Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series discussing the destruction of history by those who seek to rewrite it. Stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow right here on Liberty Nation.
When the past is erased, the present can be interpreted by the powerful and the future shaped at will. We may see the wanton destruction of America’s monuments as a recent development of an ever more powerful political left, but the process and the reasoning are much older. During this last century, various regimes have pushed the idea of historical destruction as a way of “shaping” society for the better; each time has been a disaster that has shamed the nation involved.
In the United States, the “progressive left” is in the process of demanding the removal of any monuments that may be offensive by associations with slavery; it’s wrong, but not likely to cause a revolution. The problem is that the left means to segue into an era where the alteration of our past is accepted without murmur.
From 1966 onward, the Chinese Communists engaged in the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution that was ostensibly due to the Soviet Union placing too much emphasis on expertise rather than on ideological purity. The Communists under Mao Zedong wanted all things to bow to ideology instead of fact-based policy. Sound familiar?
The Revolution in practice involved destroying The Four Olds: Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas. And this is what is happening in America today; the leftist’s dream of scrapping every square inch of history with which they disagree is an effort to erase the rough and tumble of this nation’s historic challenges. In many cases, this eradication includes the very things that made the U.S. the most powerful nation in the world. And their justification for these actions is primarily because America’s success is an affront to their “pure Socialist agenda.”
When nation states work and are not Socialist, it disproves their theories, and they will not allow this to happen. The United Kingdom is a perfect example of what shouldn’t work under Socialism, but it does. There is a Constitutional Monarchy that works as a Parliamentary Democracy. There is a National Health System that survives through taxation paid in a Capitalist society. The U.K. had an empire that spanned the globe, yet dismantled it without revolution and destruction. For the left, these things shouldn’t be.
In Sweden, the Svenska Dagbladet reports that the vast majority of Viking artifacts that are being discovered are being recycled as scrap metal. The reasons given are that” financial constraints” make it difficult to treat the metals and that by having so many artifacts around it may create a “market.” But the reality is that the Swedish government is not interested in anything that promotes a past existence before the days of a multicultural Sweden.
If you follow the leftist media line that the tearing down of Confederate Monuments is merely an act of concerned, anti-racist citizens, think again. According to the Independent Journal Review, of the four individuals arrested for bringing down the statue in Durham, North Carolina, at least three are active members of the Workers World Party (an openly Communist organization). The group is behind activities in Durham, Charlottesville and seem to be at every major rally or event.
Thus, they use the Civil War and all its many historic trappings as the beginning of a leftist plan to purge any trace of “Greatness” from America; only then can they claim it as a failed state and set out “rebuilding” in their own ideological image.
In part 2 of this series, Mark discusses the destruction of history in Stalin’s Russia and the implications for today.
