America is waging a war on history. They’re taking down statues, removing plaques, erasing the memory of a difficult past. This week President Trump asked where it will end.
Love him or loathe him, as a historian I have to concede that it’s a good question.
His remarks follow the events of last weekend, when white supremacists marched with torches and swastikas in Charlottesville, Virginia. They were protesting at the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park. Lee was a commander in the Confederate army of the slave-holding South during America’s long and bloody Civil War, a hero to many conservative whites, a bigot to his critics.
‘America is waging a war on history. They’re taking down statues, removing plaques, erasing the memory of a difficult past. This week President Trump asked where it will end,’ writes historian Tim Stanley
Violence broke out. A woman — an anti-fascist protester — was mown down by a car and killed. Two police pilots, monitoring the fighting, died after their helicopter crashed.
America waited for the President to deliver a condemnation of racism generally and white supremacists in particular. Instead, Trump gave two confusing statements, first condemning violence on ‘many sides’, then blaming white racists.
On Tuesday, during a rambling press conference, he reversed his position again and said the Left-wing protesters were just as bad as the Right-wing ones — that as well as being violent, they were trying to ‘change’ culture.
‘White supremacists marched with torches and swastikas in Charlottesville, Virginia. They were protesting at the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a public park’
‘This week, it is Robert E. Lee,’ said Trump. ‘Is it George Washington next week and Thomas Jefferson? You have to ask yourself, where does this stop?’
The events at Charlottesville, in truth, only sped things up. In Baltimore, monuments to Lee and his fellow Confederate general Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson were among four torn down overnight (with the city council’s approval), put on trucks and hauled away.
In Durham, North Carolina, a woman named Takiyah Thompson used a ladder to scale a podium, climb a monument to Confederate soldiers and help pull it down.
Yesterday, the President returned with a flurry of tweets saying he was ‘sad to see the history and culture of our country being ripped apart’, adding ‘you can’t change history, but you can learn from it’.
He’s right again, of course.
No, you can’t change history, but some people are convinced you can make the present nicer by eradicating reminders of our nasty past. Here in Britain, students waged a campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford. Rhodes was one of the architects of the British Empire: a 19th-century businessman and politician who regarded colonisation as a way to civilise lesser races.
‘Violence broke out. A woman — an anti-fascist protester — was mown down by a car and killed. Two police pilots, monitoring the fighting, died after their helicopter crashed’
Students said that he was a symbol of a racist past, an insult to the descendants of the colonised. Donors to Oriel said they’d cut off donations if the college removed the statue. Oriel decided to keep him in place. Trust me, nothing touches an academic’s conscience like cutting off their funding.
One argument made against removing statues of men like Rhodes is that the past is a foreign country: it’s wrong to judge it by today’s moral standards. Take Lee. He owned slaves. There’s evidence that he treated them badly — if they ran away, they were captured and beaten.
His apologists point out that in a letter he wrote in 1856, Lee described slavery as a ‘moral and political evil’. But he went on to say that it was necessary because ‘the painful discipline [that slaves] are undergoing is necessary for their instruction as a race’. Lee’s views are repugnant. They were, however, of his age. And if your test for whether or not a statue remains standing is the racial views of its subject, you’ll be taking down a lot of statues.
‘America waited for the President to deliver a condemnation of racism generally and white supremacists in particular. Instead, Trump gave two confusing statements, first condemning violence on ‘many sides’, then blaming white racists’
Say goodbye to George Washington — commander-in-chief of the army that freed America from the British, and first president of an independent United States, whose monument sits on the National Mall in Washington DC. When he was 11, Washington inherited ten slaves in his father’s will. By the end of his life, there were 123 on his estate at Mount Vernon.
Farewell, too, to Thomas Jefferson. He was the chief author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the U.S. — a hero to liberals for his clear-eyed defence of liberty. He owned slaves and fathered children by one of them. Given that consent is impossible within slavery, this was rape.
Robert E. Lee (1807-1870), Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate armies during the Civil War
There are good arguments for this war on the past to stop at Confederate memorials. Washington and Jefferson helped make their nation independent. Lee and Jackson plunged it into civil war — and their statues were put up after the conflict, for a political purpose.
When the Civil War ended, many southerners wanted to forgive and forget. But in the Twenties there was a resurgence of racist political activity, and that’s when a lot of these statues were erected.
Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee dates from 1924. Those who want to remove it aren’t just attacking the statue, but the racist culture that put it in place.
It’s a culture, let’s not forget, that has left deep scars on American life. The fascists who appeared in Charlottesville are part of its legacy: some of them were affiliated to the Ku Klux Klan, a group started after the Civil War to persecute freed slaves. In America in 2017, where black people are twice as likely to be unemployed and five times as likely to go to jail, a statue is never just a statue. It is a symbol of America’s failure to fulfil its promise of equality.
Therefore, I understand why some want all trace of Robert E. Lee erased from the public space. If I were American, I’d demand he come down in Charlottesville.
‘In America in 2017, where black people are twice as likely to be unemployed and five times as likely to go to jail, a statue is never just a statue. It is a symbol of America’s failure to fulfil its promise of equality’
When the neo-Nazis turned up, they confirmed what this statue has come to represent. Far from saving it, their actions will lead to its removal and the removal of hundreds of other pieces of Confederate history.
But the President’s question still stands. What’s next? If America wants to have a conversation about the roots of its present problems, so be it. It’s about time that some truths were told.
But everything will be on the table, including president Theodore Roosevelt, with whom Obama once identified himself as a fellow progressive. Roosevelt reportedly said: ‘I don’t go so far as to think the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are.’
Those put in charge of sifting through the past will find bad men doing good things and good men doing bad. History is like that: it defies every attempt to tell a simple story. And who will be in charge of sorting the good from the bad?
‘Those put in charge of sifting through the past will find bad men doing good things and good men doing bad. History is like that: it defies every attempt to tell a simple story. And who will be in charge of sorting the good from the bad?’
It can’t be angry students. We cannot allow one group to appoint themselves the archivists of acceptable history and use social pressure to destroy popular culture. Not only is that unfair, its’s also a recipe for a far-Right backlash.
And that’s one conclusion I drew from Trump’s press conference. Politicians and commentators are wondering if this latest outburst is the last straw or just the latest in a never-ending cycle of insult and outrage that appals the Left.
I doubt that it will bring Trump down. There are millions of Americans — some of them racist, for sure — who will have heard his words and quietly agreed.
America’s history belongs to them, too — and they’ll appreciate a President who takes a stand on their behalf.
Dr Tim Stanley is the author of Citizen Hollywood: How The Collaboration Between LA And DC Revolutionized American Politics.