“Racist Parts of America’s History”

On July 5th, a group of “protesters” toppled a large public statue of Christopher Columbus in Baltimore’s Little Italy. The statue broke into chunks as it hit the ground. The “protesters” threw the pieces into the harbor. And if Americans of Italian descent find this overtly violent expression of hatred for their heritage upsetting or threatening…well, Columbus was racist.

Recently, a group of “protesters” in Portland, Oregon toppled a statue of George Washington, one of the small handful of men without whom one might think America herself would not exist — and set its head on fire. In an age of public school literalism and anti-poetic sensibilities, one can hardly imagine a group of “protesters” thinking of this sort of question, but let us ask it anyway: What type of statement is implied in the act of setting fire to the head of a man’s effigy? This is the fate of George Washington during today’s communist takeover of America. Does this not represent an overt expression of violent aggression toward everyone who would dare, from this moment forward, to regard Washington as a great man and national hero?

If you prefer to comfort yourself with the thought that these “protesters” are merely a few thousand radical agitators, not the majority of the country, you are in for a very rude awakening. Of course, the vast majority of the U.S. population is not out toppling statues and setting fire to founding fathers in effigy. The vast majority of the U.S. population in 1776 was not fighting for independence from the British crown either. The vast majority of any population is that critical mass which tacitly, quietly, passively, but willingly, accepts certain molds into which historical movements seek to set them. 

At this moment, if you are an American who is not an enthusiastic supporter of Marxist revolution, that is your body being broken up and tossed into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, your father’s head being set on fire in Portland. 

Here is how CNN, one of the leading public megaphones of the revolution, interprets this act of anti-Italian violence in Baltimore’s Little Italy:

The statue has stood by Little Italy for more than 30 years and is the latest to come down in recent weeks amid protests. Both crowds of demonstrators and local orders have removed other tributes to Columbus, Confederate leaders and other controversial figures representing racist parts of America’s history.

Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott said in a statement he had previously suggested the statue be removed, according to WBAL.

“I support Baltimore’s Italian-American community and Baltimore’s indigenous community,” the statement said. “I cannot, however, support Columbus.”

You see? This violent mob attack on a public monument and the ethnic community it represents is not an illegal act of thuggery. After all, the city council was wanting to take down that statue anyway, so the good people of Baltimore simply took this justice matter into their own hands and did the right thing for the city. And as the city council president makes explicit, in the cause of communist upheaval, “I cannot support Columbus” is never just one man’s, or many men’s, personal judgment and free thought; it is grounds for coercively, violently disallowing anyone else in one’s community to “support” Columbus.

Notice that the CNN reporter — her name is Christina Maxouris, since all willing agents of communist agitprop deserve to be publicly identified for future reference — does not even feel restrained by such qualifying niceties as having to say, “other controversial figures accused of representing racism,” the way people claiming to be journalists once did. No, today the respectable public mouthpieces of communism — why not let the “protesters” speak for themselves, so Americans can see who is really calling the shots here? — may simply say, “Columbus, Confederate leaders and other controversial figures representing racist parts of America’s history,” as though this condemnatory descriptive phrase were unquestionably true. Those “controversial figures” were not, it seems, men of substance, courage, and accomplishment who also happened (like every other human who ever lived) to be flawed, to share certain questionable attitudes of their times, and to have made mistakes. Rather, they were and are nothing but representatives of “racist parts of America’s history.”

So then, by implication and association, were all the people who followed or revered those men for generations. So, likewise, are all the people today who mistakenly continue to regard many of these men — including, let us not forget, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — as anything other than “figures representing racist parts of America’s history.” 

For those men living in the statues are merely representatives, i.e., symbols. This means that what is really being reduced so easily to nothing but racism — condemned outright by “protestors” and mainstream news reporters and city councilors and every person at every kitchen table who says, “Well, I can understand why they’re offended by that statue; after all, the man owned slaves” — is the age in which these symbols were admired, and all the human beings, past and present, who ever admired them. What is being set on fire or hurled into the harbor is America, its history and its heroes, its founding philosophy and its traditional legends — and every member of its population, right up to this moment, who ever loved that America, admired its history and heroes, adhered to its philosophy as the great political achievement of modernity, or accepted its legends as good stories for teaching children to respect the past and appreciate men more ennobling than today’s popular icons. 

The relevant question about this Marxist takeover of America is not the comforting one, “How many people are actually involved in this public square violence?” but rather the one that ultimately determines historical change: How many people are quietly shifting their own beliefs and modifying their ways of speaking today in order not to offend these “protesters,” in order to stay on the right side of history, in order not to seem to support historical injustice? In other words, where is the passive critical mass right now? If your answer to that question is at all similar to mine, then it is time for you too to evolve into the Plan B form of comfort, which is to remind yourself of this: When (not if) these people get the world they want, they will destroy each other and their children as surely and as brutally as they are trying to destroy you and yours. They are setting fire to George Washington’s head, but it is their own life and future that they will burn to ash. They may seem to be winning, but the prize they are seeking, unbeknownst to themselves, is their own miserable death and ignominious grave. 

They cannot see, because they have chosen a philosophy that teaches them not to listen to history, not to learn from the past, and not to respect the lessons won through centuries of great struggle and greater thought. And so, as willfully blind mice, they will scurry right off the pier and into the harbor themselves, and drown, as everyone of their sort has done before.


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