Pressure builds to remove the 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy located on US public lands https://t.co/ZL9lLQWz6e pic.twitter.com/1L0ywZXG3m— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 16, 2017
Washington Post: Baltimore hauls away four Confederate monuments after overnight removal
Crews removed Baltimore’s Confederate statues early Wednesday, days after the deadly unrest in Charlottesville instigated by white nationalists rallying to defend a downtown Confederate monument.
The quiet and sudden removal of four monuments, with little fanfare and no advance notice, marks an attempt by the city to avoid a long, bruising conflict that has embroiled Charlottesville and other communities rethinking how they honor figures who fought to preserve slavery.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh (D) announced Monday she was in talks with contractors to haul away the statues, and the city council approved a removal plan that night. Some activists had vowed to destroy the monuments before government could act.
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WNU Editor: I will never forget what the mayor of the Chinese city of Quanzhou (Fujian, China) told me in 1988 on what he did during the Chinese Cultural revolution. During the Cultural Revolution Mao's cadres were destroying and obliterating China's history, and while the mayor was a minor official at the time he made the decision to save what was one of the city's most important historical buildings .... the Buddhist Kaiyuan Temple. They barricaded the doors and kept the mob out .... but if the mob had succeeded they would have destroyed one of the world's oldest and most unique Buddhist temples. The Taliban have also pursued this destruction of history .... the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan are their legacy .... and it is now in the the Middle East .... with radical Islamists pushing for the obliteration of the region's history .... from wanting to destroy the pyramids in Egypt to the actual destruction of temples and shrines in Syria and Iraq. This is human nature at its worse .... finding offence with history, and responding to it by destroying it.
The U.S. is not immune to this desire to purge a part of its history .... at the moment the focus is on the history of the Confederacy. Tomorrow .... who knows what these activists will want .... but I do know that once they have succeeded they will not be satisfied and they will be looking at other targets. This is just the beginning .... and it is going to get even far more violent. Groups like Antifa are just as violent as neo-Nazis .... though some in the media are trying today to portray a different narrative.
A little bit of my own history .... after the fall of the Soviet Union I was part of a group that wanted Lenin's Mausoleum removed from the Red Square. There were debates and discussions .... and our point of view was rejected. But there was a compromise .... there would be no sugar-coating on Lenin's role in the rise of Communism, and its legacy. I am satisfied with that .... but we are now pushing to build a memorial to remember the victims of Communism on Red Square and/or adjacent to it. I do not know when this will happen .... but I am confident that with time we will be successful.
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