Panda in the Smithsonian National Zoo, USA
Donald Trump’s executive order to eliminate “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian Institute, including its zoo, may seem strange – but the use of zoos for political purposes is not new.
The vast range of more than 130 executive orders and other decisions by President Donald Trump aims to change everything, from longstanding immigration policy to the control of a performative arts center.
But so far, zoos are not among the many issues where Trump administration has focused.
But this may stop being the case.
Trump issued an executive order on March 27, 2025 to restore “truth and sanity” in federal historical sites.
“Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite the history of our nation,” Trump wrote in the executive order, ‘replacing the facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology and not truth’. As a correction, gave instructions to Vice President Jd Vance to eliminate “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian Institutea group of museums and research centers created and funded by the federal government.
The executive order also applies to the National zoo In Washington, DC, which has been part of Smithsonian since 1890.
For Trump’s critics, the suggestion that the zoological gardens could be indoctrinating visitors was absurd.
NBC Late Night program host Seth Meyers played with the executive order on his program on April 2, characterizing it as proof of an authoritarian personality.
“Seriously, what lightning is a Ideology ‘improper’ in the Zoo Garden? Trump is starting to enter the wave of strange dictators, ”said Meyers.
Meyers’s amazement should not be a surprise. The zoos gardens make a great effort to present themselves as scientifically objective and politically neutral.
However, zoos have always been ideological, sending subtle – and not so subtle – messages on topics that have little to do with animals. Historically, zoos have been used to justify colonial exploration. They put weight to eugenic ideas about racial hierarchy. And they have served as a scenario for all kinds of political theater.
During the 1920s and 1930s, for example, the Italian strong man Benito Mussolini liked Enter the zoo lions cage from Rome to demonstrate the courage and vitality that associated with fascist politics.
As explained by the 2025 book “World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Age,” calls between zoos and national politics are especially accentuated in periods of war.
ZOOs in World War
The ownership and financing models of the zoological gardens depend on each zoo, but many of them receive at least some government financing to function.
At the beginning of World War II, most governments required the zoological gardens to adopt a Ideology of sacrifice – A desire to put the needs of the state above their own.
For the Zoos of North America and the British Empire, this meant reducing workers’ salaries, rationing food supplies, and offering uniformed soldiers special access to the facilities from the zoo.
Also meant the destruction of animals considered a threat to public safetyespecially in the case of bombing or assault that could free them. In 1939, the London Zoo Garden killed more than 200 animalsstarting with the black widows and poisonous snakes. Other zoological gardens did the same by slaughtering their collections of animals as a precaution against possible escapes.
During World War II, authoritarian governments exerted almost total control over the zoological gardens of their countries.
Under the regime of Adolf Hitler, the German zoos applied policies of Visit “Just for Arianos”They decorated their land with swastikas, organized galas for Nazi dignitaries, and displayed animals looted from zoological gardens from occupied countries.
In Japan, the governor of Tokyo ordered the Ueno Zoo to carry out a series of “advertising killings” in order to reinforce the public’s commitment to the fight in war time. From August 1943, Zoo employees killed the shooting, electrocied, stabbed and strangled more than 20 animals, including a polar bear, an American bison, a python and a leopard’s cub.
Tokyo’s zoo also killed three elephants called Jon, Tonki and Hanako. Weeks after the zoo had an official funeral for its animals, two of the three elephants that They were not effectively killed They continued to suffer, with their cloth -covered cages so that the public did not see the horrible evidence.
Even during the fighting, the Soviet government gave instructions to its zoological gardens to develop practical measures to help the war effort. In the Moscow Zoo, employees taught people to Create rats and rabbits For medical applications such as vaccine tests.
Throughout this time, the employees of the Soviet Zoo had to demonstrate ideological surveillance in the workplace. Any slip could mean official sanction, loss of office or something worse.
Zoos of the Cold War
During the Cold War, governments around the world continued to see the zoological gardens through an ideological lens.
This was especially true in Berlin, where the two zoological gardens of the city – one in the capitalist West, the other in the East Communist – became symbols of Competitive ideological views of the world.
No other zoo animal was more ideologically problematic during the Cold War than giant, endemic pandes of the central china forest mountains.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the US government denied the American zoos authorization to import Pandas from China. The State Department considered them “enemy goods”.
This changed in 1972, when President Richard Nixon, during the Cold War defilette, returned from China with Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, the first giant pandes that were presented and shown in the US in decades.
The National Zoo has revealed the latest “Soft Power Ambassadors” from China in January 2025. Three -year -old Pandas Bao Li and Qing Bao should remain in DC for 10 years – enough time to win the hearts and minds of millions of visitors from the Zoo.
