Some Thoughts on the Destruction of Statues of Confederate War Heroes
My consistent reaction over time to the destruction of statues of Confederate generals has been to regard them as spasms of the mob and the product of cultish ideology. More particularly in the instances of Robert E Lee or Nathan Bedford Forrest, the desecrations are the product of a generation of miss education
Historically, they have a broader meaning and a sinister impulse. The French Revolution stands as an example of iconoclasm as a tool of social control rather than a mere expression of ideological purity.
Statues are icons and for millennia icons have stood in the place of written language. They are a visible, physical symbol of what is to be respected, venerated or even worshiped. Often after an episode of iconoclastic destruction new icons are erected to represent the new values to be respected, venerated or worshiped.
So in the French Revolution that we saw the deliberate destruction of churches as well as the physical bodies of priests and nuns, we saw the decapitation of the statues of Kings along the façade of Notre Dame we saw the decapitation of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. All this was part of the rabid anticlericalism of the French Revolution. But keep in mind, the destruction of religious icons in the course of the French Revolution was not limited to the initial adrenaline upheaval but extended for four years when one might have expected passions to have cooled.
Not surprisingly, after Robespierre had led the way in a blood spasm of murder and iconoclasm, he turned about and erected a new icon toward a supreme being and summoned the people to a festival. Shortly thereafter he was guillotined.
Robespierre had erected a new icon to represent a new supreme being who was to be celebrated, venerated or even worshiped. Napoleon came along and was not in doubt about what should be the object of iconic worship; statues of Napoleon together with paintings exaggerating his Imperial magnificence became abundant. The phrase, the man on horseback, suggests statues of Napoleon. Not coincidentally, the more the cult of Napoleon grew, the more intrusive waxed his secret police.
The point is that the iconoclasm unleashed by the storming of the Bastille, a solid fortress torn down in a fit of iconoclasm, was a tool of the revolution, no less than the propaganda of Goebbels served the ideology of Nazism. The Jacobins knew that the icons of their ideology must supplant those of the ancient regime so they changed the calendar, renamed the months and supplanted every icon of the ancient regime they could lay their hands on.
Czar Nicholas of Russia and his family learned to their sorrow, just as Louis XVI and Marie Annette learned to their sorrow, that living human bodies are also seen as icons that must be destroyed if the ideology they represent is to be successfully supplanted. Small wonder that figures of dead Confederate generals must also be executed.
Quite often the iconoclasm assumes the aura of religious indignation. That is the sort of iconoclasm we have seen when the Taliban smote graven images into bits but hopefully not out of history. We saw much the same during the Protestant Reformation among the nonconformist sects who effaced religious images from church walls. These examples are illustrative of an impulse to destroy an icon not just because its presence is repugnant but because the absence of an icon is needed to conform to the theology of Islam or nonconformist sects. We are reminded that The 30 Years War was one of the worst holocausts to be visited on Europe. The German town whence my ancestor left for America today describes the carnage as worse than that experienced during the second world war.
The French Revolution justified its iconoclasm by declaring it stood for liberty, equality, fraternity all certainly enlightened impulses. But regicide or the murder of priests and nuns can hardly be described as noble. The Taliban justify their iconoclasm because it obeys the diktat of Allah but they proffered the same justification when they severed the heads of women and children.
When 21st-century Talibans smash Confederate icons, they are preening their virtue for all the world to see that they themselves are not racists. They will not admit the humanity of the men whose effigies they destroy. They must make way for a whole new reality and they must sweep away historical reality to do so. The destruction of Confederate statues is not just a reaction but also a tool for social control.
God help us if the tearing down of 19th century men evolves into the destruction of 21st-century men. History tells us the temptation for the iconoclasts to indulge their ideology in blood and murder is very real.
