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We are all LGBTQI+ archivists now
There is one consistent with authoritarians is that they desire to control information and will destroy it to prevent the spread of contrary messages. The United States implemented introduced the concept of official secrets during World War One to stop the spread of sensitive information, and from that point the US government has adopted a policy of control information that means that most Americans will never see the deep workings of the State. The same is true of every country, for secrets are the stock trade of the machine of State. This desire for control and censorship is part and parcel of living in a digitally connected world, yet what is most shocking about the Trump administration’s attempts at using that apparatus against trans and “woke” information is that those leavers of control are erasing and eradicating information that is both publicly known and taken for granted.
All censorship is political, and no society seeks to be completely open about every aspect of how the State works. The UK destroyed vast archives of information as it decolonised, hiding many of the crimes committed by its agents in the field. Most accidental examples include the US bombing of Baghdad in 2003 which destroyed Iraqi ministry archives. The most visceral destruction of information has come in the form of book burnings and deliberate attempts at destroying culture and heritage, including the…
