From Trinity to Trump: The Politics of Nuclear Memory in the 2020 Election
The 75th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 2020, while having low-key, in-person gatherings on account of COVID-19, still resonated through a range of electronic and broadcast media, as did the controversies surrounding them, whether historic or current, including reflections on ongoing nuclear policies.[i] Existing academic studies have explored memorialisation and politics around the bombings, but only briefly discussed these in relation to US elections.[ii] However, Hiroshima and Nagasaki have become intertwined with the 2020 US presidential election, mobilised by presidential candidates in arguments over nuclear policies. President Donald Trump has avoided reference to the bombings, but used other WW2 nuclear anniversaries to indicate support for such weapons, embodying his wider approach to nuclear diplomacy (descriptions of which range from negotiating through strength to some variation of a ‘big stick approach’ or ‘Madman Strategy’).[iii] By contrast, Democrat Presidential Candidate Joe Biden used the Hiroshima anniversary to reiterate […]