Progressive Iconoclasm

On Statues, Power, and Revenge

We failed, but in the good providence of God apparent failure often proves a blessing.

-Robert E. Lee

After years of protest, deliberation, and attempts to evade destruction, the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville was finally dismantled and melted down. The Washington Post, who had a special report on the melting down of the statue hides none of the progressive giddiness and outright euphoria that came from the melting down of this great man.

Reading the article, spares the reader no fluff at all before getting straight to the juicy one-liners that one would find in a naughty dime novel.

The statue’s defenders more recently sought to block the city from handing Lee over to Charlottesville’s Black history museum, which proposed a plan to repurpose the metal. In a lawsuit, those plaintiffs suggested the century-old monument should remain intact or be turned into Civil War-style cannons.

But on Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry outside Virginia, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence.

“Well, they can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” said Andrea Douglas, the museum’s executive director, as she watched pieces of oxidized metal descend into the furnace. “There will be no tape for that.”

“No cannons,” added Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia religious studies professor standing beside her.

No subtleties here on the revenge fantasy that is being played out, nor the two professors that were interviewed being black. However the march of progressive history must march on, ingots must be used for new art and reflect a new America. The great men of the past, soldiers who took up arms to defend their homes and livelihood, are washed away in the new blood of a nation that no longer recognizes what had happened to have any semblance of nuance but rather are instead confined to the dust bin of history via leftist racial moralizing. Every Southerner a Slave Owner, the Greatness of his Leaders are Racists or Proto-Fascists, and here we must reconstruct again. So as the article tells us, “It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one.”

The difference between Damnatio memoriae and Justice is a matter of perspective but more importantly a matter of power. The South is a complicated issue, to say the least. The Confederacy, Slavery, States’ Rights, all of which can be seen from progressive historiographers to old liberals defending their regional identity at the Abbeville Institute. Despite argumentation, protests, or lawfare, rhetoric and laws mean nothing when facing the sword of demographic coalitions and virulent political resentment. It doesn’t matter that President Eisenhower called General Lee one of the four great Americans, Eisenhower exists as a racist, antifa, and fascist in the eyes of many progressives depending how you ask them about his record. It doesn’t matter that South will not rise again, or that those protesting in defense of Lee’s statue from being toppled by masses of progressives who have no relatives who fought in the War of 1861, what matters is that those defending the statue of part of the structure of White Supremacy, Slavery, and Reactionary Racism.

In a slew of progressive victories, from Doug Mackey getting jail time (and more importantly the precedent) for shitposting during an election, Electoral Justice Protestors of January 6th being jailed and treated poorly as political prisoners, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of new illegal aliens entering the country with the explicit support of federal authorities, don’t think for a second they haven’t forgotten about this issue of Iconodulia.

After all, “inclusive monument”, just like “diversity” just means less white or no white at all.