From “We Must Preserve History” To A Digital Book Burning
Here at This Book is Banned, we talk a lot about censorship. And, as Joel Emery, the guest essayist contributing the following piece points out:
The most effective form of censorship isn’t silencing—it’s flooding the space with conflicting or misleading information.[1]
But, disinformation isn’t simply about getting some details wrong in a news story, for example. It’s about “shaping how people perceive the world,” and “what they believe is possible.” [2] That makes it possible for bad-faith actors to control the narrative. Which is precisely what the following piece by Emery addresses.
From “We Must Preserve History”
to a Digital Book Burning
The Same People Who Screamed
About “Erasing History” Are
Now Doing Exactly That
By Joel Emery
N
ot long ago, the loudest voices in American politics insisted that removing Confederate statues was an unforgivable crime against history. The argument was simple: If you take down statues of Robert E. Lee or rename military bases that honored Confederate generals, you are erasing history and denying the past.
But now, those same voices are systematically deleting records of real American history—scrubbing the contributions of women, Black service members, Hispanic leaders, and LGBTQ+ figures from official government archives. Arlington National Cemetery, the Department of Defense, and other federal institutions have quietly removed pages honoring some of America’s most decorated and groundbreaking military figures.
This isn’t about historical preservation. It’s about historical control.
What we’re witnessing is a digital book burning—a calculated effort to erase inconvenient facts, rewrite the past, and ensure that only a narrow, whitewashed version of American history remains.
Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.
~George Orwell, 1984~
The Confederate Monument Debate
Was Always About Power, Not History
The vast majority of Confederate monuments weren’t erected in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. They were put up decades later, during two key periods:
- The Jim Crow era (late 1800s–early 1900s) when Black Americans were being disenfranchised.
. - The Civil Rights Movement (1950s–1960s) when Black Americans were fighting for equal rights.
These statues weren’t built to neutrally document history. They were deliberate symbols of intimidation—reminders of who still held power.
Yet, when activists pushed to take them down, the backlash was overwhelming. “You can’t erase history!” they said. “If we start removing monuments, where does it end?” The idea that these statues were not the primary way Americans learn about history didn’t matter. The idea that textbooks, museums, and primary source documents still exist didn’t matter.
What mattered was preserving a particular version of history—one that glorified the Confederacy and minimized the reality of slavery and racial violence.
Now, the same people who said history must never be erased are burning pages from it in real time.
The Digital Purge of Military History
In the last few months, the Trump administration has systematically purged government websites of references to marginalized groups in military history. Arlington National Cemetery, long considered the final resting place for American heroes, has deleted information about Black, Hispanic, and female service members from its website. A spokesperson for the cemetery confirmed that internal links directing users to pages listing notable graves of these individuals have been removed.
Here are just a few of the names now missing from Arlington’s public historical pages:
- General Colin Powell – The first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
. - Justice Thurgood Marshall – The first Black Supreme Court justice.
. - Major General Marcelite Jordan Harris – The first African American woman brigadier general in the Air Force.
. - Lieutenant Kara Spears Hultgreen – The first female carrier-based fighter pilot in the Navy.
. - Major Marie Therese Rossi – The first American woman to fly helicopters in combat.
Entire sections detailing the histories of the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen, two of the most historically significant Black military units, have also been removed.
This is literal historical erasure—not the symbolic kind that Confederate statue defenders once railed against, but the actual destruction of public records and digital archives.
The Hypocrisy Is Blinding
So where are the voices that screamed about “erasing history” when Confederate monuments were taken down?
Where is the outrage from the people who insisted that removing statues of men who fought against the United States was an unacceptable loss to our national memory?
Now that the names being erased belong to Black soldiers, women pioneers, and LGBTQ+ service members, the silence is deafening.
Because the truth is, this was never about history.
If it were, there would be just as much anger about the removal of Colin Powell’s name from Arlington’s website as there was about renaming Fort Bragg. But that anger doesn’t exist, because for these people, some history is worth remembering and some isn’t.
What This Is Really About
This isn’t about preserving or erasing history. It’s about who gets to be remembered.
The Confederate monument debate was about protecting a specific ideological narrative—one that glorifies white supremacy, minimizes the horrors of slavery, and erases Black resistance. The DEI purge happening under the Trump administration is the exact same project in reverse: eliminating the records of anyone who challenges that narrative.
Confederate statues were defended because they reinforce a vision of America where white men are the heroes. The contributions of Black, Hispanic, female, and LGBTQ+ service members are now being erased for the exact same reason.
This is not about fairness. It is not about keeping history neutral. It is not about preventing “wokeness” in the military.
It is about rewriting the past to serve an agenda.
And the people doing it don’t even feel the need to hide it anymore.
The Digital Book Burning
Is Just Beginning
What happens when we allow governments to decide which parts of history are worth keeping?
This purge has meaning far beyond Arlington National Cemetery—it’s part of a much bigger effort to reshape public knowledge. From Texas banning school curriculums that discuss systemic racism to Florida rewriting civil rights history to say that enslaved people benefited from slavery, this is an organized effort to curate the past to serve a political agenda.
The same people who claimed to defend history are now the ones destroying it.
And if we don’t push back, the digital book burning won’t stop here.
Essayist bio:
Joel Emery is the founder of American Reality, an online platform dedicated to breaking down complex socio-political and economic issues in a way that’s clear and strategic.
“We live in a time when [dis]information is rampant, media narratives are weaponized, and trust in institutions is eroding. That’s not an accident—it’s by design. Those who benefit from confusion and fear have no interest in a well-informed public.
That’s why I started American Reality—to help cut through the noise.
This isn’t about pushing an agenda or reinforcing divides. It’s about a quest to make sense of the world as it is—not as someone else wants you to see it.”
#book banning #on censorship #erasing history
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Endnotes:
[1] Emory, Joel. “Why Facts Matter and Who Controls the Narrative Matters Even More.” American Reality https://american-reality.com/the-foundation-of-american-reality/
[2] Emory, Joel. “Why Facts Matter and Who Controls the Narrative Matters Even More.” American Reality https://american-reality.com/the-foundation-of-american-reality/
Sources Include:
Reuters.com https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-erasure-transgender-references-extends-stonewall-monument-website-2025-02-14/
Wall Street Journal.com https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/trump-can-enforce-ban-on-dei-programs-for-now-court-says-1c2032f0https://apnews.com/article/7ef0bf4ce1d465f6b61f3fcfde544593
The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dei-programs-funding-companies-government-s0t5356jd
Images:
Header: https://american-reality.com/
The Confederate Monument Debate: Bowen, Jim. Flickr: Stone Mountain Carving. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. It has been cropped.
The Digital Purge of Military History: Frissell, Toni. Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), attend a briefing at Ramitelli Airfield, Italy, March 1945.This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.13245.
The Hypocrisy is Blinding: Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
What is This Really About: Photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash
The Digital Book Burning Is Just Beginning: Photo by Freddy Kearney on Unsplash
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