As the infrastructures for creating, replicating, and disseminating information have increased significantly since the advent of the World Wide Web, the tools used by nationalist governments to control those infrastructures have expanded and evolved to keep pace with technological change. Nationalist governments seek control of knowledge infrastructures both to promote their supporters and beliefs and to erase positions and people who they fear. While the increased embrace of nationalist practices – particularly in relation to information – is currently occurring in a distressing number of governments across Europe and the Americas, the United States (US) provides an especially stark example of how rapidly a nationalist government can gain political control of knowledge infrastructures to advance its preferred beliefs and silence opposing views.

Knowledge is dangerous, especially to governments

Governments have viewed knowledge as potentially dangerous to their authority as long as we have records of governments. Well before the Common Era (BCE) in Egypt, China, Greece, Jerusalem, Rome, and many other locations, governments were implementing censorship policies when written records were confined to papyrus scrolls and clay tablets. The first censorship campaign for which detailed records have survived was in China in 213 BCE, and it was thorough. The emperor Qin Shi Huang called for the burning of all texts contradicting his preferred version of history, along with the more than 400 authors of those texts just to make sure the stories would not be told again.

Most governments and religions kept an index of banned materials as a matter of basic policy. But, in a practical sense, censorship policies had only a small range of written materials to cover before the printing press made the written world much more available. Prior to the printing press, the cost of a typical book was about $20,000 in production costs in today’s money. Such books were filled with transcription errors that had accumulated over time, and in many cases the creation of new copies took more time than the decay of the existing books due to the materials used. New discoveries were often forgotten faster than they could be recorded.

The first comprehensive government programs to control knowledge infrastructures were created in response to the printing press, as this invention suddenly made it much easier to spread information that a government did not want to spread. The printing press greatly advanced access to information, which in turn spurred increases in literacy. The rapid expansion of the written word encouraged mass confusion and increased isolation along national and religious lines, producing many bloody conflicts driven by differences in religious beliefs that were now in print for all to read.

Learning to control knowledge infrastructures

Control of what information was printed and disseminated became a driving goal for most governments, leading to banned books lists and state control of who had license to print materials. As the period of European powers creating colonial empires coincided with the expansion of publications and literacy via the printing press, the colonizers could wield their power both through printing and through censorship. Later new technologies, such as the telegraph and the steam-powered printing press, would further government control over empires and knowledge infrastructures by giving the government the ability to learn new information faster and thus control narratives about events.

The Habsburg Empire implemented policies to control knowledge infrastructures that spanned centuries. In Spain, the Habsburg policies led to the Inquisition and an approved books list of about 100 titles. In the central European branch of the Empire, every creative act had to be approved by the authorities, and all improvisations were forbidden. Public performances had a police officer in the audience following the script word for word with any actor guilty of deviating however slightly arrested on the spot.

Asserting control over knowledge infrastructures is a defining characteristic of nationalist governments, which work to inextricably link their political party to the nation and state itself. The marginalization and dehumanization of minority populations and political opponents is one of the core uses of these infrastructures. Nationalism defines current governments such as Argentina’s Javier Milei, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Russia’s Vladmir Putin, and Donald Trump in the US, among many others.

The twentieth century featured many nationalist states – such as Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist China, and the Soviet Union – seeking comprehensive control of knowledge infrastructures that incorporated a widening array of communication technologies including newspapers, radio, films, academic journals and scientific publications, recordings, and television. Such control included sometimes arresting – or much worse – scientists, journalists, and librarians. These governments undermined and attacked education, expertise, and public discourse so that the tools for dissent were badly weakened or no longer existed. Control of educational curricula was employed as a powerful means to dictate the information that was available. Dissenting writers were silenced and their works burned publicly. Such twentieth century efforts simultaneously promoted the government-approved narratives and beliefs, while limiting or erasing other perspectives. Russia’s Vladmir Putin, the person who has invented much of the playbook for government control of knowledge infrastructures in the information age, has stated that “Wars are won by teachers”.

In the twenty-first century, the capacities of the World Wide Web magnify the power and reach of government efforts to control knowledge infrastructures. Government messages can be spread instantly to create the preferred narrative and drown out a dissenting narrative. Social discord and disorganization among opponents can be created through disinformation that distracts from real threats. Online harassment of opponents can intimidate and punish those who dissent. Swarms of bots can be deployed to further disinformation and cyberbullying efforts on a massive scale. The Internet can even be slowed or turned off to control information flows within a country.

For Internet-enhanced nationalist governments, control of information, censoring information, and spreading disinformation are now entirely interrelated. The growth of knowledge infrastructures inevitably leads nationalist governments to discover new methods of control, like removing all of the information about a population from government websites. All these Internet-enabled methods are enhancements to the established methods.

Asserting control of knowledge infrastructures

One key lesson that nationalist governments have learned is that a flurry of activity and disinformation is very useful in accomplishing their goals. Opponents are left working to keep track of all the changes, to determine which are conjectures and which are genuine proposals, to ascertain which have been implemented, and to figure out the implications of the changes. The more that is happening, the harder it is to understand how these changes interact with one another. That confusion is intended, enhancing the unending stream of falsehoods to make you question your own perceptions of reality.

In the US, this tactic can actively be witnessed in the relentless efforts by the second Donald Trump administration to take control over knowledge infrastructures in the US, primarily through executive orders rather than legislation, during its first year in office. Since taking office in January 2025, the Trump administration has:

• Fired many government employees with specific areas of expertise and in positions related to information collection, oversight, analysis, and accuracy, including the Librarian of Congress and the Archivist of the United States.
• Removed thousands of government webpages, many focused on science.
• Mandated government use of nationalist terms such as “restoring patriotism” and “restoring American exceptionalism”, which are contrary to the independent missions of institutions, while also prohibiting the use of other terms and perspectives.
• Shuttered federal grant programs and agencies supporting libraries, archives, and museums, such as the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
• Fired all the librarians at federal government agencies, such as the Center for Disease Control (CDC) Library that supports public health professionals across the US.
• Required the federal museums of the Smithsonian Institution to submit their exhibition content, plans for future shows, and guidelines for review by the White House.
• Ended all federal government funding for independent public media, such as National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).
• Closed or greatly diminished federal agencies devoted to collecting and disseminating news and other information resources, such as the Voice of America (VOA).
• Cancelled many already awarded grants devoted to topics the administration objects to, such as projects focused on issues of gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion, from agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF).
• Ended federal funding related to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
• Asserted direct control over the curriculum in all schools run by the federal government, such as military academy schools.
• Created lists of banned books for federal government libraries.
• Eliminated federal funding for programs that the administration objects to, particularly those related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
• Threatened to cancel broadcasting licenses or take other retaliatory regulatory actions from commercial networks airing content the administration disagrees with, such as trying to get television comedians Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert removed from their respective late night programs.
• Encouraged censorship organizations looking to ban materials about marginalized populations in local schools and libraries while simultaneously claiming that no such censorship organizations exist.

The second Trump administration entered office with an extensive plan – known as Project 2025 – prepared to accomplish massive changes to the federal government and the entire country. Many of these ideas had been proposed repeatedly but not acted upon in the first Trump administration. And, in addition to all these tactics to control scientific knowledge infrastructures, Trump spreads a great deal of strange disinformation related to science, such as clearly not understanding the causes of wildfires.

One alarmingly notable thread across these efforts to control knowledge infrastructures is trying to establish which perspectives and experiences are to be considered truly American. These policies variously target Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC), lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and beyond (LGBTQIA+), disabled, and immigrant populations to establish that these traditionally marginalized populations are not worthy of inclusion in the administration’s vision for America. Many of the policies of Project 2025 intentionally increase the disadvantages faced by already marginalized populations. The same populations are often spoken of in highly negative terms by Trump.

The extent of the Trump administration’s success thus far in asserting control over information is evident in the rising amounts of self-censorship. In an example of unsuccessfully trying to avoid criticism, Harvard Education Publishing Group cancelled an issue of one its own journals in 2025 shortly before publication. The issue focused on the damage done to the educational infrastructure of Gaza during the war with Israel. Given the strong anti-Gaza stance of the Trump administration, even writing about the need to educate the children of Gaza displaced by the war was determined to be potentially displeasing to the Trump administration.

Controlling science infrastructures

All the means of controlling the knowledge infrastructure noted above have been readily applied to scientific knowledge infrastructures, through ending funding programs, closing agencies, cancelling grants, threatening retribution, and firing experts. Additionally, the Trump administration has taken further steps to control the scientific knowledge infrastructure by elevating the roles and opinions of those who lack scientific expertise.

The clearest example of all these methods of undermining scientific knowledge infrastructures through political action can be found in the appointment of Robert F. Kenndey, Jr. to the position of Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). With a budget in the billions and control over most of the health, medicine, and safety research done by the US government, HHS is the perfect avenue through which to undermine and repurpose the scientific knowledge infrastructure in the US.

Kennedy has seemingly devoted his life to contradicting established science, including spreading disinformation about many diseases and vaccines, while advocating for treatments that have no scientific basis. Placing an anti-science activist in charge of HHS guarantees that the scientific knowledge infrastructure in the US will be greatly altered to disregard research, evidence, and scientific data in favor of the personal, not-science-based beliefs of Kennedy and the political objectives of the Trump administration. Kennedy has cancelled health and safety research programs, already stopped public education programs, and appointed people who share his beliefs rather than relevant expertise to advisory committees.

The political intentions to undermine scientific knowledge infrastructures through HSS were perfectly encapsulated in a report issued by the agency entitled Make America Healthy Again, which had to be retracted and corrected multiple times. Not only was much of the content contrary to established scientific evidence, a large portion of the work cited in the first version of the report did not exist. Publications and scientists were made up, while actually existing publications and scientists were wildly mischaracterized; the report was also filled with obvious indicators that generative AI had been used to write the report rather than experts.

A depressing centerpiece

The US is less than one year into the second Trump administration. The mounting damage to knowledge infrastructures overall, and particularly to scientific ones, is painfully evident. The capture and misuse of knowledge infrastructures by nationalist governments is central to their political strategies of controlling what information is available, what information is censored, and what disinformation is foisted upon the public. Whether the goal is to erase the presence of marginalized cultures or inconvenient scientific truths, political control of knowledge infrastructures is a depressing centerpiece of the playbook of the increasing numbers of nationalist governments in the twenty-first century.

This essay is adapted from the forthcoming book entitled Book Bans, Disinformation, and Cultural Erasure: The Censorship Movement in Libraries, Schools, and Society by Paul T. Jaeger, which will be published in 2026 by Bloomsbury.

The post State-Approved Information appeared first on Verfassungsblog.