State institutions are never neutral. They protect the supposed legitimacy of the state. THIS is what should become obvious when an Obama-appointed bureaucrat hid the historical record to protect “the presidency.” #Twitterstorians
https://twitter.com/lindaholmes/status/1218514886545809408
The National Archives are not neutral arbiters of American history in the services of some ‘public good.’ They exist as a propaganda arm of the state to tell a romantic story about the greatness of America and its government. #twitterstorians
The fact that people have pressured the National Archives (from inside and outside) to include XYZ is not part of its normal operation. That’s the anomaly here not the archives hiding history (hello, classified files?).
When an agent of the state says their agency is “non-political” or even “non-partisan” they can only get away with that if you allow them to confine their definition of politics to the narrowest of arenas (i.e. electoralism).
Don’t believe me? Can you even imagine a #Communist Party USA display in, say, 1980 at the National Archives for all the Midwestern schoolchildren to see? The roll of #anarchists in the labor and Civil Rights Movement? Black nationalism (not sanitized and confined to @NMAAHC)?
In other words, the erasure of anti-Trump signs from the #WomensMarch at the National Archives is part of the normal functioning of state power, not a bureaucratic anomaly in need of more (or even better) state power. #Twitterstorians
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