Since January 20, 2025, the president of the United States has been leading a crusade against cultural institutions. His goal: to make American art compatible with MAGA. By attacking individual artists, persecuting museums, and taking control of libraries and theaters, the Trump administration is acting according to a Stalinist playbook.
The fight to preserve intellectual freedom in America will be long and expensive, historian Paul Josephson believes in his analysis for the French online publication Le Grand Continent.
Impressive, brutal, chaotic: Donald Trump's civilizational project seems to be unfolding out of control. On July 20, he will have been in the White House for six months. Faced with the stunning series of cataclysms that have erupted in Washington, how do we take stock of a presidency that sought to change the course of history by transforming the old American republic into an empire?
On June 11, 2025, when Donald Trump visited the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to see "Les Misérables," the little applause that followed was drowned out by boos and jeers. Then, transvestites stormed the aisles to protest the president's hostility to free forms of cultural expression. The President of the United States remained unfazed.
He had come to declare victory in the fight against freedom of expression in art, literature, and music, and to reaffirm his rejection of all forms of cultural experimentation, and in particular, of diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) in all American institutions. According to Trump, museums and libraries, theaters and concert halls had rejected the true American values of patriarchy and power.
Other things being equal, this systematic fight against culture is reminiscent of the tactics and programs implemented by Joseph Stalin, who tried to forcefully impose new values on the peoples of the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s.
From Stalin to Trump: Art Criticism as a Way of Governing
Stalin insisted that music, literature and architecture correspond to socialist ideological norms and policies.
To this end, for example, he ordered the creation of the Writers' Union. Created in 1934 to "reconstruct the human soul" In accordance with party dictates, he granted status and privileges to officially approved writers whose works reflected simple, Manichean narratives of party victories and the triumph of the proletariat over "antagonistic forces". Writers attacked "class enemies" through approved clichés. Soon directors, actors, artists, architects, and composers were forced to form their own unions to ensure their conformity with "socialist realism".
At the same time, Stalin persecuted writers, artists, and composers whose messages were not "correct". Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Isaac Babel, and Marina Tsvetaeva were executed or committed suicide to avoid arrest and torture. He attacked the poet Anna Akhmatova, whose "Requiem" honored the victims of the purges. He opposed the satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, who brilliantly exposed Soviet corruption and was forced to contribute to a literary anthology glorifying Stalin's Baltic-White Sea Canal, whose construction in the early 1930s caused the deaths of 70,000 prisoners. Zoshchenko and Akhmatova were expelled from the Writers' Union in 1946.
Stalin also politicized music. After a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in January 1936, he published his scathing review in Pravda two days later, condemning the work as "rather rubbish than music", calling it "bourgeois" and "vulgar". This criticism contained a thinly veiled threat to the composer during the Great Terror: compose according to the aesthetic standards of the state or die in the Gulag. In Russia, music still matters: one of Vladimir Putin's first acts after becoming president was to rehabilitate the Soviet national anthem in Russia.
Trump has also decided to attack composers and musicians who reject his messages and insult him. His TruthSocial network, with its relentless attacks on his supposed enemies, can be described as a mouthpiece for the "MAGA writers' union".
Rock star Bruce Springsteen, a national icon in the United States, has openly criticized Trump for his "corrupt, incompetent, and traitorous administration". He urged Americans to "speak up against authoritarianism and let freedom resound". Trump used TruthSocial to order artists like Springsteen to know their place in the MAGA world.
Similar to a column in "Pravda", Trump wrote on TruthSocial: "[Springsteen] is vastly overrated... he is not a talented man, he is just an arrogant, annoying IDIOT." Of the hit singer Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris in 2024, he wrote: "Has anyone noticed that since I said "I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT" she's not COOL anymore?"
Trump's museums
Trump has ordered federal museums to rewrite their curricula and exhibits and abandon policies on inclusion and diversity.
In Washington, for example, he is seeking to take control of the Smithsonian Institution. Founded in 1846, the Smithsonian, which runs 21 museums and the federal zoo, operates independently of the executive branch and promotes excellence in science and culture—it is this excellence that explains the 30 million visitors it attracts annually. But for Trump, high achievement is not the criterion.
He has criticized "partisan" exhibitions that he says target racial and gender inequality. He has overstepped his authority by firing Kim Saget, director of the National Portrait Gallery, apparently for not exhibiting portraits of long-suffering white men. Trump called Saget "an extremely partisan figure and a fervent supporter of DEI, completely inappropriate for her position." A White House spokesman explained: "From the very beginning, President Trump has made it clear that dangerous anti-American ideology has no place in our government and institutions."
Trump prefers to have portraits of himself hanging in the White House, including a painting inspired by his police photo for his criminal record and another of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president who supported slavery, whose "Trail of Tears" led to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans.
But the US president went further than hostile appointments or firings. On March 27, he issued an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Reason to American History", aimed at "removing inappropriate, divisive, or anti-American ideology" from the Smithsonian museums and the National Zoo. The order would ensure that the Smithsonian"s "distorted narrative" is replaced with "objective facts", will present "founding principles" of the United States in a favorable light and will remove any mention of LGBT history from discussions.
Trump even found ways to politicize the Holocaust Museum, purging its board to appoint supporters without training in Holocaust history and insisting that the museum's mission must include "unwavering support" for Israel - a blatant exploitation of the fear of anti-Semitism to support his political agenda. In the USSR, museums had several different functions: to contribute to the intellectual and political consciousness of the masses, to convey socialist messages, and to demonstrate the connections to the art and culture of Russia's bourgeois past. The Kremlin had purged history of anything that might embarrass it: there were no museums dedicated to the Great Terror or the deadly famine in Ukraine; women and ethnic minorities were largely ignored.
While under Gorbachev, museum displays briefly became more realistic, under Putin they have been repoliticized to convey a message similar to Trump’s: that the state is all-powerful. The exhibits should focus on the elite, the generals, and the oligarchs who make history. Putin recently ordered all national museums to present exhibits that portray the invasion of Ukraine in a positive light, using Kremlin materials.
Similarly, rewriting the script, Trump administration officials have ordered all national parks to post signs asking visitors to report any negative information about the site or its history. This directive applies to all 400 sites under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management—the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service.
Similar signs have appeared, for example, at Manzanar National Historic Site, an internment camp where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants were held in appalling conditions because of their Asian heritage during World War II. Giant QR codes now invite visitors to report any negative comments about "Americans past or present" and "that fail to highlight the beauty, grandeur, and richness of landscapes and other natural features". This is one of the concrete applications of an executive order issued in March that effectively encourages racist rewriting of history.
The National Park Service, for example, deleted a webpage about the Underground Railroad, which connected the South and North during slavery, and removed the figure of abolitionist Harriet Tubman from the top of the page. Tubman was replaced by a collage of commemorative Underground Railroad stamps issued by the U.S. Postal Service, highlighting "black-white cooperation". After a public outcry, the page was finally restored.
The search for the wrong "ideology" continues everywhere. Only in the zoo, for obvious reasons, has it not yet led to cataclysm.
End of reading
The United States has long served as a global benchmark for public library systems—including the Soviet Union. Benjamin Franklin founded the first lending library in the United States in the 1730s, and Andrew Carnegie funded nearly 1,700 libraries by the early 20th century.
Like Franklin and Carnegie's, Soviet libraries responded to the government's desire to educate illiterate peasants and workers. Libraries sprang up in every small village and town, and all citizens were encouraged to get a library card. Of course, the Soviets carefully controlled the collections. They emphasized the glorious history of the Communist Party and the works of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin. Only those deemed trustworthy were allowed to read books in special, closed collections.
Trump has never been a fan of libraries or universities.
His "Trump" Foundation was shut down for lack of philanthropic donations, and his so-called "university" - a training company accused of fraud - was not only shut down but also fined $25 million.
Unlike Lenin and Stalin - each of whom had extensive personal libraries - there is no indication that Trump values books, except those written for him by writers. He receives daily intelligence reports without reading them. He claims to have devoured the Bible, but he can't quote a single passage or verse. He calls the Eucharist a "little cookie." He owns a copy of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and revels in Nazi political theater, calling his political opponents "parasites" and claiming that illegal immigrants "poison the blood of our country."
Yet Trump, a president who doesn't read, has spent the past six months trying to take control of America's libraries.
He fired not only black and female service members, but also the first woman and first African-American to serve as director of the Library of Congress, Carla Hayden. This accomplished academic was confirmed to the position in 2016 by the Senate. She was forced to resign because the White House confirmed the absurd accusation by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) that Hayden "promoted radical children's books" and allowed "literature from opponents of the president." The AAF considers competent officials like Hayden to be "subversive and leftist bureaucrats." The allegations that Hayden "provided inappropriate books to the children's library" or supported a "DEI" program are false.
The Library of Congress is a research library and only persons over the age of 16 may borrow books from it. A more plausible reason for this attack on the library's autonomy is the well-founded assumption that the Trump administration wants access to data prepared for members of Congress "that could be used to manipulate Congress."
Bolshoi Theater "Kennedy"
The Trump administration decided to attack the performing arts as well - again, using a tried-and-true tactic: the communists bolshevized the Bolshoi Theater in 1919 so that the ballet could serve the state and indoctrinate workers.
In 1927, dancers performed "The Red Poppy", the first communist ballet, a naive tale in which noble Soviet sailors come to the aid of oppressed Chinese dockworkers, victims of brutal exploitation. Stalin ensured that this cultural agenda was upheld by strict control over theater programs. He required composers to create works that glorified socialist ideals and banned any music that seemed influenced by Western styles.
Great composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich were sometimes silenced. Later, many artists chose to emigrate or defect rather than submit to cultural authoritarianism: the dancers Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev, the film director Andrei Tarkovsky, and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Stalin even sent dancers to the Gulag.
To a similar end, Trump decided to "MAGA-ize" the Kennedy Center for the Arts, a nonpartisan arts institution, by removing its leadership. The stated goal remains the same: to provide artistic programming that avoids "DEI" themes.
The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 and has successfully presented jazz, folk, classical, and musical performances. It welcomes two million people a year and only a fifth of its budget comes from federal funds. But Trump insists that its aesthetics and ideology are completely wrong.
Trump appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center's board of trustees, saying: "We will soon announce a new board with an extraordinary chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!".
Mstislav Rostropovich was the center's artistic director from 1977 to 1994; an émigré from the Soviet Union, he understood the importance of cultural freedom.
Since Donald Trump took over the Kennedy Center, ticket sales have plummeted.
Building cultural walls
The Trump administration has dismissed cultural exchange as antithetical to the American way of life, insisting that the United States has nothing to learn from others.
Here again, the parallel is striking. This closure accurately characterizes the Soviet approach: erecting cultural walls around the USSR, protecting workers susceptible to "bourgeois thinking", and preventing the theft of Soviet secrets. By pursuing this policy of isolation, Stalin ensured that the Soviet Union fell decades behind in scientific discovery and crippled economic innovation.
Trump has attacked cultural exchanges, starting with the prestigious Fulbright program, founded in 1946 to improve cross-cultural relations and skills between American citizens and those of other countries. As a result, the White House has instructed U.S. State Department officials to drastically reduce the number of Fulbright exchanges, whose alumni include several Nobel Prize winners.
In response, members of the program's board of directors resigned in early June in protest of the rejection of several grants by cultural leaders close to the MAGA movement, particularly in the fields of biology, architecture, agricultural and animal sciences, medicine, music, and history. The State Department bypassed a long and rigorous selection process designed to select the best candidates for the exchange, prioritizing the "national interests and academic integrity" of the United States.
For six months, artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other cultural figures have been resigning from their posts and refusing to obey Trump's orders. So far, the courts have sided with the administration, but the lessons of authoritarianism from the Soviet past and modern Russia are clear: the fight to protect intellectual freedom under Trump will be long and costly for the American nation.