Only You Can Prevent Thoughtcrime In National Parks
The Trump administration is asking visitors to report rangers who step outside party dogma
On Friday, the National Park Service and other land management agencies will install signage urging visitors to report any communication they find, “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living,” or which, “emphasizes matters unrelated to the beauty, abundance, or grandeur of [natural features.]” Not only does that violate the federal laws governing how the National Park Service and other agencies operate, but it also escalates the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine rangers and break the service, in preparation for selling off national parks.
The term “thoughtcrime” comes from the novel 1984, which George Orwell wrote as a cautionary tale about the dangers of fascism. In it, Orwell examines the role truth and communication play within a society, and the ways in which those factors can be manipulated in order to control the populace.
A through line across policies and doctrine put out by this administration is an attempt to paint American history as moving in a straight line from colonization towards the present. Flawed realities like institutional racism, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, or the exploitation of immigrant labor are pushed aside in favor of narratives that center the dominance of straight, white, Christian men. We see that in attacks on the teaching of factual history in schools, the re-naming of military facilities, and in national parks.
The signage, which you can see at the top of this article, is being installed under the Department of the Interior’s Secretarial Order 3431, entitled, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Its purpose is to implement an executive order issued by Trump of the same name, and it covers a range of matters including funding infrastructure improvement at Independence National Historical Park (where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were formed), reviewing national monument designations established by President Biden, and editing online communications from NPS to ensure they adhere to Trump doctrine.
You can find the full order at this link, the section relevant to this discussion is reproduced below:
A memo providing further guidance around implementing the new signage and policies was distributed to NPS employees yesterday. Here that is:
Visitors who follow the QR code on signs will be directed towards this online form, where they can submit their complaint.
It’s important to remember that the National Park Service doesn’t just run Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. NPS manages 433 sites that, in addition to the 63 national parks, include battlefields, historic sites and more.
Those include places like Manzanar, a concentration camp that held some of the 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were incarcerated during World War II. In 1988 Ronald Reagan issued a formal apology, acknowledging the injustice was based on, “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” The federal government that year paid restitution to all surviving prisoners, and established a fund for teaching the history of Japanese internment.
A poem left at Manzanar’s “Soul Consoling Tower.” Credit: NPS
As of Friday, will teaching that history be considered disparaging of Americans past? Will a visitor to Manzanar report a ranger whose job it is to communicate that place’s history? And what penalties or retribution will such a report trigger?
Before speaking with a group of concerned NPS employees, Japanese internment sites and Civil War battlefields were the places where I saw the most obvious conflict between this order, and the innate subject matter. But those NPS employees explain they’re more concerned about more mundane history in more mainstream NPS sites.
“I’d be much more concerned to be somewhere like Mount Rushmore,” one ranger told me. “They’ve made a big push in recent years to talk about all the people on the mountain as a whole, and not just, ‘Wow, look how great they were.’ And the type of visitor they get would absolutely report them.”
Another ranger explained to me that the vague broadness of this order could have a chilling effect across all areas of park service operations.
“As an interpretive park ranger, part of my job is helping people connect with things they haven't had a chance to connect with before,” they told me. “That's anything from helping kids understand photosynthesis for the first time because they have a spark of curiosity about a tree, but also helping people see themselves in history. Helping people make those connections with the past helps them see themselves as a part of crafting the future. Being told to not do that is taking away the core essence of my job and asking me to break the law, which as a civil servant, I follow.”
NPS operations are governed by a number of laws, including the Organic Act of 1916, the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act, and the 2016 National Park Service Centennial Act.
The Organic Act created the National Park Service and established its mission as, “to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
The National Historic Preservation Act recognized that our nation’s history was being lost to development, and provided funding and a legal structure to protect it. And it established for the park service the role of protecting history within areas it manages, and educating the public about that history. It reads, “The preservation of [our] irreplaceable heritage is in the public interest so that its vital legacy of cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, economic, and energy benefits will be maintained and enriched for future generations of Americans.”
The Centennial Act brought the NPS mission into the modern era. It defines interpretation as, “providing opportunities for people to form intellectual and emotional connections to gain awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the resources of the System.”
All three are laws passed by Congress. The secretarial order restricting interpretations of history is not. The park rangers I’ve talked with feel that being asked to teach a version of history not rooted in complete fact is a violation of the laws they’re tasked with upholding.
It can be hard to separate the history of any national park from historical context that is not always flattering to straight, white, Christian men.
Glacier National Park, for instance, was established through a treaty with the Blackfeet Nation that granted tribal members hunting rights within park boundaries in perpetuity. But immediately upon the park’s creation, tribal members were arrested for trying to hunt there. Some tours in Glacier are now operated by Blackfeet vendors who teach visitors the tribe’s history.
How will this order impact that contract, and those teachings? If a visitor is offended by learning that history, will they report that vendor? Could such a report result in the cancellation of that contract?
The answers to all of these questions remains unclear. As is any specific target area for these reviews, or what possible consequences might look like. But all of that seems to be part of the point. Remember that the administration is engaged in an effort to break NPS in order to foster public approval for the privatization of operations, and the sale of park service land.
“Some of us feel super demoralized and are using a lot of leave and are just really struggling,” one ranger told me. “Others are oscillating between demoralization and righteous anger.”
“…force retirements of dedicated and experienced NPS leaders, terminate the employment of those who refuse…” is the first step that former NPS director Jon Jarvis spelled out, in the list of steps he thinks the administration will use to sell parks.
“Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed,” writes Yale professor Jason F. Stanley in his book How Fascism Works. “Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above.”
In 1984, a person commits “thoughtcrime,” by speaking, acting, or even thinking in ways that contradict the ruling party’s doctrine. The point is to break dissent, and make resistance feel impossible.
“I’ll put the sign up, but I’m not changing how I interpret anything,” stated one ranger.
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Thank you for posting this information. Have been witnessing cutbacks, closures in NM and CO over last month camping — the detrimental effects on several sites. From outright closures, to morale, to even grand facilities struggling. Big sites — and small being the most obvious victims with actually closed facilities — sites unattended, but accessible. Have seen visitors at grand sites oblivious to the damage their votes have rendered. Want to confront them — that they have forfeited their right to enjoy these places. Have to channel the anger…
Would be quite interesting if that submission line was inundated with complaints about how native Americans aren’t being properly recognized or historically significant BIPOC aren’t being spoken about in sufficiently complementary terms or anything else that pushes a historically accurate narrative which may run counter to the preferences of this admin.