Once Started, Mob Violence Targeting Monuments is Hard to Stop

Byron York Jun 24, 2020 

What do George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, Father Junipero Serra and Christopher Columbus have in common?

None were Confederate generals, and yet all have had their statues torn down by mobs in the last few days -- or, in the case of Roosevelt, had New York's Museum of Natural History announce that a Roosevelt statue at the museum's entrance will soon be removed.

The mobs ripped down statues in Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and several other cities without any fear of police interference. The police might as well have been defunded, for all they did to protect America's historical monuments from vigilante violence.

Now add to the list Andrew Jackson, another president who was not a Confederate general. On Monday night, a mob attempted to tear down the Jackson statue in Lafayette Park in front of the White House. Since the statue is on federal ground, U.S. Park Police intervened, saving Jackson from crashing to earth...........To Read More.....

How a Conservative Commentator Turned the Left's Cancel Culture Campaign Against Itself

Matt Vespa @mvespa1 Jun 22, 2020

The left-wing mob is recharged and totally insane. They’re back on this cancel culture nonsense. They’re tearing down statues of historical figures they view as problematic. There is no reasoning with them. They’re the intellectual al-Qaeda of our time. You don’t negotiate with terrorists. As Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt are being targeted, two things are clear. This has never been about Confederate statues, folks. This has been centered on the Left’s hatred of America and its history and the bizarre fetish to rewrite it through a woke paradigm where no nuance is afforded to anyone. The far-left loony code of ethics, for lack of a better term, is retroactively applied here. It’s utterly insane.

Now, granted, I admit that the Left had a good PR move here. The Confederacy isn’t all that popular, of course. By targeting them, they’ve created a campaign that puts every historical figure at risk. It was never going to stop with Jackson, Lee, or Davis. Never. This was the flank march, the backdoor maneuver to smash all the people.

As you already know, the statue of former President Ulysses S. Grant was torn down. American history has dark periods. The Confederacy, for better or worse, is part of that narrative. It must be defended, so yes—I will defend all the statues because the alternative is what we’re seeing now: A roving band of historically illiterate morons whose main goal is destruction and nothing else.............. .To Read More....

Here Are the Heroes Whose Statues Black Lives Matter Has Attacked

Daniel Greenfield - June 16, 2020

The statue of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, stands at the corner of Fairfax and Beverly in Los Angeles. When the racist mobs swept through the area, looting Jewish stores and defacing synagogues with "BLM" and "Free Palestine" graffiti, the statue of a man who risked his life to resist fascism and bigotry was one of their targets.

The racists and leftists vandalizing statues across the world claim that they’re fighting hate, but their targets have often been the men and women who courageously stood up to racism and hatred.

When the statue of Churchill was vandalized in London, the thugs who did it went after the one man who had done the most to wake up the world to the threat of fascism. In Philadelphia, the thugs scrawled “murderer” and “colonizer” on a statue of Philadelphia abolitionist Matthias Baldwin and in Boston, they vandalized the ‘Glory’ monument of the African-American 54th Regiment.

In Washington D.C., the Lincoln Memorial and the National WW2 Memorial were both defaced.

This is not the work of anti-racists, but of racists. It’s not the work of anti-fascists, but of fascists.

While the media has upheld the racist narrative justifying the Taliban campaign against America by focusing on confederate memorials, the vandalism has been extensive, targeting both sides in the Civil War, and spilling over to vandalize statues that have absolutely no relevance to contemporary politics.

In Louisville, the statue of Louis XVI lost a hand and then was graffitied. Despite the French monarch having absolutely nothing to do with Floyd’s death, the statue was spray painted with "BLM", "We Will Win", and "George Floyde". If the ghost of the executed king had been hanging around Louisville, he would have been outraged and confused at being blamed for a dead man in Minneapolis.

But nobody ever accused Black Lives Matter of knowing any history beyond the 1619 Project.

In Scotland, a statue of Robert the Bruce was vandalized with the epithets “Racist King”, “BLM”, and “Robert was a racist bring down the statue”. Robert lived in the 13th century. He no doubt was very racist toward the Saxons, but It is unlikely that he had ever met a black person in Medieval Scotland.

Even more randomly, the ‘Waiting’ Statue in Harrisburg of a man reading a newspaper while waiting for a bus was covered in the red paint that the racist and leftist mobs have been using on statues. Apart from being a depiction of a fictional white man, it’s not at all clear what the statue did to deserve that.

Much like Nile Kinnick, the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner, who died in WW2, but was still vandalized.

Even minority statues didn't get a pass.

A memorial to three lynched black men was defaced in Duluth, Minnesota, to the outrage of the NAACP.

Statues of Gandhi were vandalized in New York City, Washington D.C., and London, in Bristol, England, a statue of a Jamaican playwright was covered in bleach, and in El Paso, Texas, a statue of Don Juan de Onate, a Spanish conquistador, was defaced with the message, "Your god is not my god."

The El Paso vandalism was one of a number of defacements that appeared to be motivated by religious bigotry which led to the targeting of primarily Catholic churches and Orthodox Jewish synagogues.

That included at least one statue.

In Wasco, California, St. John the Evangelist church, a mostly Latino congregation, announced on Facebook that, "Sadly somebody destroyed the statue of Sacred Heart last night."

The statue had been beheaded and had its arms chopped off.

The BLM attacks on the statues were not about fighting hate, but spreading it, defacing and defiling the values and memories that people hold dear in order to force them to kneel to its racial supremacism.

In Birmingham, Alabama, the racist thugs didn’t just go after confederate memorials, but the WW1 Doughboy memorial to the Birmingham boys who had gone off to fight in the fields of France and never returned which had been dedicated by the city’s Greek-American community. Another statue commemorating the American soldiers who had fought in the Spanish-American War was also defaced.

A statue honoring Thomas Jefferson was set on fire as the radical mob hooted and held up smartphones, but while a flame burned at the base, the great man appeared to be untouched.

In Missoula, Montana, a statue of a WW1 Doughboy was vandalized. In Pittsburgh, a WW1 memorial was defaced with a hammer and sickle to commemorate the deaths of Communist terrorists. The choice of message strongly suggests that this particular memorial vandalism had been carried out by Antifa.

Griffin's Veteran Memorial Park monuments in Atlanta were vandalized with "BLM" and "People over Property" slogans, and the Colorado Soldiers Monument was defaced in Denver.

Christopher Columbus, the bold explorer who paved the way for the settlement of the New World, was a particular target with statues of the great man vandalized in cities across the United States.

In Houston, a Columbus statue donated by the Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Greater Houston to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America had a hand chopped off, a noose placed around its neck, and the message, "Rip the head from your oppressor" taped to it.

In Miami, statues of Columbus and Ponce De Leon were defaced with "BLM", "George Floyd" and the hammer and sickle. Columbus statues were beheaded in Boston, spray painted in Pittsburgh, thrown into a lake in Richmond, and torn down in St. Paul. Camden and Wilmington, among other Democrat cities, took down statues of the great explorer on their own. Boston is likely to follow suit.

Wilmington also took down a statue of Caesar Rodney, one of the Founding Fathers and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A statue of General Philip Schuyler, a member of the Continental Congress, the father-in-law of Alexander Hamilton, was removed by Albany's Democrat mayor.

The monument to General Kosciuszko, a Polish national hero who had served as a colonel in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, was vandalized with BLM graffiti in Washington D.C.

The statue of General Casimir Pulaski, who had fought for American independence, was also defaced.

In Boston, a statue of Abigail Adams, the wife of John Adams, was vandalized. Abigail had been a fervent opponent of slavery.

But it’s not just the American heroes of the past whom the un-American radicals and racists hate.

In Dover, Delaware, a memorial to fallen law enforcement officers was viciously vandalized. The statue of an officer kneeling before the list of the names of the fallen was attacked with an axe, and the state flags flying over their names were soaked in urine.

Memorials to fallen police officers were vandalized in Richmond, Virginia Beach, and Fort Worth.

"F__ the Police" was spray-painted on the California Peace Officers’ Memorial in Sacramento.

A memorial to Officer Robert Kozminski in Grand Rapids, Michigan who was killed while responding to a domestic dispute was defaced with the word, "Pig". And in Pittsburgh, a police memorial was defiled. The memorial is commemorated with the poem, "He answered the call, of himself he gave all, and a part of America died."

As every statue falls, is defiled, and disgraced, a part of America dies. When Democrats and even Republicans collude in the desecration and stand aside for the mob, a part of America dies.

The soul of a nation lies with its heroes. The radicals and racists tearing down our statues are out to destroy that soul. They want our heroes to be Karl Marx and Angela Davis, they want terrorists, totalitarians and criminals celebrated, and heroes, explorers, founders, officers and soldiers condemned.

They aren’t just coming for the “controversial” statues as the media likes to tell us.

They are coming for all the statues, for our entire history, for every great man and woman who sacrificed, strove, and struggled to move the course of human history forward by even one inch.

They are coming for America. And they intend to destroy it, one statue and one city after another.

When the history of this period is written, we will learn whether we had any heroes in our time.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.  Thank you for reading.

All The Statues Must Go

Posted by Daniel Greenfield 0 Comments  Monday, September 04, 2017 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Back in May, a New Orleans statue of Joan of Arc was tagged with “Tear it Down” graffiti.

Why Joan of Arc? Any famous historical figure is by definition controversial. Joan is a French
national symbol, but Shakespeare depicted her as a malicious witch. The French Quarter where the statue stands is a mostly white neighborhood. France was dealing with a controversial election.

This is what happens when you open a can of historical, religious and nationalistic worms.

The war on Confederate memorials quickly escalated into attacks on Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Memorial was vandalized in Washington D.C. and in Chicago, a statue of Lincoln was burned. Abraham Lincoln fought the Confederacy. But from a black nationalist perspective, Lincoln and Lee were both racist white devils. And to the left, they both embody white supremacy.

What began with tearing down General Lee, escalated to vandalizing statues of Junipero Serra.

Serra was an 18th century Catholic priest who set up missions in what is now California. He’s hated by some American Indian activists who accuse him of racism and colonialism. There are statues of Serra all over California. And while most Americans have never heard of him, a pitched battle is underway between Catholics who venerate him as a saint and left-wing activists who call him a genocidal racist.

These leftist activists began by vandalizing Columbus statues and then Junipero Serra. But Serra was also America’s first Latino saint. To Latinos, Serra is a hero. To some American Indians, he’s a villain. And Christopher Columbus is in the same boat. The statues of Columbus spread across America were often put up by Italian-American associations. Italian-Americans marched in Columbus Day festivals. Serra pits Latinos against American Indians. Italian-Americans and American Indians face off over Columbus.

The battle over Junipero Serra is a microcosm of the gaping national and religious fault lines on which so many statues stand. Our towns and cities are full of statues celebrating some group’s version of history. The civil society we used to have allowed different groups to each celebrate the heroes of their history.

It’s not just Confederate memorials that are the controversial remnants of an old war. The Hundred Years War that Joan was part of had its own winners and losers. And if that seems like ancient history, our cities are full of memorials and statues featuring Irish, Italian and Latin American nationalist figures.

Springfield, Massachusetts has a garden dedicated to the 1916 Easter Rising. There's a statue of Irish nationalist Robert Emmet in Washington D.C.'s Triangle Park. Three miles away stands a statue of Winston Churchill near the British Embassy. There is a great deal of national history that separates both men, but they can coexist together in our civic spaces because of mutual historical tolerance.

There can be a statue of James Connolly in Chicago and of Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri.

If we have to start picking and choosing between Irish nationalists and British leaders, one set of statues would have to be torn down. And then eventually both sets. Every historical figure is controversial.

New York’s Central Park has equestrian statues of Simon Bolivar, Jose Marti and General Jose de San Martin. All the statues are controversial in their own way. It took years to get the Marti statue mounted. At one point anti-Castro Cuban exiles covertly put up a replica in its place in the middle of the night.

You don’t have to be a politician or soldier for your Central Park statue to be controversial. Dr. J Marion Sims, the father of modern gynecology, was targeted by black nationalist protesters for operating on slave women without anesthesia. Never mind that anesthesia wasn't widely used at the time. To the medical profession, Dr. Sims is a hero. To the black nationalist leftists, he’s a villain.

If the anti-statue protesters get their way, the only statue left in the park will be Alice in Wonderland.

Black nationalists in New York have been allowed to name streets and parks after racists and Nazi collaborators like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X. The other side of the bargain that allowed black nationalists to have their own heroes, no matter how racist and terrible they were, is tolerance for the other groups exercising that same privilege. The anti-statue campaign violates that bargain. And like breaking the other bargains that maintain a civil society, it begins a civil war.

It’s not just Charlottesville, Baltimore or New Orleans. It’s vandals running around California and vandalizing Columbus and Serra. It’s Lincoln being set on fire and Joan of Arc getting vandalized.

In Glendale, California, Korean and Japanese groups are battling over a memorial to the “Comfort women” who were raped by the Japanese military during WWII. It’s yet another example of how a multicultural society becomes filled with explosive battles over history that can only be resolved with mutual tolerance or centralized censorship. The left has opted for the latter. And that’s dangerous.

Trying to make things better instead often makes them worse.

After the left complained that there were too few statues of female historical figures in New York, Bryant Park got a hideous statue of a squatting Gertrude Stein. While Stein was gay, with points for the LGBT checkbox, she was also an anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator, double points withdrawn.

In a bid to court feminists, gay activists and the artsy crowd, a New York City park got a statue of the woman who suggested that Hitler should win the Nobel Peace Prize for driving the Jews out of Europe.

But that’s also how history works. Every major figure has their negative sides if you go looking for them.

Behind the self-righteousness with which the left vandalizes Confederate memorials is also a great deal of hypocrisy. The double standards immunize comrades on the left from accountability and judgment.

Without a certain degree of tolerance and historical distance, no statue can stand the test of time.

In Philadelphia, the shortage of General Lee statues instead made the statue of Frank Rizzo a target. The former mayor and top cop of Philly suffered a defaced mural and calls to take down his statue. Black nationalists hate Rizzo because of his determination to crack down on Black Panther violence and terror. But gay rights activists have also targeted the statue over accusations of “homophobia”.

But why stop with Frank?

There are thousands of statues of Martin Luther King Jr. across America. The civil rights legend was an ordained minister who believed that homosexuality was a psychological problem that needed to be addressed. People have lost their jobs for less than that.

No, there’s no help for it.

All the statues must come down. Including the huge memorial on the Mall. All the streets named after Martin Luther King Jr must be renamed. If we’re going to hold historical figures accountable for not holding the same civil rights positions that the left adopted 5 minutes ago, why not start with King?

Either that or we can once again learn tolerance by leaving each other alone.

The left’s version of tolerance is just an endless civil war that pits groups against each other. It stirs up division and hatred under the false façade of justice. Its only possible outcome is to force everyone to accept one version of history while prohibiting everyone from having their own versions of history.

That’s not America. That’s Communist China and the Soviet Union.

In America, Churchill can co-exist with Connolly. There’s room for Junipero Serra and Chief White Eagle in California. New York offers a place for a bust of Napoleon III and a statue of Garibaldi (both men had once lived in exile in the city). And there’s also room for General Grant and General Lee.

History is complicated. Tyranny is simple.

A free society isn’t maintained by the brute force of easy answers, but with difficult compromises.

Tyranny offers the easy answer of eliminating all the statues that displease us. History tells us that the statues should stay. If we embrace the easy answer, soon there won’t be any statues left.

Either all the statues must stay. Or all the statues must go.