipulation of words and their meanings.
It is a commonplace of writing on international relations that appeals to Thucydides are facile and misleading. But every official missive and unofficial word that comes out of the U.S. government today reminds me of how fragile our commonwealth is and how much relies on a shared understanding of language and experience.
There’s a selfish cruelty running amuck in our government, and it is not just the United States. A wave of revolution–or properly–a destabilising devolution is sweeping the world. It starts with language and its first targets are the very disciplines that teach us how to think critically about the world and its words. And there’s an inequality in its outcome. In his Politics, Aristotle suggests that all human beings have a predisposition to revolution, although there is a signal difference. According to him, “those who are in a lesser position engage in strife in order to become equal; those who are merely equal do it to become superior” (1302a).
We cannot allow the redefinition of words to prevent us from seeing the truth in the world. There’s a movement to make the world less fair, less predictable, and meaner tomorrow than it was today. Those of us who still can must be brave enough to call it what it is.
*Joel Christensen is a professor of Classical and Early Mediterranean Studies at Brandeis University where he serves as Senior Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs. He has recently published Storylife: On Epic, Narrative, and Living Things with Yale University Press.
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
