patrick.net

The Great Statucide

... There have been hundreds of similar examples. Monuments that in many cases stood for centuries have been reduced to bare pedestals smattered with graffiti, the end result of Twitter-fueled fanaticism driven by national-guilt and systemic-racism narratives in which Americans are increasingly indoctrinated. But while media coverage has dwindled, the removal, defacement, and destruction of statues quietly continues. It’s part of a trend in which the high priests of social justice, dissatisfied with denouncing the living, now engage in a form of “cancelling” that seeks to condemn the dead, digging up the corpses of “problematic” individuals and putting them on trial. ...

History is a teacher of prudence. And, as is so often the case, it’s full of lessons from which we might learn in order to avoid repeating the past. It shines a light on the future, giving us a glimpse of where we might be headed so that we can course correct before it’s too late.

I’m thinking now of China’s cultural revolution during the 1960’s. Chairman of the People’s Republic of China Mao Zedong, worried that he might be sidelined by senior colleagues in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), decided to assert his authority by bypassing comrades and appealing directly to youthful party members. He denounced the four olds that were impeding China’s progress: the old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits of the exploiting classes. It was a move to extend the revolution from economic and political power bases to all aspects of culture, including morals, values, traditions, and beliefs. In Mao’s telling, only a nation freed from its history could achieve the Communist end state. The informal paramilitary militia of adolescents prepared to engage in cultural revolution became known as the Red Guard. ...

It’s important to understand that members of the Red Guard weren’t psychopaths, as plenty of testimony proves. No, they were young and impressionable folks lured by the delusive analgesic of radical performative collective action and an illusion of purpose, direction, and identity. Afraid of being denounced themselves, they were driven to ever greater degrees of zealotry in order to prove their dedication. ...

When mobs engage in destructive outbursts they’re essentially testing the waters to gauge the level of violence legal authorities and the wider public are able to stomach. In this way, iconoclasm is a prelude to more extreme acts. As British historian Alexander Adams has written, “Iconoclasm is an immediate precursor to suppression, persecution, expulsion and the massacring of people. ...

As British historian Alexander Adams has written, “Iconoclasm is an immediate precursor to suppression, persecution, expulsion and the massacring of people. ...