The American Left’s New Cultural Revolution

In the old Soviet Union an often-told joke went something like this: “The future is certain, it’s the past that’s unpredictable.” That’s because it was always changing. Unfavorable history would be scrubbed in an instant. 

Under the brutal reign of Stalin, those who strayed from the established line were actually removed from photographs. Controlling the past, the Soviets understood, was a way to control the future. Today the American Left is using the same playbook. American history is now fully on the chopping block. 

Recently in Savannah, Georgia, a public park named for John C. Calhoun has been slated for a rebrand. This after Calhoun’s name was removed from a building at Yale, where he attended college, and his monument in Charleston was destroyed. 

A monument in Arlington National Cemetery, known as the “Reconciliation Memorial,” is now targeted for destruction by the end of the year. Consider that for a moment. A monument dedicated to reconciliation between the sections – North and South – is now deemed offensive. 

Historic yet still active and important US Army bases like Fort Hood and Fort Bragg are being renamed as well. A “Naming Commission,” authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act, was handed power to “remove all names, symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia that honor or commemorate the Confederate States of America . . . or any person who served voluntarily with the Confederate States of America from all assets of the Department of Defense.”

In recent years, our enemies – and that’s exactly what they are – have gone after Columbus, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and even Theodore Roosevelt, whose mother was a Southerner and who had relatives who fought for the Confederacy, something he was not shy about mentioning when he campaigned in the South. 

We’ve seen the names of schools scrubbed of American leaders and statues honoring Confederate war dead removed. The beautiful, iconic Monument Row in Richmond has been completely dismantled. Graves of Confederate leaders have been disturbed and moved to less public viewing areas, less someone should be triggered by their very sight. 

Many of the great monuments and statues that have stood for more than a century, rather than sell them to museums, or donate them, have been destroyed. This is the American Left, not unlike the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

But it’s even more disturbing when our side joins in the fight out of sheer cowardice. When Mississippi leaders, led by the state Republican Party, lied to the people about the future of the state flag, by denying a fair vote on the matter, they made themselves “useful idiots” of the Left’s new cultural revolution. 

We’ve seen this story before, many times actually, and it was terrifying.

The French Revolution was one of the most horrifying events of the modern world. Breaking out in 1789, what began as a reaction against the intolerable conditions in France and the indifference of the ruling classes, spilled out into unspeakable violence that eventually saw the end of the monarchy, the nobility, and even Christianity. Radical revolutionaries soon changed the calendar, street names, and even names of towns, anything connected to the past. Those caught in the simple act of speaking words related to the Old Regime, or using the wrong pronouns, were sent to the guillotine. It was a full-scale re-ordering of French society. 

The Russian Revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin in 1917, also engaged in a remake of society, especially in the area of education. Any and all religious topics in schools were forbidden. A Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment controlled every level of education and even entertainment, such as the content in theaters. In short, they wanted all Soviet citizens to think like Marxists in everything they did, including the promotion of atheism, and the ruling elites used force, including the terrifying threat of the gulag, to gain absolute obedience to the State.

Mao Zedong’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China lasted ten years and turned bloody, claiming the lives of at least two million people. One of the goals was to “clear away the evil habits of the old society.” Those holding on to the old ways were referred to as “monsters” and “demons.” As one Communist Party paper wrote in 1966, “The triumphant progress of this great and unparalleled cultural revolution of the proletariat is already sounding the death knell not only of the remnant capitalist forces on Chinese soil, but of imperialism, modern revisionism and all reaction. Your days are numbered.”

These are just three of the most conspicuous examples. But, in fact, every totalitarian movement, no matter what name it goes by – Fascism, Communism – erases the past as a way to control the future. Strict censorship is always the order of the day. 

It didn’t used to be this way. Four days after the end of the Spanish-American War, President William McKinley traveled to Atlanta, Georgia in 1898 to attend a gathering known as the “Peace Jubilee.” Himself a Union veteran who was at the battle of Sharpsburg, the bloodiest day in American history, McKinley cheered Confederate veterans and even stood for the playing of “Dixie.” In his speech, McKinley stated, “In the spirit of fraternity we should share with you in the care of the graves of Confederate soldiers.”

President Theodore Roosevelt returned captured Confederate battle flags to the South. President Warren Harding attended Confederate Memorial Day services in Washington in 1922, and spoke from a platform draped with both American and Confederate flags. And no one thought anything bad about any of it. But today we live in a different world.

“To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots,” Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitzyn once said. And he’s right. The goal is to destroy our proud past, then replace it with their version of history, one that denigrates the great advances of liberty, capitalism, Christianity, and Western Civilization, ideologies diametrically opposed to their plans for a very dark American future.