Once upon a time in Romania, now in America
Under the pretext of racism and the flag of felon-heroes such as George Floyd, in America this summer statues have been demolished. Except the statues of Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and many other historical figures have nothing to do with racism, but everything to do with the methodology of any totalitarian movement or political religion. Part of this methodology is the never ending war against truth, civilization and their memory. Now they call it ‘Cancel Culture’. For the time being I’d call it the Demolition Left, because that’s what the Left does if allowed: demolishes all that stands in its way.
In Romania, after WW2, our communists, same as Bolsheviks, were a minority with no social or cultural traction, but with great ambitions of political supremacy. They knew people would never accept them freely and willingly. Therefore, having the full armed support of the Evil Empire – USSR – they applied the same methodology: the ideologically motivated terror in order to replace the previous political and social order. One of their first worries was to forbid the inconvenient truths and erase their bearers and symbols. With people, no matter how many they tortured and murdered, it took generations – their children and grandchildren still remember. With books, no matter how many they burned, some still remained. With statues went faster.
They started in 1948, in Bucharest, known at the time as „the Little Paris”. Most statues representing the personalities who practically built the modern Romania and our flourishing capital were demolished. The statue of Carol I, our first modern king; the statue of I.C. Bratianu from the University Square; of Lascar Catargiu from the Roman Square; of Pake Protopopescu, one of the best mayors ever; of Eugeniu Carada, co-founder of the National Bank of Romania, were removed overnight and many others followed. The statues made of stone were thrown away. The bronze statues were melted and the material used to build the monumental statues of Stalin and other communist heroes.
The result? I was born 20 years later and I had never even heard about some of the people embodied by the demolished statues. History had already been falsified and erased for my generation even from the manuals. If it hadn’t been for Ronald Reagan and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, I would still be an ignorant about it – in many ways I still am, all of us are about the past the Left so diligently and continuously falsifies and buries.
But what old communists did wasn’t new. After all, communists have never invented anything; they just redesigned and rebranded evil.
Take for instance Islam. The 14 century methodology of the Muslim conquests includes the removal or confiscation of the symbols belonging to non-Islamic cultures. The method is still vigorously applied. In 2001, in Bamiyan, after failing to demolish two giant statues of Budha with anti-aircraft and tank fire, the Talibans finally managed to bring them down with dynamite; the statues were 115 and 174 feet tall and had been carved in the mountain 17 centuries before. More recently and equally spectacular the perfectly Islamic State did the same in Syria and Iraq Should I remind the historical case of Hagia Sophia, the oldest and greatest Christian cathedral at the time of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople (1453), transformed into a mosque for 500 years – enough for the people to forget it once was the heart of the flourishing and civilized Orthodox Christianity – then into a Turkish museum (1935), then back into a mosque this year under the new Sultan Erdogan?
You see, it’s in the logic of any political religion, inevitably totalitarian in its messianic aspirations, to wage war against the symbols of the social order it seeks to destroy. To falsify the past by erasing the collective historical memory is mandatory when you want to impose an ideology, i.e. a utopia, a political fantasy presumably bringing global salvation and well-being. And the Left, utopian by definition and totalitarian by aspiration, knows it. Without destroying the values and symbols of the ‘old world’, ideologies cannot seduce enough public to survive. How could they when people will find all over the place the reminders of reality? When enduring symbols will secure the truth in the mind of successive generations and make the roots of good and evil verifiable?
Yes, the past is always risky for the Left, which keeps failing historically in its promise for a perfect world, but always leaves behind a trail of massive destruction. That is why to manufacture for itself a respectable background the Left needs to confiscate, erase and falsify other succesful people’s past, especially the good one. This is precisely what the Demolition Left is trying to do in America with its ropes, hammers, laws and mobs aiming for much more than destroying the stone.
It’s good president Trump and his administration are defending statues and monuments. It’s a crucial battle in this cultural war of the Left against civilization and the memory of its making. Because the cultural war is the precursor of the total war, and winning the first prevents the last.
We, Romanians, couldn’t prevent it decades ago though hundreds of thousands of our own sacrificed themselves for that. The Evil Empire was too big and appeased by the West, and we were too small. That is not the case with America.
Despite the tireless efforts of the Left, America isn’t dying as long as its people remember and celebrate their history and founding values. But in order to keep doing that Americans have yet to learn from us about the perils of the Left.
I don’t think America lacks the human and material resources to prevent and avoid the tragedies we experienced curtesy of the Left, and still do. What Americans lack is the direct experience of totalitarianism and the awareness that it can happen to them too. Actually, it starts happening even if in bits and pieces.
Americans should learn that what the Left destroys in one generation is hard to reverse and rebuild – if ever. After 75 years, a bloody anti-communist revolution and three generations, we are still struggling to rebuild and free ourselves, caught between the trail of massive cultural and institutional destruction of the Old Left and the promise of more destruction from the New Left.
Today as well as in the past century, whether people admit it or not, my country and our continent still rely on America to keep pace with liberty, democracy and prosperity. But sadly, while providing tremendous economic and military support, America has failed to export its founding values to Europe; instead has joined and spread the nonsense of the New Left, i.e. of the anti-America.
Maybe it’s time for the ultimate land of the free and its many good people to abandon the Western ideas and elites who keep reinventing, revitalizing and rebranding the communism we’ve already experienced. Time to rely more on the forgotten people from my side of the continent craving for a better chance and more liberty, not on our elites – deeply corrupted, both morally and ideologically. Time to learn more from those who lived and understood totalitarianism by default and freedom by the lack of it. And learn now, because later may be too late for all of us.
Update: Sunday night, the 11th of October, „peaceful” protesters in Portland, Oregon, demolished the statues of President Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt on what they called an “Indigenous Day of Rage”. Next day it was Columbus Day, federal holiday which some cities and states renamed Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
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