In war — and politics — truth often loses out. Will it again?

British writer Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, worked for the BBC during World War II. He produced propaganda focused on the Indian subcontinent, a job that gave him the insights into truth and falsehood that shaped his later work on powerful books including “Animal Farm” and “1984.”

As Orwell, he has become known for searing work that speaks eloquently to our times, even now, more than 75 years on. He expressed some of his wisdom in short lines. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” he wrote in “1984.” Along with that was this thought: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

Today, as NPR reported ably about the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, such phrases could easily come to mind. Bowing to the orders of the GOP in control of Congress, tour guides at the building these days omit any mention of the rioting that injured 140 law enforcement people, forced lawmakers into hiding and left several people dead.

This is so even though the FBI labeled the event an act of domestic terrorism, one in which some 2,000 people took part in criminal acts, including using weapons to assault police officers. Visitors won’t hear of that, evidently on orders of a party determined to whitewash it into nonexistence. It is a vital point in history that, for now at least, visitors will have to learn of somewhere other than where it occurred.

“I don’t think that it’s necessary when giving a tour in this building to talk about January 6,” former Republican Congressman Anthony D’Esposito, who sat on the House committee that oversee the Capitol Visitor Center, told NPR. “This institution carries with it hundreds of years of history and tradition focused on the forward movement of this great country, and I think that should be the focus when touring.”

And some number of Americans seem fine with denying or forgetting the whole thing, a reflection of a peculiar fact of our political culture: a lack of memory. One visitor told NPR that the omission didn’t trouble him. “I was fine because I don’t think anything bad happened on January 6,” he said. “I thought it was a political hit job, you know, it was all made up.”

Despite images that media outlets aired or published at great length at the time and despite an exhaustive bipartisan congressional investigation, some Americans seem to either disbelieve or discount it all. Apparently, for them, two plus two don’t really equal four. And control of the present by some does seem to mean control of the past.

Recall that Donald J. Trump, refusing to accept the results of the 2020 election, had stirred up the mob that besieged the Capitol, the congressional committee found. It even recommended that criminal charges be brought against him (and, in fact, he had been impeached unsuccessfully for his incitement).

Remember that the Republican-controlled Senate acquitted Trump of incitement, even though the body’s leader, Mitch McConnell, declared him “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day” — a sentiment apparently shared by most Americans at the time. A Quinnipiac poll in 2021 found that nearly 60 percent believed back then that he should never hold office again.

Now, of course, we are just a couple weeks away from his installation for a second term as president. And the rewriting of history leading up to that has been breathtaking.

For instance, the so-called Loudermilk Committee, a GOP-controlled House committee that reexamined the rioting, rendered Trump blameless for whipping up the mob, instead faulting “numerous security failures” and the “politicization of Capitol security.” Democrats, who had worked with two Republicans (Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) for nearly two years to produce a nearly 1,000-page report, had just “cherry-picked” evidence to fit a pre-determined narrative that pointed a finger at Trump, the GOP report argued.

In response, Democrats on the Loudermilk Committee — formally the House Committee on Administration — condemned its efforts to paint over the all-too-real events.

“There is nothing about this that is being done in the public’s interest,” the committee’s ranking member, New York Democratic Rep. Joseph D. Morelle told Roll Call. “The public has every right to know what transpired on Jan. 6… but what’s happened since then has been the continued politicization of this — promoting far-right conspiracy theories, election disinformation and extremism. I’m really angry about this.”

Morelle issued a dissenting report, citing among many other things a damning comment by then Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy. “The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” the former GOP leader said. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding.” Morelle denounced the Loudermilk effort as based on a “tapestry of lies,” branding it a “work of fiction.”

Trump, for his part, has recast the bloody day as a “day of love.” He used this language even though the mob shouted out demands to hang Vice President Mike Pence for accepting the votes that ousted him and Trump from the White House. It was a day when fearful legislators were chased into secure rooms and some in the House chambers were outfitted with gas masks as law enforcement personnel were besieged by Trump backers.

The effort to throw sand in the eyes of history, as The New York Times put it, began early.

Before the Capitol had even been secured, Representative Paul Gosar, Republican of Arizona, was asserting on Twitter that the events had “all the hallmarks of Antifa provocation,” the paper reported. Hours later, Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham was telling viewers that “there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.”

Matt Gaetz, the now-disgraced former congressman and onetime Trump nominee for Attorney General, furthered the nonsense. He claimed on the House floor that some rioters “were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

According to M.I.T. Technology Review, this fabrication was repeated online more than 400,000 times in the 24 hours after the Capitol attack, the Times reported. It was amplified by MAGA influencers, Republican officials and, unsurprisingly, members of Mr. Trump’s family.

When asked recently by the paper whether Trump accepts any responsibility for Jan. 6, his spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, instead referred in a statement to the “political losers” who tried to derail his career and insisted that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.” She added, “The American people did not fall for the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th.”

The incoming president has promised to pardon rioters convicted of various insurrection-related crimes, calling them “patriots” and “hostages” and portraying them as political martyrs. Some have even sought to attend the inauguration.

More than 1,500 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection in the biggest prosecution in Justice Department history. According to PBS News, about 250 have been convicted of crimes by a judge or a jury after a trial. Only two people were acquitted of all charges by judges after bench trials. No jury has fully acquitted a Capitol riot defendant. At least 1,020 others had pleaded guilty as of Jan. 1, with more than 1,000 sentenced, including over 700 receiving at least some time behind bars. The rest got some combination of probation, community service, home detention or fines.

Just how successful the GOP and its allies will be in rewriting the history of January 6 seems unclear. Plenty of accounts have been memorialized of that day that give the lie to their efforts.

“My fellow officers and I were punched, kicked, shoved, sprayed with chemical irritants by a violent mob,” former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell testified to Congress in one such personal account shared by NPR. “I could feel myself losing oxygen and recall thinking to myself: ‘this is how I’m going to die – defending this entrance.'”

Still, Trump’s mastery of deceit was proven beyond doubt in his first term. And it would seem that his many followers – those in the shade under 50 percent of the electorate who voted for him – either swallow his tripe or discount it.

Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have shown that they respect the electoral system that Trump sought unsuccessfully to discredit in 2020. They have turned over the keys of government over to him and his party peacefully – a far cry from Trump’s reaction of four years ago. No calls for riots. No insurrections.

But, now that Trump’s party will control all the major levers of power in Washington, one can only wonder what sort of alternative facts its minions will spread. How much will two and two add up to in the coming four years?

In a 1944 essay, “Freedom of the Press,” Orwell wrote: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” A lot of folks don’t want to hear facts nowadays — as others want to bury them — but it falls to the press and to historians to make sure the truth endures.