In the second world war, Navajo code talkers transmitted sensitive US military information in their own undocumented language. Which was nice of them, as their immediate ancestors had been dispossessed and destroyed by white settlers, and then had all their water poisoned with uranium. “Were it not for the Navajos,” concluded major Howard Connor, at the time, “the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” And that famous photo of the American soldiers raising a flag would just have shown some Japanese boy scouts letting off a party popper.
But last month Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said: “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength’.” Some Navajo code talkers reputedly had bodyguards to protect them from white American servicemen who thought they were Japanese. Plus ça change, as they say over there in that Europe.
