'Unhinged'? 'American Taliban' taking down statues nationwide

FPI / June 23, 2020

An “unhinged left-wing mob” is attempting “to vandalize our history … tear down our statues, and punish, cancel, and persecute anyone who does not conform to their demands for absolute and total control,” President Donald Trump said at his re-election rally in Tulsa on Saturday.

“This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans,” Trump said. “They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose their new oppressive regime in its place.”

Rioters who tore down a Christopher Columbus statue in Minnesota are “American Taliban,” Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said.

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said he approved of the removal of what he called a "problematic" statue of President Theodore Roosevelt which stands outside the American Museum of Natural History.

The bronze statue, which has stood outside of the museum entrance since 1940, depicts Roosevelt riding horseback accompanied by a Native American and an African American male.

“The American Museum of Natural History has asked to remove the Theodore Roosevelt statue because it explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” de Blasio said in a statement. “The City supports the Museum’s request. It is the right decision and the right time to remove this problematic statue.”

A statue of Mohandas Gandhi was vandalized in New York’s Central Park. The NYPD said police became aware of the incident only through social media and sent a community services team to the park to take a report.

Rioters in Washington, D.C. toppled a memorial to Albert Pike, a former Confederate soldier. Reports say that multiple sets of ropes were used to pull down the 11-foot statue of Pike and set it on fire. The rioters chanted “No justice, no peace!” and “No racist police!” Capitol Hill police are reported to have stood by and watched as the statue was taken down and burned.

While Albert Pike was a Confederate general, the statue actually was erected to honor his service as a Freemason, according to WUSA.

In Portland, Oregon on June 18, rioters tore down a statue of George Washington, wrapped the head of the statue in an American flag and then lit the flag on fire. A statue of Thomas Jefferson was also toppled in Portland.

Rioters in California took down a statue of Junipero Serra, a Roman Catholic Spanish priest widely regarded as a founder of the religious California Missions, The Epoch Times noted in a June 21 report. In response, the Spanish Embassy in Washington issued a series of Twitter posts stating they “deeply regret the destruction of the statue … and would like to offer a reminder of his great efforts in support of indigenous communities.”

California rioters also toppled a statue of Francis Scott Key, who penned the national anthem. One video taken at the scene shows a group of people dressed in black and cheering as they use a cord to pull the Key statue down.

Rioters in California also toppled a statute of Ulysses S. Grant, the famed general who helped win the Civil War, bringing an end to slavery in the U.S.

"Grant was an abolitionist who helped win a slew of battles against the Confederacy during the Civil War, forcing Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to surrender in 1865. Grant went on to serve as the nation’s 18th president and used federal troops to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan. He worked to enforce civil rights for blacks and appointed them to prominent positions in his administration," The Epoch Times noted.

"Grant, accused by some activists of being a slave owner, acquired one slave through marriage into a slave-owning family but freed him about a year later."

In San Francisco, rioters toppled a statue of Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish writer who was a slave himself for five years. "It's very sad. It makes me feel it's totally out of hand and it has nothing to do with civil rights," one local bystander told CBS SF.

Author Trevor Loudon called the tearing down of statues a “Maoist tactic of erasing the form of culture.”

“Maoism is about building a new man, a new society,” Loudon told The Epoch Times. “You have to destroy all remnants of the old society. You have to destroy memorials and the former culture so you can build a new society.”

According to Loudon, Marxist organizations such as Liberation Road and the Workers World Party have both been involved in the recent escalations.

“They are following the line of the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” said Loudon, who is also a contributor to The Epoch Times. “The Cultural Revolution wiped out the previous Chinese culture; they toppled statues and desecrated monuments.”

The endgame, Loudon says, is to usher in an American revolution that involves the destroying of the U.S. Constitution and the destruction of U.S. history.

“All of this is linked; all of this is revolutionary activity to destroy the old culture … and build a new socialist society in its wake.”

Free Press International