As someone who has written herself to exhaustion just trying to keep up with the Trump regime's "shock doctrine" installation of a white nationalist dictatorship through a flurry of autocratic executive orders, I can understand how the larger public might not have noticed the one about defunding and ideologically controlling the niche-sounding Institute of Museum and Library Services. After all, we live in an internet world, were millions of people are happy to ask their garbage "AI" assistant for "facts" approved by technofascist billionaires, museums aren't a big part of your daily life, and unless you're poor or from an underserved rural community, there's a good chance you have no idea what kind of "services" a public library can provide anyway. As this March 21st article in the Guardian demonstrates however, this decision is deeply political and part of the regime's openly white nationalist agenda because of which types of people it targets, what services it removes, and how it fits into the larger fascist war to rewrite history and indoctrinate our society.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/21/trump-attack-libraries-devastating

Trump’s attack on libraries was predictable. Its consequences could be devastating

"How did we arrive at this moment? The targeting of library funding appears to be financial, but it’s deeply political. Last year alone, the American Library Association reported 1,247 attempts to ban library books nationwide, largely targeting works related to race, gender identity and LGBTQ+ experiences. Librarians increasingly face intimidation simply for defending intellectual freedom, the very principle libraries have always championed.

Yet libraries remain non-partisan, practical institutions focused on ensuring equitable access to information, learning and civic participation. From Boston’s Edward M Kennedy Institute, which offers IMLS supported immersive Senate debate simulations, to voter registration drives and disability-inclusive voting programs in Illinois and Alaska, libraries sustain democracy itself."

I don't think its hard to figure out why White Trash Hitler and his government full of nazi ghouls are targeting Indigenous communities, poor families, disabled people, educators, students, and folks dedicated to registering voters; in a variety of ways all of those groups are already people the regime has marked out as enemies of the new fascist order. Crucially however, I think this executive order has to be understood as part of a larger war on our history, education, and the accessibility of viewpoints that would be fundamentally opposed to a fascist regime like the Trump administration as a matter of course. Downmarket Mussolini isn't writing these executive orders in a vacuum and I'm glad this article's author tied what's going on here into the larger fascist quest to control the content of libraries; first in schools and now through the public library systems in America.

Reading this story I was reminded of a 2023 comment in the New York Times from Deborah Caldwell-Stone of the American Library Association in the face of the nationwide crusade to ban library books by a very small number of fascists closely aligned with Trump and the larger Christian Nationalist movement. I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but Caldwell-Stone provided a great example of the "boiling frog" style of war on learning these people are waging by pointing out that two years prior, these fascists had been banning books by nonwhite, LGBTQ, and otherwise diverse authors in school libraries and telling folks that if they wanted to read them, they could just go to a public library and do so for free. By the time Caldwell-Stone had given the interview however, that very same group of ideologically motivated fascists, were pushing for all the same books to be banned in public libraries too; which makes it pretty clear that the goal isn't protecting students, but rather to keep *anyone* from consuming knowledge this Christian Nationalist movement that has coalesced around Trump, doesn't want them to read. Now that Trump is president, and working to make himself King, it's wholly unsurprising that he could continue those efforts to erase viewpoints his fascist regime cannot allow to exist, by starving and seeking to control the very public libraries where your average person would find those viewpoints in the first place.

Folks, I grew in a patriarchal fascist household dominated by my father, who I am certain if he were alive, would fully support the fascist Trump regime today. Access to other viewpoints through public libraries is how I escaped that cracker headcage. If these nazis have their way, none of our children will ever have the same opportunities to question unjust authority and imposed racial hierarchies as I did; and the nazis know that - in fact, they're counting on it.