Trump’s move to sanitize US history gets little support with national park visitors | US news
As part of the war of his administration against “Woke”, Donald Trump asked the American public to report anything “negative” on the Americans in American national parks. But the public has largely refused to support a vision of the world without embarrassing historical fact, comments submitted in national parks and seen by the Guardian Show.
Opinions have been erected on each site of the National Park Service (NPS), which covers 433 national parks, monuments and battlefields, following an order of can “restore the truth and mental health to American history”, issued by the Department of the Interior of Trump. The president had demanded a repression of any material which “inappropriately denigated the Americans”.
The panels ask visitors to report any damage to the parks as well as, via the QR code, to identify “all the signs or other information which is negative on past or living Americans or that do not emphasize the beauty, the size and the abundance of landscapes and other natural characteristics”.
But a mine of nearly 500 comments relating to the panels submitted to the United States by the public in June and July, seen by the Guardian, show that visitors were mainly reluctant to delete the suppression of the materials of the park on the darkest chapters of the past of America, such as slavine or the ill-treatment of the native tribes.
“Are we so weak and fragile that we cannot see the whole length and extent of our history?” A Muir Woods visitor in California wrote in July after a sign entitled “History in Construction” was removed. “Are we so afraid that we should hide the factual story of telling our past?” Oh, please !! “
Another visitor from Cumberland Gap National Historical Park in Kentucky wrote in June that “the staff working in this park is among the nicest and most competent people you will find anywhere”. They added: “I hate that this administration believes that the story that can represent the United States in a bad light should be covered.”
Many comments rent the park rangers or call more information on issues such as Aboriginal American experience or the climate crisis. Some complain about the decision to withdraw the LGBT `T ” at the Stonewall National Monument in New York, to exclude transgender people, while some visitors demanded the truthless truth to say in Manzanar, a Californian establishment where the Japanese-American were interned during the Second World War.
“Disinfection or minimizing this story makes bad service to those who have experienced it,” a tourist from Manzanar wrote. “The one who authorized this panel should be dismissed,” added another visitor on the new signaling. “History belongs to everyone, and any attempt to rewrite or shine on even our darkest days should not be tolerated.”
The QR code comments, an instantaneous public opinion that is filtered before being stored by the NPs, come at a tumultuous moment for the service of the park. Almost a quarter of NPS employees have left the agency since Trump became president, leading to too extensive and potentially dangerous conditions on vegetable sites often called “best idea in America”, such as Yellowstone, Everglades and the statue of freedom.
“The Americans have shown that they had a deep love story with the national parks and what we have seen from these comments is that the public said that it was an insulting and malaviced effort,” said John Hard, the principal director of the National Parks Conservation Association.
“Rangers should not be intimidated not to talk about slavery and other things that have happened in the American past. It is scandalous and the American public was deeply disturbed.”
However, all the comments subject to what some staff calls “SNITCH panels” will not be used to direct the redesign of the park. Among the comments seen by the Guardian, less than 40 were “reported for examination” by the Park Service and among these, less than 10 were indicated to be definitively used in the context of the order of the Interior Department.
This small selection of comments is mainly aligned with the prospect of the administration. We complain about “revisionist history based on the Woke religion” in Muir Woods, another criticism of “fashionable left jargon” and a third, from a visitor to the Rock Creek park in Washington, is turned upside down that the materials on Francis Newlands, an American senator at the time of the first world war, “denigrate it as a white Supremacist to have common opinions war”.
“They want this version washed by the virtue of history and they try to lead a gap between us and the public,” said a main employee of the NPS, who did not want to be appointed for fear of remuneration.
“Whenever there is a comment asking for more information on the natives, he will not be recognized. If there is someone who says they are terribly offended by a sign, he will be reported and sent for exam.”
The staff member of the NPS, which is part of the movement of “Rangers Rangers” within the Park Service comprising more than 1,000 rangers on leave which has its own podcast in which they contribute anonymously, said that the composition of the comments has recently become more pro-Trump since the service of the park noticed that the public mainly supported panels.
“It seems that an orchestrated effort has been made, many comments appear identical or generated by AI,” said the employee. The Guardian saw no evidence that the public responses were distorted by the administration in this way.
“Always, we have a positive public response every day. People don’t want that. Every day, I have people who whisper me:” We love parks, we want to help. “”
The administration should go soon to eliminate the signs he deems inappropriate. On Monday, he started a one -month -old separate process to examine and withdraw other documents in the National Park sites, such as books and posters found in gift shops. “We have to review each brochure, brooch and loving,” said an NPS employee. “There will be hundreds of articles that will be deleted.”
A superintendent of a story based on history said that there were very few guidelines on how to judge materials as problems. “It is on the park staff, who is already underworld, to understand what to censor, which is really disturbing,” they said.
“I tried not to delegate any of this because I do not want to do that the staff do things that go against their values,” said the superintendent about the signs.
“It is a way of preventing us from talking about difficult subjects and getting our hands behind our back. The touch in an overwhelming way, the public does not buy it. They do not want this. When the department has put this in place, I do not think they expected that so many comments were positive, it turns a little on them.”
The purge is part of a broader thrust of the Trump administration to fold American historical, cultural and scientific life to adapt to its ideological imperatives.
The bases and military statues will again bear the names of the Confederate generals, the climate science relationships will be reissued to potentially include discredited and marginal views while current and planned exhibitions at the Smithsonian Institution, the largest museum and the world research complex, will be examined to “assess the tone, historical framework and alignment with American ideals”.
An NPS spokesperson said that the panels of the September 18 panels were “incompatible” with the Ministry of the Order of the Interior would be deleted, covered or reintegrated into a later date.
“The National Park Service has received several fundamental comments to this day across the country, complimating the programs or services of the park, noting maintenance problems or potential inaccuracies or distortions of information out of context,” said the spokesman.
“In the implementation of the order, the objective is to promote an honest and respectful narration that educates visitors while honoring the complexity of our country’s shared journey and the parc staff only makes usable comments linked to this objective.”
