They’re Not Hiding It and It's Not Irony

Nov 11, 2025

white wooden fence near green trees during daytime — Photo by Janne Simoes on Unsplash

The Trump administration just quietly removed a memorial to Black U.S. soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, near Maastricht. Not relocated. Removed. Gone.

But sure, tell me again how it’s “hysterical” to think this administration is animated by white supremacy. How it’s “deranged” to notice the pattern. How it’s “absurd” to think JD Vance—who spread lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets, who appears comfortable with Groypers in his circles, who spent Friday night celebrating Viktor Orbán—might harbor racist views.

His wife is of Indian descent, after all! That’s the defense. As if proximity to a person of color vaccinates you against racism. As if marriage were ideological immunity.

Never mind the very weird comfort many right-wing Indian-Americans display with white supremacy—having convinced themselves they’re Aryans too, that the racial hierarchy has room for them near the top if they just align with the right forces. Never mind that “model minority” has always been a wedge concept designed to pit non-white groups against each other while leaving white supremacy intact.

They removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died fighting fascism. They did it quietly. They thought you wouldn’t notice or wouldn’t care.

The same administration whose young staffers—30 to 40 percent, according to

Rod Dreher

’s own weekend reporting from DC—are Nick Fuentes fans who use anti-Semitism as a social litmus test and openly discuss fascism as a governing option. The same Vice President who celebrates Orbán’s “illiberal democracy” as a model. The same movement where Groyperism has infiltrated official Republican networks to a degree that even sympathetic observers find alarming.

This isn’t subtext anymore. This isn’t dog whistles. This is removing memorials to Black soldiers while Fuentes-aligned staffers consolidate positions in Republican Washington and the Vice President meets with authoritarian leaders who model how to dismantle democracy while maintaining its aesthetics.

But please, tell me how noticing this makes me hysterical. Tell me how connecting these dots is derangement. Tell me how the memorial’s removal is just normal administrative housekeeping that coincidentally targets Black soldiers’ recognition.

They’re counting on your exhaustion. On your willingness to treat each violation as an isolated incident rather than a systematic pattern. On sophisticated people explaining why noticing the pattern is actually the problem, not the pattern itself.

Two plus two equals four. They removed a memorial to Black soldiers who fought fascism while fascist-adjacent forces consolidate in official Republican Washington.

If you can’t see the connection, you’re not looking. If you refuse to name it, you’re accommodating it.

And accommodation is how this becomes sufferable. How each violation gets normalized. How the abyss deepens while people explain why noticing the depth is the real problem.

They’re not even hiding it anymore. The question is whether we’ll keep pretending not to see—or whether we’ll insist on seeing it, naming it, and refusing to normalize it.

The wire still holds. But only if we choose to walk it consciously, recognizing what we’re witnessing and what it means.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated the memorial was located on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The memorial to Black U.S. soldiers who died in World War II was located at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, near Maastricht. The error has been corrected.