Trump's "Disappearing" Act: It's Happened Before

When I first heard Sarah Sanders mention the president's thoughts about rescinding the security clearances of several former intelligence and national security officials, I flashed back to a time--within my own lifetime, by the way--when Soviet leaders doctored photographs to eliminate the faces of people who had once been in positions of authority within the Soviet Union. Such people became non-persons, their identities stripped, their names purged, their images over-painted or simply cut-out. It was (and still is) Photoshopping of the crudest (and darkest) kind.

As Melissa Stanger of Business Insider wrote earlier this year, "It's not easy to remove a person from history, but brutal leaders throughout history have erased some of their formerly close advisors."

Joseph Stalin excelled at "disappearing" his enemies.

The original picture, left to right Nikolai Antipov (formerly the People's Commissar for Posts and Telegraphs of the USSR), Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov, and Nikolai Shvernik. Picture shows how after time each of the Stalin's comrades from the original shot was removed as they fell out of favor.

Sometimes it can be a less-sinister, but nonetheless self-aggrandizing attempt to change history in a picture as with this side by side of Prime Minster of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, removed King George VI from the original photograph with the PM alongside Queen Elizabeth. The photograph was used on an election poster for the Prime Minister, so the theory is that an image of just Mackenzie with the Queen put him in a more powerful light.

In other instances, removing even a relative can help rewrite the official record. Kim Jong-Un's uncle, Jang Song-thaek, executed by his nephew, became too inconvenient to include in an old photo, and was removed. 

Generations younger than mine have to understand that there is a certain kind of PTSD affecting my generation associated with seeing such disappearances; it's not from physical trauma, or personal trauma of any clearly identified kind. It's from the realization that what we were witnessing at the time was the very act of erasing people, of changing history books, of subverting the public memory. To Americans watching those visual and historical-record purges, it was inconceivable that such a thing would happen here--orchestrated at the very top of the government.

As a little test of what a 21st century president could do to a 20th century commander-in-chief of a different party and reputation, I took a photo I'd shot of President Jimmy Carter and China's Deng Xiaoping during a state welcoming ceremony in the '70s, and I rubbed Mr. Carter from his place at the podium. Such a transformation takes less than five minutes...and an historical image gets a nefarious do-over.

China's Deng Xiaoping and President Jimmy Carter, January, 1979.  Photo by Jim Moore, Gamma-Liaison

Now I know that Trump's bluster about pulling the clearances of former intel leaders is typical of his stupidity, smallness, and desire for vengeance, but once a dictator-without-tethers goes down that road of erasure, and gets away with it...he will go farther down that road if he thinks he can.

I don't doubt for a second that if Mr. Trump could erase every positive picture of Barack Obama and Michelle, he would do so in a heartbeat. He's already demonstrated his predilection for bogus magazine covers hung on the walls of his golf resorts. I guess we can be, grateful that so many people today know how images can be manipulated...how often we have been deceived by "real" pictures, only to discover just how altered their reality was. And yet...

If you don't want a general in your picture, you can just eliminate him from history (Orig. Getty Image on left)                   Using Photoshop, I modified the image, removing that pesky general

Imagine if the general escorting the Trumps and Pences to the East Steps of the Capitol on inauguration day (above) fell out of disfavor with the president. Why, in the wink of an eye, and a few keyboard commands and pen moves, the quintet becomes a quartet, and history is none the wiser. 

Mr. Trump is determined to erase the past; that is the bottom line. And, for those of us who saw how brutal leaders managed to pull that off in an oppressed society that is now run by a former KGB chief, a chief with some sort of dark tie to our president...well...I do not think this attempt at purging is over. It starts with taking away credentials; it ends with taking away lives and rewriting them out of existence.