UNESCO

Donald Trump’s Inaugural Speech on 20 January 2025, demonstrated the significance of history in building a narrative for national politics. These are some of the key passages in his speech:

“The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.  …

“Above all, my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization. …
 
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.  …
 
“Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers.  The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.  The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls. 
 
“Our American ancestors turned a small group of colonies on the edge of a vast continent into a mighty republic of the most extraordinary citizens on Earth.  No one comes close.
 
“Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness.  They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand.  If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve.“

We will come to see to what extent the Trump administration will even employ cultural heritage to signify its ‘historical’ mission. And whether heritage will be seen as a tool for future-making.

While campaigning for his first Presidential period, there was one example of Trump possibly using a type of ‘heritage futures’. That was the occasion of the fictitous war memorial erected in 2015 on one of his golf courses. The River of Blood monument was installed at the Trump National Golf Club in Lowes Island, Virginia, which purports to mark an American Civil War battle site even though no records to that effect are known. The intention seems to have been to connect Trump’s patriotic America-first agenda with a heritage site commemorating an imagined historic event during the American Civil War.

Lets see how all this plays out over the coming years.