RUTHFULLY YOURS

Back to the Future

Romans emperors were often a bad lot — but usually confirmed as such only in retrospect. Monsters such as Nero, of the first-century A.D. Julio-Claudian dynasty, or the later psychopaths Commodus and Caracalla, were flattered by toadies when alive — only to be despised the moment they dropped.

After unhinged emperors were finally killed off, the sycophantic Senate often proclaimed a damnatio memoriae (a “damnation of memory”). Prior commemoration was wiped away, thereby robbing the posthumous ogre of any legacy and hence any existence for eternity.

In more practical matters, there followed a concurrent abolitio memoriae (an “erasing of memory”). Specifically, moralists either destroyed or rounded up and put away all statuary and inscriptions concerning the bad, dead emperor. In the case of particularly striking or expensive artistic pieces, they erased the emperor’s name (abolitio nominis) or his face and some physical characteristics from the artwork.

Impressive marble torsos were sometimes recut to accommodate a more acceptable (or powerful) successor. (Think of something like the heads only of the generals on Stone Mountain blasted off and replaced by new carved profiles of John Brown and Nat Turner).

A Scary History

Without Leon Trotsky’s organizational and tactical genius, Vladimir Lenin might never have consolidated power among squabbling anti-czarist factions. Yet after the triumph of Stalin, “de-Trotskyization” demanded that every word, every photo, and every memory of an ostracized Trotsky was to be obliterated. That nightmarish process fueled allegorical themes in George Orwell’s fictional Animal Farm and 1984.

How many times has St. Petersburg changed its name, reflecting each generation’s love or hate or indifference to czarist Russia or neighboring Germany? Is the city always to remain St. Petersburg, or will it once again be anti-German Petrograd as it was after the horrific First World War? Or perhaps it will again be Communist Leningrad during the giddy age of the new man — as dictated by the morality and the politics of each new generation resenting its past? Is a society that damns its past every 50 years one to be emulated?

Abolition of memory is easy when the revisionists enjoy the high moral ground and the damned are evil incarnate. But more often, killing the dead is not an easy a matter of dragon slaying, as with Hitler or Stalin. Confederate General Joe Johnston was not General Stonewall Jackson and after the war General John Mosby was not General Wade Hampton, just as Ludwig Beck was not Joachim Peiper.

Stone Throwers and Their Targets

What about the morally ambiguous persecution of sinners such as the current effort in California to damn the memory of Father Junipero Serra and erase his eponymous boulevards, to punish his supposedly illiberal treatment of Native Americans in the early missions some 250 years ago?

California Bay Area zealots are careful to target Serra but not Leland Stanford, who left a more detailed record of his own 19th-century anti-non-white prejudices, but whose university brand no progressive student of Stanford would dare to erase, because doing so would endanger his own studied trajectory to the good life. We forget that there are other catalysts than moral outrage that calibrate the targets of abolitio memoriae.

Again, in the case of the current abolition of Confederate icons — reenergized by the Black Lives Matter movement and the general repulsion over the vile murders by cowardly racist Dylan Roof — are all Confederate statues equally deserving of damnation?

Does the statue of Confederate General James Longstreet deserve defacing? He was a conflicted officer of the Confederacy, a critic of Robert E. Lee’s, later a Unionist friend of Ulysses S. Grant, an enemy of the Lost Causers, and a leader of African-American militias in enforcing reconstruction edicts against white nationalists. Is Longstreet the moral equivalent of General Nathan Bedford Forrest (“get there firstest with the mostest”), who was the psychopathic villain of Fort Pillow, a near illiterate ante-bellum slave-trading millionaire, and the first head of the original Ku Klux Klan?

Were the 60–70 percent of the Confederate population in most secessionist states who did not own slaves complicit in the economics of slavery? Did they have good options to leave their ancestral homes when the war started to escape the stain of perpetuating slavery? Do such questions even matter to the new arbiters of ethics, who recently defiled the so-called peace monument in an Atlanta park — a depiction of a fallen Confederate everyman, his trigger hand stilled by an angel? How did those obsessed with the past know so little of history?

Key to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating strategy of marching through Georgia and the Carolinas was his decision to deliberately target the plantations and the homes of the wealthy, along with Confederate public buildings. Apparently Sherman believed that the plantation owners of the South were far more culpable than the poor non-slave-holding majority in most secessionist states. Sherman generally spared the property of non-slave owners, though they collectively suffered nonetheless through the general impoverishment left in Sherman’s wake.

In our race to rectify the past in the present, could Ken Burns in 2017 still make his stellar Civil War documentary, with a folksy and drawly Shelby Foote animating the tragedies of the Confederacy’s gifted soldiers sacrificing their all for a bad cause? Should progressives ask Burns to reissue an updated Civil War version in which Foote and southern “contextualizers” are left on the cutting room floor?

Every generation, in its modesty, used to think the prior one was far better. Tom Brokaw coined “The Greatest Generation” to remind Americans of what our fathers endured during the Depression and World War II—with the implicit message that we might not have been able to do what they did.https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/21/the-silliest-generation/

For the Roman poet Horace to be a laudator temporis acti (“a praiser of a past age”) was a natural if sometimes tiring inclination. His famous lines at the end of his Ode 3.6 on moral degeneracy run, “Worse than our grandparents’ generation, our parents’ then produced us, even worse, and soon to bear still more sinful children”—and managed in just a few words to fault four generations for continual moral decline.

Yet what is strange about the present age is that our current generation uniquely believes just the opposite. Apparently, we believe that most cadres before us were not up to our standards. Indeed, we are having to clean up their messes of racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, as well as environmental desecration and global warming.

Even their statues must fall as bothersome reminders of their moral depravity. And the way they come down would do either Hitler (who carted off to Germany the French dining car in Compiègne that had been commemorated as the site of the 1918 armistice) or Stalin (who primitively photo-shopped out each year’s new enemies of the people) proud. Usually our generation kills the dead by the mob or a frightened mayor in the dead of night—rarely by a majority vote of elected representatives, referenda, or the recommendations of local, state, and federal commissions and carried out in daytime.

Apparently, proof our generation’s genius is that no one in the past had a clue how to build an iPhone or do a Google search—or even make a good Starbucks Teavana shaken pineapple black tea infusion. Yet given our own present lack of humility and meager accomplishments, we have combined arrogance with ignorance to become the smuggest generation in memory. What good is the high-tech acceleration in delivering information if there is now precious little learning to be accelerated? Google is an impressive pump, but if there is no real water, what is the point of delivering nothing faster?

Ours is an age that passes easy judgment on prior generations by sandblasting away the mention of those deemed unsuitable in the past, often by our present and sometimes laudable standards of morality—but without much concession to the cruel physical landscapes and poverty of the past or our own shortcomings that will be all too clear to subsequent ages. Which prompts more activist outrage by Antifa—a century-old sullen statue of a beaten secessionist Robert E. Lee or the indifference shown to unchecked bloodletting and murder in the streets of Chicago?

When the street protests target Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, or Planned Parenthood, their progressive outrage at the public honoring of yesterday’s racists might gain more credibility. It is an easy moral judgement to condemn unhinged racists in vile Nazi and creepy Confederate garb, but quite another for progressives to demand that America finally stop honoring the now iconic former progressive attorney general of California who sent tens of thousands of Japanese Americans into camps or to march on Princeton to demand an end of deifying a progressive President Wilson whose animated hatred of blacks set back race relations for years.

But then again, we are an opportunistic generation who looks often at the past but rarely as a mirror of ourselves—and if we did, in a variety of areas, we might find ourselves wanting.

Compare how long it took just to rebuild one segment of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, with the work of those 80 years ago who in Depression-era poverty built the entire bridge near simultaneously with its twin, the massive Golden Gate, in far less time (four years compared to seven)?

Despite our much-ballyhooed high-tech achievements, California’s s high-speed rail project will likely take five times as long to build (if it’s ever finished) as did the transcontinental railroad—each foot the work of pickaxes and shovels—across the country a century and a half ago. Driving in California in 1980 was often far safer (and quicker) than in 2017.

Presentation as prepared for delivery on July 13, 2016, at the Institute for the Study of Strategy and Politics symposium on “American Strategy: The Way Forward,” available at strategyandpolitics.org

I am speaking today about the life and times of “America First” as a political idea.

Three quarters of a century ago, it was seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans as a means of mustering popular support through a vigorous public debate to resist powerful forces, seen but mostly unseen – for example, British and Communist propaganda and influence operations – seeking to drive, pull and trick the United States into the second world war.

Reading about the 1940 formation of the America First Committee, one is impressed by the wide cross section of notables drawn into this cause of strong defense but anti-intervention;

from the original contingent of students at Yale, including future Yale president Kingman Brewster, future president Gerald Ford and future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, to New Dealers and anti-New Dealers, to socialist party leader Norman Thomas.

There were many other political figures, from Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat, to Sen. Gerald P. Nye, Republican, many leading business men, from Hormel meat to Morton salt to railroad and steel tycoons, William J. Grace, head of one of Chicago’s largest investment firms, newspaper publishers Col. Robert J. McCormick (Chicago Tribune), Joseph Patterson (New York Daily News), also William Regnery, whose son Henry would later found Regnery Books.

We see a lot of military brass – the chairman of America First was General Robert E. Wood, sergeant quartermaster in World War I and innovative head of Sears Roebuck, a West Point grad and actually an early New Dealer; at least one movie star, Lillian Gish; heroes such as Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindbergh; Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, and novelists, journalists and celebrities of the day, including architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Outside the group itself, but within the same anti-intervention cause, were such leading Republicans as former President and world class humanitarian Herbert Hoover and “Mr. Republican,” Sen. Robert Taft.

A lot of star power, a lot of people power, too.

When we look at “America First” today, we see the idea as manifested in the highly unusual political instincts of one national figure – a one-man political movement, to be sure – but still, one individual, Donald Trump, who has revived the slogan as a battle cry against the global system and obligations the United States entered into really ever since the America First Committee disbanded after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

For the America First idea then, a steep downward trajectory even to this point of unexpected revival.

This suggests that the notion of putting America first — giving priority to American interests over rest the world’s; even recognizing that America has separate interests from the rest of the world — has become antiquated, and, to many, nothing less than anathema, certainly among political professionals, journalists, and academics.

Then again, there are those many millions of Americans who have already cast a vote for America First, having made Donald Trump the presumptive GOP nominee.

If we stop and think – – – Is it not the most natural thing in the world for a politician to put his country first?

I would say yes, but not so much in our world.

How did such a world come to be?

This latest chapter in the annals of America First probably began as a set up, when a New York Times reporter asked Donald Trump if it was correct to say that what Trump was describing was – “if not isolationist, then at least something of `America First’?…

The Obama Justice Department dismissed the IRS political targeting scandal as no big deal, and the Trump Administration hasn’t been any better. At least the judiciary is still trying to hold someone to account for this government abuse.

In a little noticed decision last week, federal Judge Reggie Walton ordered the IRS to answer a series of questions by Oct. 16. Notably, the tax agency must finally explain the specific reasons for the specific delays in approving each of dozens of conservative nonprofit applications—delays that stifled free speech during a midterm and presidential election. Judge Walton is also requiring the IRS to name the specific individuals that it holds responsible for the targeting.

These are basic questions of political accountability, even if the IRS has stonewalled since 2013. President Obama continued to spin that the targeting was the result of some “boneheaded” IRS line officers in Cincinnati who didn’t understand tax law. Yet Congressional investigations have uncovered clear evidence that the targeting was ordered and directed out of Washington.

Former director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was at the center of that Washington effort, but the IRS allowed her to retire with benefits. She invoked the Fifth Amendment before Congress. One of her principal deputies, Holly Paz, has submitted to a deposition in separate litigation, but the judge has sealed her testimony after she claimed she faced threats. The Acting Commissioner of the IRS at the time, Stephen Miller, stepped down in the wake of the scandal, but as far as anyone outside the IRS knows, no other IRS employee has been held to account. Even if the culprits were “rogue employees,” as the IRS claims, the public deserves to know what happened.

Judge Walton’s ruling means that “the IRS must finally acknowledge its wrongdoing (and the reasons for it) in the context of a judicial proceeding in which the agency may be held legally accountable for its misconduct,” Carly Gammill told Powerlineblog.com. Ms. Gammill is an attorney at the American Center for Law & Justice who represents tea-party groups in the litigation.

President Trump has been fighting a one-man war against political correctness. He could use some help. The Confederate monuments are as good a place as any to start

The tearing down of Confederate monuments was sure to be a divisive issue. Why raise it now, when the people of the United States are as divided as they have been at any time since—the Civil War? The question answers itself. It was raised now precisely because it would be divisive. But to say this is to call into question the motives of those who have raised the issue. Indeed.

Those who advocate tearing down the monuments accuse their opponents of racism. It’s an easy accusation to make, and not an easy one to refute. It places the moral onus on those who would defend the monuments to justify their actions, while deflecting moral scrutiny from their accusers.

Surely those who oppose the monuments do so because the Confederacy was an affront to the individual liberty of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It is one thing to oppose slavery and racism, but it makes all the difference what one advocates in their place. And there’s the rub.

Consider Black Lives Matter. They are not a radical fringe group. Barack Obama welcomed them into the White House, where he praised their success as community organizers. They have enjoyed sympathetic nationwide media coverage, thanks in no small part to Colin Kaepernick and the entire cast of announcers at ESPN. They even have their own exhibit at the Smithsonian Exhibition.

Black Lives Matter has been at the very center of leftwing agitation against white “oppression” for the last year and a half. It is largely because of the success of BLM and their allies that the Left now feel emboldened to go after the monuments.

What exactly do Black Lives Matter advocate? According to their website, they are “committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another….” If this sounds like a turning away from Western-style individualism toward African-style tribalism, that’s because it is.

Consider their view of capitalism, which is the economic system based on private property, the foundation of individual rights. On their website, BLM described capitalism as an economic system “which deforms the spirit and fuels interpersonal violence.”

In a 2016 interview for the website Essence.com, BLM co-founder Alicia Garza was asked if she thought “revolution is the answer”. “[W]e have to be clear a revolution is a process,” said Miss Garza. In other words, yes, the current system of government in the United States does need to be torn down and replaced.

If there is any doubt about Black Lives Matter’s revolutionary inclinations, consider these words from Miss Garza on the BLM website: “When I use Assata’s powerful demand in my organizing work, I always begin by sharing where it comes from, sharing about Assata’s significance to the Black Liberation Movement, what its political purpose and message is, and why it’s important in our context.” “Assata” is JoAnne Chesimard, a former soldier in the Black Liberation Army convicted in the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. Mrs. Chesimard escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba.

To understand that the effort to remove the monuments grows out of the same soil that Black Lives Matter has been tilling for the last year and a half is to understand that if every single Confederate monument in the country were torn down tomorrow, it would settle nothing. It would simply be one more victory on the way to deconstructing the culture of individualism to which men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington gave political form. The Confederate monuments are just low-hanging fruit for the deconstructionists; who but racists would dare defend them?

Many Americans will find it fantastical to think that the removing of the Confederate monuments could possibly be just a step on the way to razing the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument, much less to the extinguishing of our republican form of government. They should ponder this additional item from the Black Lives Matter website: “We are committed to … doing the work required to dismantle cis-gender privilege ….” “Cis-gender” is newspeak for people whose “sexual identity” corresponds with their anatomy.

On Sunday, Jeh Johnson, former secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, said that removing Confederate monuments is a matter of homeland security.

“That’s not a matter of political correctness, that’s a matter of public safety and homeland security, and doing what’s right,” Johnson told ABC News in an interview.

“What alarms so many of us, from a security perspective, is that so many of the statues — the Confederate monuments — are now, modern day, becoming symbols and rallying points for white nationalism, for neo-Nazis, for the KKK,” the former DHS secretary explained.

“We fought a World War against Nazism. The KKK rained terror on African-Americans for generations,” Johnson said. “I support those in cities and states who are taking down a lot of these monuments for reasons of public safety and security.”

Cities, states, and private entities do not argue they are removing the statues for “public safety and security,” however. The University of Texas, which removed Confederate statues in the wee hours of Monday morning, explained that these monuments were “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”

In April, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu — whom Jeh Johnson praised in his interview — said, “The removal of these statues sends a clear and unequivocal message to the people of New Orleans and the nation: New Orleans celebrates our diversity, inclusion, and tolerance.” The city removed its four statues in April and May.

Anna Lope Brosche, president of the Jacksonville City Council in Florida, announced a plan of action to take an inventory of Confederate symbols and relocate them to museums. In her statement, Bosche noted that the monuments evoke “some really negative emotions, and pain and hurt.”

Some have mentioned safety — the safety of vandals who might try to remove the monuments. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said he must “protect North Carolinians and keep them safe,” citing “the likelihood of protesters being injured or worse as they may try to topple” the monuments, in addition to the threat of violence in rallies like Charlottesville.

Removing monuments might not guarantee safety or that white supremacists won’t rally in locations which used to have monuments, however.

Furthermore, the Left’s rush to defend vandals, to protect feelings, and to champion Antifa on the grounds that it is fighting Nazis suggests that this is an issue of political correctness more than one of homeland security.

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his deceitful policies featuring victimhood as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His legacy, the Leftist Democrat Party with its “resistance” movement, is the party of the Humanitarian Hoax attempting to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism.
The three basic tenets of left-wing liberal progressivism are political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. Leftist progressivism is an extremely regressive political structure that emphasizes victimhood and encourages childlike dependence on the government in its march toward socialism. Progressivism is an Orwellian doublespeak word designed to dupe the participant into believing he is moving society forward when in fact progressivism and progressive policies support regression backwards toward childhood dependence.
Historical records presents the humanitarian huckster with a conundrum. The history of our American democracy is one of immense growth, development, and achievement. American history contradicts the negative message of the humanitarian huckster attempting to transform America into socialism. Destroying historical records, historical facts, and historical icons does not erase history – it simply leaves history open to historical revisionism. Obama’s revisionist anti-American pro-Muslim Common Core re-education curriculum was a start, smashing historical statues is an escalation, violent anarchy is the ultimate Leftist strategy to destroy American democracy.

Progressivism posits that objective reality does not exist – this in itself is an invitation for historical revisionism. For progressives there are only matters of opinion and all opinions are equal. This means that opinions of out of control screaming protesters at Evergreen college have the same status as the opinion of their professors. Progressives support subjective reality and deny objective reality in their self-serving need to preserve the fiction of their narrative. Here is the problem – saying something does not make it true. Objective reality exists whether the Left accepts it or not. Watching the Left is like watching a child insist he can fly. He is certain of it – but that does not make it true or a fact in objective reality.
George Orwell understood these dynamics seventy years ago when he created the dystopian society in his cautionary tale “1984.” American society under Obama has devolved into an Orwellian nightmare of Leftist political correctness, groupthink, and moral relativism designed to destroy the moral fabric of American society. The Left is convinced of its moral superiority because its narrative of moral relativism and politically correctness insists it is superior and its groupthink mentality validates itself.
A civil society requires consensus. Normative behavior is a matter of consensus that is codified into laws that govern society. Multiculturalism challenges consensus. If one individual thinks “honor” killing is acceptable and society considers it murder then there is a problem – whose norms will prevail if everyone’s opinions are equal? When Leftists insist that opposing points of view are intolerable hate speech they hypocritically deny freedom of speech and a free society. When everything is a matter of opinion and all opinions are equal there can be no consensus. Without consensus there are no accepted laws to abide – there is only anarchy and social chaos. But that is exactly the point – the Left wants anarchy and social chaos. Their leaders are fomenting racial violence and violent anarchy because social chaos is the prerequisite for seismic social change. Obama’s “resistance” movement is trying to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism. The Leftist/Islamist axis is attacking Judeo-Christian norms and destabilizing society with the collaborating mainstream media. For the Left to embrace the barbaric tenets of Islamist sharia law requires political correctness, moral relativism, historical revisionism and the dreamscape of subjective reality where the stunning hypocrisy of their alliance is ignored and considered irrelevant by the media.

The Democratic Party Goon Squad chalked up another win last week when they got into a rumble with a fringe group of white racists who were protesting the removal of a statue of a famous Democrat from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The Nazi/KKK racists hadn’t received this much attention since their march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978. Their last member of Congress, former KKK official and Democratic senator Robert Byrd, died in 2010, and their most famous living member, David Duke, hasn’t generated much news of late, so they probably missed the notoriety. Thus, they assembled in Charlottesville on the evening of August 11 and marched to save the statue of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. They carried tiki torches and chanted, “One people, one nation, end immigration” and “White lives matter” and other vile mottos, but they broke no laws.

Laws were broken the next day, however, when the Democrat Goon Squad showed up and a mêlée ensued. Both sides wielded fists and bats, and, in a pattern that has become familiar, the police stood down. By the end of the day, one young woman had been killed by a motorist, two officers who had been monitoring the events died in a helicopter crash, and 35 people were being treated for injuries.

A single voice of sanity commented on the events. On Saturday evening, President Donald Trump decried the hatred and violence on both sides. Then the country went nuts. Journalists and politicians expressed outrage that he hadn’t called out the Nazis and the Klan by name and that he had blamed both sides. They demanded retractions and apologies, and a few called on Trump to resign. One Democratic Missouri state senator hoped for his assassination.

But Trump was right. There were two sides in Charlottesville. One side was a fringe group whose views haven’t been taken seriously for at least 50 years and who don’t have sufficient members to elect a dogcatcher.

The other side were the “aggressively aggrieved left.” They’ve been around for decades, and, like many shady movements, they frequently change their name.

In 2011, they called themselves “the 99%” when they occupied and trashed Zuccotti Park near Wall Street.

Iconoclasm is generally defined as the destruction of sacred images, usually for religious or political motives. America is experiencing an epidemic of iconoclasm and it did not begin in Charlottesville. For several years there have been numerous incidents of vandalism of Confederate statues, fallen officer memorials, and veterans’ monuments. The widespread desecration of statues and memorials throughout the country directly corresponds to the increase in anarchist, socialist, communist, anti-police, anti-government and anti-Trump movements.

Throughout history and across cultures, regime change always begins and ends with the destruction and removal of symbols. Iconoclasm is one of the most powerful strategies for cultural revolution. From the French Revolution to the Bolshevik Revolution to the Islamic State, regime change has been accompanied by the destruction of statues, paintings, monuments, sacred objects and other symbols identified with the previous government.

The first wave of contemporary American iconoclasm began in June 2015 after the mass murder of nine parishioners at the historically black Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A widely circulated photo of the self-identified white supremacist, Dylann Roof, holding a gun and a confederate flag definitively linked confederate symbols to white supremacist violence. Subsequently any and all things Confederate were designated as undeniable symbols of racism. Black nationalist, socialist and communist groups began organizing campaigns against Confederate flags and statues that they perceive as symbols of slavery, injustice, racial oppression and white supremacy.

The iconoclasm campaign had its first big success in July 2015 when the Confederate flag on South Carolina’s statehouse grounds came down after 54 years at the Capitol. During the debates over its proposed removal dozens of confederate statues were vandalized. Walmart, Sears, Amazon and other companies removed Confederate merchandise from thousands of stores across the U.S. Organizers discovered the power of iconoclasm and began targeting statues, names and memorials. A counter movement ensued to preserve the Confederate statues and monuments as historical symbols of American history and Southern heritage. Supporters of Confederate symbols were placed in the untenable position of having to defend slavery.

The grievance for the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA was the proposed removal of the Robert Edward Lee Sculpture. Because the rally was organized by neo-Nazi, white nationalist and white supremacist groups who wore KKK regalia and proudly displayed Neo-Nazi symbols, the debate over Confederate symbols became intrinsically intertwined with fascism and white supremacy. Hundreds of counter protestors showed up resulting in violent clashes between demonstrators and the death of a counter protester. Subsequently, arguments and rallies in support of Confederate symbols were eclipsed by emotional visceral reactions to white hoods, swastikas, Nazi salutes and images of violence. Charlottesville ignited a second more virulent wave of iconoclasm.

Immediately after the Charlottesville rally, Confederate statues and plaques were removed from public parks, cemeteries, plazas and government buildings in cities across the country. Politicians are calling for the removal of all Confederate monuments from public spaces and legislation is being introduced to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol building. Other statues were vandalized and destroyed. In Durham, NC protesters toppled a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier outside the Old Durham County Courthouse. They did not just remove the statue. They lynched it. Video of the incident shows a woman climbing a ladder to the top of the statue and tying a rope around the soldier’s neck. Dozens of other activists participated in the lynching, pulling the statue to the ground, cheering and taking turns kicking, spitting and standing on the fallen soldier. This went beyond vandalism. It was a collective ritual execution. Historically, iconoclasm encompassed formally executing statues and effigies of people in their absence or long after they were already dead. People were posthumously declared enemies of the state and were sentenced to death. Statues were imprisoned, tried and sentenced. Then they were ritually punished by hanging, burning, defacing, dismembering and decapitating in staged public executions. Other historical acts of iconoclasm included ritually debasing, humiliating and physically assaulting statues.