Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series discussing the destruction of history by those who seek to rewrite it. In the first part, we looked at how the left is trying to change history to make their own ideology seem unsurpassable. You can read part 1 here on Liberty Nation.
The left’s record on destroying the past to shape the future is full and rich. It has been a political tool to shame the inheritors of a legacy that does not fit the preferred ideology. This is happening today in America with the tearing down of monuments that are historical markers; the left wants their racist connections to the past removed and to paint the right as the ones who are responsible for slavery. The airbrushing of history is the only way they will convince the next generation of their ideological success.
We saw an almost perfect example of history’s erasure under Joseph Stalin. Leon Trotsky was a huge figure in the rise of the early Soviet Union, he founded and led the Red Army and was one of the first members of the Politburo. After he was declared an enemy of the state by Stalin, the process of his eradication began. People who were close to Trotsky were quite literally painted out of history with portraits being altered and photographs being doctored. Was this just part of Stalin’s famous insecurity? Or was it perhaps an attempt to remove from memory the fact that the ideology could change? Stalin saw the Left Opposition as moving away from pure Leninism, and any successful policies that came about through any actions that were not pure in ideology had to go.
And then there was Adolf Hitler. At some point during his relationship with Joseph Goebbels, the key, “inner circle” member fell out of grace and the wheels of the leftist propaganda machine began to spin. We still have many records of Goebbels and know that he was actually on hand to burn Hitler’s body after his suicide, but it appears the reason for the falling out has been wiped away. Again, photos were doctored; most famously the picture of Hitler and Goebbels at filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.
For more recent examples, we need only look at North Korea and Kim Jong Un’s relationship with his executed uncle (and advisor), Jang Song-thaek. After falling out of favor, the regime embarked on one of the largest projects of erasure ever attempted.
The point is that these “leaders” were not eliminating history out of spite or caprice, but as political actions to defend their ideologies against criticism. And this is happening again, today, in the United States.
The removal of Confederate Monuments is merely the first stepping stone in a grander scheme to remove a connection to the past. The left doesn’t genuinely care whether Confederate leaders were slave owners or racists, but in the modern climate, they are easier targets. Once the people of America have accepted that “some” aspects of history can be removed, it will become all too easy to remove others, and the next step is already happening.
A Chicago pastor, James Dukes, is calling for parks named after George Washington and Andrew Jackson to be renamed (he suggests after Mayor Harold Washington and Michael Jackson). He says that because they were both slave owners, it is an affront to have them honored in a “black neighborhood.”
“I think we should be able to identify and decide who we declare heroes in our communities because we have to tell the stories to our children of who these persons are.”
And here’s the rub, if the stories that are told are not common to all, but only to a selective community, then we end up with no shared culture or history. And this is precisely the plan. Anything that creates connections to other people in different communities, connections between the today’s successful institutions and a past that isn’t purely leftist, or connections to their own past tyranny, cannot be permitted and must be erased.
The past will be rewritten to hold up an ideology that does not have the strength to stand on its own history; the casualties will be immense and irreplaceable.
