‘Trump’s war on science is the terminal phase of a long illness whose early signs were ignored’ – Go Health Pro

Since January 20, the news from America has been of an extravagant fervor, each morning presenting the avalanche of the previous day’s follies. The staggering spectacle offered day after day by the White House may be thrusting us a little more each day into a dystopia no one could have imagined arriving so quickly, but it also conceals an important part of the depth of the regime change underway in Washington.

Through its relationship to science, knowledge, and the places where knowledge is constructed and transmitted, the Trump administration is also crudely revealing its totalitarian practices.

“There cannot be two masters: the Party and science. For the Party’s authority to become absolute, science must disappear (…). The ambition to control reality itself, all reality, is inscribed in the totalitarian project. This is why the oligarchs must break down the two modes of thought offering reliable access to reality and referring to it: science and common sense,” wrote philosopher Jean-Jacques Rosat, in a book to be published in April (L’Esprit du Totalitarisme. George Orwell et 1984 Face au 21^e Siècle, “The Spirit of Totalitarianism: George Orwell and 1984 Against the 21^st Century”).

On Friday, March 7, in France, the United States and elsewhere, numerous rallies were held to protest against the Trump administration’s subversion and destruction of science. “Science and knowledge [are] being targeted by a fascist trajectory,” was the motto at the Paris rally.

In the US, thousands of federal scientists across all disciplines are losing their jobs, agencies are being outright destroyed, projects have been suspended and data has been confiscated. Universities are losing their funding, condemning precarious teaching staff-researchers to unemployment, and research projects are subject to tight political control that outlaws the use of certain terms. In Washington, federal prosecutors sent Georgetown University’s dean a strongly worded letter demanding that specific courses be discontinued.

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