Cultural Cleansing

Cultural Cleansing

Again, past is prelude — we see reruns today of what has happened before. The ancient, and not so ancient, history of totalitarian statist efforts to obscure and rewrite history. ...
Dennis Behreandt
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

The ugly series of events that transpired in Charlottesville had as it’s direct cause the left-wing movement to stamp out history by forcing the removal, or inciting the vandalism, of monuments related to the Southern states’ Confederate history, specifically, the notion that the “traitorous” South rebelled to protect the odious institution of slavery.

As with almost everything promulgated by the leftist totalitarians, actual history is not so cleanly demarcated as they like to portray, nor are their preferred correctives typically consistent in application. The causes of the war fought between the states, for example, were not solely to be found in the issue of slavery, prominent though this issue was. As for the application of corrective action today, the extremists of left-wing persuasion would destroy monuments to Southern history, but make no mention, for example, of renaming the city of Charlottesville itself, despite the fact that that city’s namesake was a British monarch whose empire permitted slavery during her reign.

The inconsistency of application and the historical blindness that underscores the movement behind the removal and destruction of historical monuments is not the point, however, to those participating in the effort. Instead, only two goals matter: the incitement to violence among the movement’s opponents that can then be used to marginalize and discredit the opposition and, most importantly, the erasure of any symbols of history and culture that run counter to the socialist totalitarian’s worldview and aims.

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