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There are fates worse than death: You could have a statue of yourself melted down by your enemies and turned into postmodern art. That’s the fate that awaits the famous Charlottesville Robert E. Lee statue. The Charlottesville City Council unanimously voted this week to give the removed statue to the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center. The black museum plans to melt it down and turn it into some grotesque art exhibit.
The center wants to use the statue as the centerpiece of its “Swords Into Plowshares” project. Andrea Douglas, the museum’s director, said:
The idea that a community could take the implements of war and turn them into plowshares or implements of social good is really what’s behind this. So, when we think about the project, it is about transformation, taking something that is symbolically traumatic and turning it into something that responds to the cultural values of Charlottesville.
Other community leaders shared similar sentiments. “This proposal best speaks to the values of equity and racial justice that the Human Rights Commission was created to advance and we urge you to select it,” Charlottesville Human Rights Commission chair (yes, that’s a thing in Charlottesville) Mary Bauer said in a council meeting. Other local activists said the Lee statue traumatized them and that they need to know it no longer exists in order to “heal.” These arguments won out.
It should be noted that Lee was not the only statue torn down in Charlottesville. City leaders also tore down a statue honoring Lewis and Clark and Stonewall Jackson. William Clark and Merriwether Lewis weren’t Confederates; they were famous explorers whose journey to the Pacific Ocean was once celebrated by all Americans. Now they’re just dead white men whose statue alongside Sacagawea reinforces white supremacy.
Fortunately for Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and Jackson, they will not be melted down by a black museum. Their respective fates are still to be determined, but city leaders want them completely removed from Charlottesville. The Lewis and Clark statue illustrates the obvious notion that they won’t stop at Confederate statues. It’s a war on America’s white heritage.
There are multiple myths deflated in this story besides “They only want to target Confederates!” Liberals and their conservative allies have constantly assured us that the proper place for these statues is in museums or historical parks. The destruction of the Lee statue shows that they lied about “proper place” notion. They want to erase them entirely from the physical world. To know that they exist somewhere is an affront that they cannot bear. They have to wipe them out completely and mold them into objects worthy of veneration in the Current Year.

You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Year America Died here.
The whole point of this measure is to humiliate whites, particularly white Southerners. While the victors of the Civil War treated the defeated Confederates with respect and admired their leaders as great men, the victors of the Cultural War treat the defeated Confederates with nothing but scorn and insist that great generals were losers simply because they lost the war. We need to admire real winners like George Floyd and Stacey Abrams instead.
Charlottesville hasn’t announced what the statues will be replaced with yet, but it’s already changed some of its landmarks to “reflect the times.” It renamed one of its streets Heather Heyer Way to honor the Charlottesville rally’s single fatality.
Other places, however, have already shown us what monuments will replace those of the dead white men. Richmond replaced Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes with an “Emancipation and Freedom” monument. The new structure depicts freed black slaves and is solely dedicated to black identity. Even though white people are responsible for black emancipation, it erases whites from the story. All the names honored are black. They include:
Mary Elizabeth Bowser, a spy for the Union in the Confederate White House;
William Harvey Carney, a former slave who fought in the 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry Regiment and was the first African-American awarded the Medal of Honor;
Gabriel, who led one of the half-dozen most important insurrection plots in the history of North American slavery;
Dred Scott, an enslaved man whose unsuccessful lawsuit for his freedom led to the infamous Supreme Court decision that persons of African descent were not United States citizens;
Nat Turner, leader of the only successful slave revolt in Virginia’s history, shattering the myth of the contented slave;
Rosa Dixon Bowser, an educator, women’s rights activist, and social reformer who founded the first African American teachers’ association and co-founded the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs and the National Association of Colored Women;
John Mercer Langston, Virginia’s first African-American member of Congress and the first President of what is now Virginia State University;
John Mitchell, Jr., a community activist, the first African-American to run for Governor of Virginia and editor of the Richmond Planet newspaper, which covered local, national, and worldwide news, especially lynchings, segregation, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan;
Lucy Simms, a prominent educator who taught three generations of African-American children in the Harrisonburg area; and
Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a Petersburg minister, civil rights activist, Chief of Staff to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
For those keeping track, the statue honors two black men whose main accomplishment was wanting to butcher white planters. One of them — Nat Turner — succeeded in his mission and slaughtered dozens of whites in 1831. Most of his victims were white women and children. This is a figure who Virginia officially now considers a freedom fighter and worthy of honor. Meanwhile, Lee is being melted down into an ugly art project.
The thing to keep in mind with every toppled statue is that we’re not supposed to honor any dead white men anymore. Confederates are merely at the top of the list. New York City recently removed a Thomas Jefferson statue because he was a racist. Last year, Boston tore down an Abraham Lincoln statue because the freed slave looked too submissive in the monument. A San Francisco school covered a George Washington mural because it offended its diverse student population. To repeat: They won’t stop at Confederates. The desire for erasure applies to all whites, unless they’re in a protected category such as Harvey Milk.
The fate of Robert E. Lee symbolizes the future of all of white America’s icons. It will all be razed and melted down to serve the interests of non-whites.
The one white pill in all this is that we can at least know that the system is giving us the symbols to represent ourselves. The system wants to be free of the men who made America, and claims that they are heroes exclusively to white Americans. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson do not represent multiracial America; they represent the historic American nation. Their removals testify to that, and offer the opportunity for us to appeal to a heritage now separated from the corrupt Empire.
We stand for the real America; the system does not.
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12 comments
I get some satisfaction from knowing that the 13% are actually too stupid to have achieved this rewriting of history without actually being the total and complete slaves of the 2%.
My dog loves being fed and the warmth and comfort of my home. It’s why he never minds the leash and the crate.
Orwell was right about this memory hole business.
I heard that there were historical associations that offered to take the Lee statue, but were denied. So the decision to melt it down is very deliberate and in-y0ur-face.
Although in general, I agree with the author’s sentiments, I wouldn’t say the victors were too kind to the Confederates after the war. Maybe the way the Russians marveled at the German’s determination and organization skills at Stalingrad, or the Marines’ astonishment at the outnumbered and outgunned Japanese soldier’s fierceness at the Pacific theater. After all, the most kindness came from their former colleagues and West Point graduates. But the real repercussions and “Racial Reckoning” came after the war, and are felt even today.
If anyone else is interested to know more about the horrors of Reconstruction, you will find that information here: https://identitydixie.com/tag/reconstruction/ .
I suppose it’s almost too banal to compare things in the US with the decline of the Roman empire. But it does seem the new religion which has captured much of the state and culture is determined to extinguish a certain rival idolatry
The left is really having their cake and eating it too with this whole Charlottesville thing. The statue getting melted down and turned into some sort of social justice sculpture is pretty much rubbing salt in the wound. The author aptly points out the whole point of this is to rob legacy Americans of their heritage and birthright. The welfare state minorities so love would not exist were it not for the white people they so loathe and despise. It’s the ultimate inconvenient truth, so the powers to be have to airbrush history, in this case, melt it down.
I was at the Denver capitol visiting and took a picture with my wife with the civil war statue that got taken down in view. I saw the statue was a memorial for Coloradans, who fought for the Union in the civil war back when Colorado was still just a territory. I had this profound experience and reflection of all the history that happened between then and now. All evoked from seeing that statue and what it represented. It evoked memories of high school history class and learning about the civil war and thinking the urban scene of Denver wasn’t always there. A year later that statue was gone. The governor was so mad about it, he also took out the two civil war era cannons outside the capitol as well.
Reading this just made me me sick to my stomach. My family ties go back to Pennsylvania and Ohio. As a young kid in school learning of the war between the states, I always had an affinity for the north, the likes of Lincoln and Grant, and of course, The Star Spangled Banner. Though, I never ever detested or loathed the southern states for what transpired. The basic fact is that they were just as American, if not more than anyone who lived in or fought for the north, period. They adhered to and believed in the constitution, freedom from an overbearing and belligerent government and they fought courageously for their values, their sovereignty, and their posterity. Win or lose, these are men and women who should be revered and respected.
Should some of the people in this piece such as Scott, Langston, or Walker be remembered and/or honored? Yeah, sure, why not? But the removal of any statue is a serious crime against history, whether it is your history or not. The destruction or melting down of a statue is absolutely sickening, disgusting, and vile. A definite slap in the face and stab in the back to anyone and everyone who cares about this once great country.
Personally I feel the Lincoln statue mentioned sums up lot of our current problems. I suspect it’s how many white people still think the world is on some level.
I’m completely cool for whites to depict themselves as superior to other races, but I’m not ok with this idea we celebrate ourselves as benign saints of giving to other races, bestowing the holy gifts of freedom and civilization and intelligence onto blacks and that we are radiating holiness in doing so.
Do these statues of Lincoln have historical value ? Perhaps. They remind us how nice white people were, how highly white people thought of themselves, how whites tried to make sense of race, tried to find some nice narrative out of it while putting themselves in the superior light but also how utterly stupid they were and still are.
Statues like this remind me of Ozymandias. This image of a saintly Lincoln with a pet negro he’s freed is not a healthy one. If a culture values this image it is eventually doomed.
In some ways I wish we were in power so we could melt it down ourselves.
And then there is the removal of the statue of Stephen Foster in Pittsburgh.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oh-susanna-songwriter-s-statue-removed-amid-criticism-n869321
After a few years in storage, the statue is headed for a museum exhibit in Los Angeles next year, alongside statues of other justifiably disgraced, evil white men.
“The Foster statue had been branded, at one point, the most racist statue in America. And it was time for it to come down,” said Kathryn Haines from The Center for American Music.
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2021/10/15/stephen-foster-statue-pittsburgh-to-museum-exhibit-in-los-angeles/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx7ZC9Gg0GE (don’t skip this)
Sam Francis predicted this 40 years ago. His article opposing the nascent “King Day” was unbelievably prescient. I’m trying to recall if Revilo Oliver was predicting this trajectory in the 1960s. I wouldn’t be surprised.
I wonder where they got the idea to do this obscenity it doesn’t sound like something negroes could think of on their own. Probably the subhumanity at the new york times or The Guardian.
I wonder how many of the white women and children the illiterate, sack-cloth wearing, and lice ridden, Nat Turner raped were infected with syphilis? Before he cut their throat.
Today museum’s and other institutions seem to be invented at the spur of the moment just to justify anti-white racism, vandalism, and censorship. Lineal descendents of the destroyers of the great Library of Alexandria. The CV of the ‘curators’ is extremely dubious and maintained by nothing more substantial than political correctness.
‘I will never apologize for Birth of a Nation.’ D.W. Griffith during his court appearance after the NAACP sued him.
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