Trump, Harvey Milk and Harriet Tubman: The Cultural Counter-Revolution Is Underway

It is a highly symbolic gesture, and a profoundly revealing one. In the middle of LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, the Trump administration has ordered that one of the US Navy’s warships cease bearing the name of Harvey Milk, an emblematic figure of the American gay rights movement, assassinated in 1978. This decision is anything but anecdotal: it is part of a methodical strategy to dismantle the commemorative and diversity policies implemented in recent months.

At the helm is Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, himself close to the evangelical far-right, who justifies this initiative with the intention of “restoring a warrior culture” within the armed forces. The message is clear: the military should no longer celebrate civilian or progressive figures, but rather return to its “primary mission”, that of a virile, homogenous and nationalist order. Hence the removal of Harvey Milk, whose commitment to equality and minority visibility is now considered incompatible with the administration’s new “military doctrine”.

But that is not all. In the same vein, the administration is considering renaming another naval vessel, this time named in honour of Harriet Tubman, a former slave, abolitionist activist, and historical figure of the “Underground Railroad” who helped hundreds of slaves escape the slaveholding South in the 19th century. Her crime? Having embodied a memory of struggle, emancipation and racial justice. The list of other threatened names — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thurgood Marshall, and Cesar Chavez — confirms the scale of the project: it is about wiping the slate clean of a progressive, inclusive memory, in order to restore a pantheon that is exclusively male, preferably white, and militaristic.

What we are witnessing here is not a series of isolated gestures. It is a cultural counter-revolution.
Since his return to power in January 2025, Donald Trump has launched a process of “ideological reconquest”, in direct opposition to the societal developments of the past fifty years. The erasure of diversity policies, the dismantling of federal inclusion programmes, the pressure exerted on universities, businesses, and museums: everything converges on a single objective — to profoundly reconfigure American identity around a singular, authoritarian, and exclusionary narrative.

That narrative is one of a “restored” America, rid of its “weaknesses”, purged of wokeness, refocused on its “true values”: strength, order, hierarchy and nation. An America where the Capitol insurgents are recast as new heroes. This is not merely campaign rhetoric: it is a structured, deliberate political line, one of whose pillars is the rewriting of national history. For any attempt at commemorative emancipation — whether related to civil rights, feminist struggles, or LGBTQIA+ movements — is now perceived as an existential threat. And this is precisely what Donald Trump and his heir apparent, J. D. Vance, are aiming for: to ensure these struggles no longer exist in any official form, to see them erased from institutions, school curricula, and collective symbols.

Make no mistake: renaming a military ship may seem trivial. It is not. In a democracy, what is honoured reveals everything about what one seeks to pass on. Erasing Harvey Milk or Harriet Tubman is not merely an insult to their memory — it is a warning to all those who today are fighting for an ideal of justice and shared dignity. It is a message of closure, an unabashed step backwards, a rejection of diversity as a founding principle of the American pact.

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Romuald Sciora is Director of the Political and Geostrategic Observatory of the United States at IRIS, where he is a research fellow. A Franco-American essayist and political scientist, he is the author of numerous books, articles and documentaries, and is a regular commentator in international media on current affairs. He lives in New York.