As linked from the Archivists’ Think Tank: 404Media offers a behind-the-scenes look on what’s going on right now in initial attempts to purge all mentions of “forbidden words” (those relevant to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ) in U.S. government databases.
Here’s an updated list of “forbidden words” at the National Security Agency from Popular Information, courtesy of Stephen Abram, who is doing an extraordinary job of posting about this ongoing outrage. (Ironically, I’m following him on Facebook, but I suspect that he will be forced off that platform soon, as Meta’s billionaire owner Mark Zuckerberg is likely to make it impossible for outspoken critics there.) From Gizmodo, here’s the Centers for Disease Control banned word list. For the moment, though, there’s a judicial order requiring that the public-facing CDC, FDA, and HHS webpages be restored, according to CBS News. A fuller account is available here from the New York Times.
Also from Gizmodo, here’s the National Science Foundation’s banned word list. (This relates to flagging those research projects using these words, which is even more frightening than the government website deletions.)
Frankly I have no words for all this, though George Orwell certainly did: memory hole. Trump and Musk are clearly taking a page from China’s recent efforts in creating its own memory hole, as chronicled by Hoover Institute historian, Glenn Tiffert: “Peering Down the Memory Hole: Censorship, Digitization and the Fragility of Our Knowledge Base.” Musk’s DOGE people (and those who have enabled them at various government agencies) have actually gone further in a technological sense, by trying to delete not only DEI-related terms but the discovery process itself.
LIS researchers Hellmich and Dinneen wrote an interesting piece back in 2022 about “Making Space for the Future: The Importance of Deletion for LIS and the Information Society,” but I’m certain that this is not the process nor the future they had in mind.
However, very few people and organizations here will be able to withstand the gravitational pull of the memory hole, I’m afraid, given the retaliation that Trump and his supporters can and will invoke. Another instance of this is the Associated Press’s refusal to accept Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and the subsequent barring of its reporters to White House press conferences. Interestingly, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geographic Name Information System is “trumped” in geographical name usage of international waters such as the Gulf by the International Hydrographic Organization, which continues to use the traditional name. The U.S. is actually a member of the IHO, but probably not for long (at least not during the current administration, which has shown no hesitation in departing from international organizations with which it disagrees.)
The English language doesn’t have a direct synonym for the German term “lebensraum” but Trump’s other current geographical initiatives (his attempts to annex Canada, acquire Greenland and the Panama Canal, and eradicate the existing population of the Gaza strip) seem closer to that than the return to the Monroe Doctrine that Trump supporters claim.
Keywords In and Out of Context 