Orwell knew.

Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.

It was laughable when the DOGE children deleted images and information about the Enola Gay from the Department of Defense website because the algo said so, combined with the typical depth of historical knowledge of young men who go by the sobriquet “Big Balls.” Then again, it was merely the Muskrats mindless method of eradicating DEI from the government in the way coders without conscience do. If it says “gay,” it’s gone.

But what the Department of Justice just did with its mass-deletion is of another bent.

The Trump administration has mass-deleted information about prosecutions tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including cases of defendants who assaulted police officers. The removals mark the latest phase of President Trump’s effort to rewrite the history of the violent riot.

Justice Department news releases that detailed guilty pleas, jury verdicts and prison sentences abruptly disappeared from government websites last week.

In the Trump narrative, the insurrection morphed into a “day of love.” The prosecuted and convicted criminal defendants were first pardoned and now may be rewarded for having committed crimes of violence and sedition for their god. The participants believed they were patriots taking action to prevent a stolen election. They believed they were doing so on the command of the president. What could be wrong with fighting when the president tells you to fight to save your nation?

On social media, the Justice Department defended the move, saying, “We are proud to reverse the DOJ’s weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes. This includes stripping DOJ’s website of partisan propaganda.”

But these press releases about arrests, prosecutions and convictions were statements of fact. Each happened, whether you believe they should have or not. They do not unhappen because the Trump DoJ, under the auspices of Auditioning Attorney General Todd Blanche, wants to contort the language to fabricate an excuse for its mass deletion.

When speaking about the attack, Trump consistently describes his supporters as victims rather than perpetrators of violence.

“I pardoned people that were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” Trump said last year. “They didn’t assault. They were assaulted.”

The video says otherwise. The injured Capital police disagree. The steaming pile of feces on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk is hardly “partisan propaganda.” Prosecuting people whose crimes were proudly captured on video is hardly “weaponization,” a word regurgitated by Trump and his sycophants as if its mere mention somehow negates what unquestionably happened.

It’s unlikely that this mass deletion will suffice to change the narrative beyond the delusions of the MAGA faithful. The content exists elsewhere, and no 404 error message at the DoJ website is going to make it disappear, although it wouldn’t shock anyone should Trump sign an Executive Order commanding the “fake” media to delete all mention of the January 6 insurrection.

But more importantly. the government is hellbent on deleting official government documents and images that fail to conform to the Trump historical narrative. It’s bad enough that Blanche’s DoJ has concluded that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional, thus enabling Trump to “disappear” his presidential writings that might reveal his malfeasance and serve to humiliate him in perpetuity. Or pretend that the classified documents illegally retained at the bathroom of Mar-a-Lago after Trump claimed he returned them, more than once, upon demand of the Archivist didn’t fully justify the execution of a search warrant and subsequent indictment.

While the colonnade wall of shame outside the Oval Office, beside the gold letters alerting Trump to the office door in case he forgets, that included a pic of the autopen where Biden’s photo should have been, or the goldish plaques that told of how much Ronald Reagan loved Trump, is little more than a silly Trumpian affectation, the mass deletion of factual government documents presents a far more serious problem. This is what happened. This is actual history. This is what the Department of Justice has disappeared. Orwell understood.