Denouncing the past – a tawdry hobby

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

                                                                                                                             - Soren Kierkegaard

There has been a movement, chiefly among the young, and chiefly from the regressive left wing, of denouncing historical figures for the fact that they were not perfect in all aspects of their lives. For example, in Australia, statues of Captain Cook, the explorer and cartographer have been defaced. In the UK, statues of Cecil Rhodes and Churchill were marred. In the US, statues of Columbus, Robert E Lee, the Confederate General, Theodore Roosevelt and even Thomas Jefferson were vandalized. The general thrust is accusations of racism and colonialism by the West.

Some questions that arises from seeing such actions are: 1. Are the assertions historically true? 2. Would the demand to remove public monuments to these people benefit society in any way?

Take Jefferson as an example. Black Lives Matter denounce him because he was a slave owner. Jefferson did own many slaves. However he was born into a nation and indeed a world where slavery was the norm. Moreover, in the context of his time, he treated slaves well, giving them free time, Sundays off and bought slaves to reunite them with their families. But more than that, anyone who has read a little about Jefferson would know that his ethos was towards the emancipation of all peoples and that he was in principle anti-slavery, as his actions showed.

Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807. The same clause was included in his draft for the Virginian state constitution as early as 1776 and, in 1783, Jefferson included a proposal for a gradual emancipation of slaves. But he was defeated in both of these attempts to reshape policy. It is very worthwhile to debate whether some of his political actions were correct – for example, the author Christopher Hitchens argued in his great biography of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, Author of America, that Jefferson would have advanced the course of ending slavery if he had heeded the advice of Thomas Paine and others to fight for it from a place of principle at the inception of the country. However, the tremendous social, economic and political pressures and danger of secession of Southern states in the face of British threats were very real. Thomas Sowell wrote in his tremendous Black Rednecks and White Liberals:

‘On the national scene, Jefferson returned to the battle once again in 1784, proposing a law declaring slavery illegal in all western territories of the country as it existed at that time. Such a ban would have kept slavery out of Alabama and Mississippi. The bill lost by one vote, that of a legislator too sick to come and vote. Afterwards, Jefferson said that the fate "of millions unborn" was "hanging on the tongue of one man, and heaven was silent in that awful moment."’

I would argue history does not agree with the idea propounded by BLM that Jefferson was a hateful racist and one who lavished in owning slaves. Rather, Jefferson was one of many of the Founding Fathers of America who began a process that pushed back against centuries of customs and social, political and religious justifications – a movement that led to the end of slavery in America, that ugly blight in the human story which still goes on in countries around the globe. America is therefore in fact one of the few places, along with Britain, to export the idea that slavery is immoral and to stop other countries conducting slavery.

What’s more, Jefferson was the third President of America, the chief author of the Declaration of Independence, and the author of the Virginia statute for religious freedom, guaranteeing a ‘wall of separation between Church and State’. He founded the University of Virginia and, in a little known chapter of history, was the man who ended the Barbary pirates’ slave trade, who were free to raid ships, towns and villages on European coasts for over three centuries and who captured more than a million Europeans for the Arab slave market. Jefferson sent the US navy and over two ‘Barbary Wars’ with European allies, ended the piratical strangle hold of the Barbary States. 

He was pro-science, experimenting in viticulture, exploring geology (he wondered why there were shell fossils on mountains) and realized that small-pox vaccines can be made to last longer if chilled and asked Lewis and Clark, the explorers of the newly-purchased Western portions of the USA, to carry the vaccine with them and to encourage indigenous Indians whom they may meet to use it. He was also anti-superstition, the Jefferson bible is a version in which Jefferson cut out all the bits that he deemed ridiculous, including all that is supernatural, even the supposed miracles of Jesus.

That’s quite a curriculum vitae in anyone’s book and is why he deserves statues. Would it therefore be better or worse to elide such a figure from the public arena? Might it not perhaps be better to walk past a statue with one’s children and to tell them what he did, right and wrong and how his actions, thoughts and ideas, shaped by his past, in turn shaped America's and the world's future? Or would the world be a better place if history, with all its pains, regrets, remorse and lessons are to be purged from society lest one person might be upset? The answer seems to be fairly obvious. Furthermore, the fatuousness and shallowness of the regressive movement might be summed up by that story that when a young lady at Mizzou, who happens to be black, showed support for Jefferson after his statue was vandalised, she was attacked with vile racist slurs by self-righteous 'anti-racists' who clearly never heard of 'irony'. 

Of all his achievement, Jefferson saw only these three as fitting to put on his tombstone

One might just about excuse youth and a bad education for not knowing anything about Jefferson, though in the age of the internet, this excuse is wearing increasingly thin. However, this excuse is unpardonable with Winston Churchill. Still, in the UK, even a statue of Old Bulldog was not spared the fury of the self-appointed ‘justice warriors’. 

Churchill, whose personality, tenacity of principle and rhetoric almost single-handedly ensured that not the whole of Europe capitulated to the Nazi regime, arguably the most racist regime in history. Did he say some un-PC things? Yes; he described Indians for example as a ‘brutish people with a brutish religion.’ His use of archaic language might grate on some sensitive domesticated ears eagerly poised to catch any potential wind of offence on other people's behalf. But, and this is very important, the statues and paintings and murals of the man are precisely not celebrating that. They celebrate the fact that he was a man clear-sighted enough to see evil for what it is and was ready to confront it, till the last breathe is drawn, under tremendous political, military, economic and moral pressures, while others around him were ready to throw in the towel, abandon their allies and compromise with the devil. Just like Martin Luther King Jr is celebrated, not for his multiple infidelities, but for his non-violent protest and clear principles on the issue of race. In other words, one can admire someone for tremendous virtues, in spite of other failings. 

Britain was the only country that was at war in 1939, which was still there at the end, unbowed, to accept Germany's surrender. For two years, it was fighting essentially alone against the Nazi regime and had it not held fast, under Churchill's steely leadership, Hitler would have had the luxury not to fight a two front war. Were it not for Churchill inducing the isolationist US into the fray, and having the green Isles of Britain as an unsinkable aircraft carrier, the fight back would have been many times harder and many more people would have undoubtedly perished. If not for Churchill, history would well have been very different and very dark indeed. 

All these from a man who never went to university (though he was an old Harrovian), who had to overcome a speech impediment, who experienced war first hand as a reporter and a soldier in many parts of the world, who battled depression on top of everything else, and who wrote all his speeches, never resorting to spin doctors or speech writers like the lesser breed of politicians we have today. And, as a post-script, he was a great painter, expert bricklayer, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his six-volume history of WWII. 

Putting aside the simple point that no one is perfect in all respects, especially if you insist on failing to note historical contexts, it is laughable how unironic this self-righteous mob is and how they fail to notice some very sharp internal inconsistencies. The same people often find it very hard to denounce Castro, who presided a nation into the dirt, or Che Guevara, who supervised the executions of hundreds of political opponents but whose face adorn the t-shirts and walls of many Leftist dorms, or even talk about Jihadi Islamism (which is killing thousands of people every year, most of whom are Arabs, Muslims and religious and ethnic minorities from the Middle East - "Fascism with an Islamic face" as the late Christopher Hitchens so brilliantly coined it) using its name, but are full of faux rage when they storm a Britain-themed café to protest Churchill and colonialism. (Incidentally, the cafe's business boomed after the incident, demonstrating the good common sense and sympathy for underdogs that most British people possesses.)

These people are posing as revolutionaries but they are in fact reactionaries on issues way past their sell by date. They are tackling things that societies have already long ago made consensus upon – such as that slavery is atrocious and Nazism is evil, but they expect the same applause for ‘fighting’ battles already won as we gave to people like Jefferson and Churchill and Dr King, who actually opposed such ideologies when these ideologies were at their most powerful and when they themselves, by taking their stances, had the most to lose. So these ‘warriors’ are only poseurs. This is evident as they have nothing insightful to say other than slogans about contemporary issues where principles of liberty are attacked by fascistic and dogmatic ideologies, because they come from a different culture. As such, they are useful idiots for race-hustlers for whose self-interest it is ideal that the flames of hatred is continuously fanned and that societies are eternally black-mailed by historic guilt.

These youths and ideologues suffer from a lack of historic knowledge and even the remotest ability of appreciating subtleties. They are fueled by what the author and journalist Douglas Murray points out as the ‘St George-in-retirement Syndrome’, a phrase coined by Ken Minogue, to describe people that, wishing for the glory of St George, though there are no more dragons to slay, would pretend sheep were dragons and charge in, bellowing for the kill and expect the adoration of society. 

As Murray wrote: ‘Eventually they may be caught either swiping at thin air, identifying friends as foes -- or mistaking foes for friends.’ This is why the same ‘anti-fascist’ groups were the ones that pressured the BBC to not air a documentary exposing Pakistani grooming gangs who raped girls as young as 11 in the early 2000’s. This is why these groups find themselves in opposition to any serious discussions surrounding similar and more extensive grooming gangs unearthed more recently, such as the rape of thousands of young girls in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Newcastle. One Labour minister even had the temerity to suggest that the victims of these rape gangs should be quiet for the sake of 'diversity'. 

This is symptomatic of massively simplified, linear thinking process – because of the West’s history of colonialism and slavery, black and brown people are victims and any attack of any member of these racial group is malicious and racist. But no one ever mention or denounce the colonialism of the Ottoman Empire, say, one of the largest and long-lasting colonial empires in history that was at the gates of Vienna. Or the Arab slave trade, which shipped multiple times the number of Africans than the United States (as did the Spanish and Portuguese into their South America colonies), and who, unlike the US, is not remotely shame-faced about its history. 

Christopher Hitchens brilliantly defined racism as, opposed to what most people think, a failure to discriminate, where whole populations are clumped together based on trivial markers like skin pigmentation rather than their ideology. That’s why the regressive Left confuse the attack of specific ideologies as an attack on a race. It doesn’t matter if you spell out that the ideology you oppose to is, say, Wahhabism, a particular strain of fundamentalist, dogmatic and militant Sunni Islam, which persecutes many other Arabs and local minorities. These people who refuses to think will label you a racist. Not only is this lazy, it is insulting and truly racist towards the thousands of people in the Middle East and Africa who are killed, raped and tortured by the proponent of this and similar ideologies. This instinct to emote rather than to study and know about these differences forces one to question their motives. Their complete lack of knowledge is sharply illustrated by the fact that they will march together and share a platform with Michael Adebolajo, the murderer of Drummer Lee Rigby, or Linda Sarsour, an anti-Semitic Sharia apologist with ties to Hamas and Hezbollah. The same ideological groups will then vilify Muslim reformers like Maajid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Asra Nomani and Imam Tawhidi, among many others, who promote Liberal principles at the risk of their lives.

If you are going to go through the linen basket of people to assassinate their character rather than attacking their ideas and ideals, then you better make sure that you are not surprised when the rod you made comes in contact with your own back. The left is remarkably good at ignoring dirty linen of their own.

Who would you guess said: “A general belief seems to prevail in the Colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than savages or the Natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.” That’s Ghandi, whom the Left adores, who also wrote that “India’s salvation consists in unlearning what she has learnt during the past fifty years. The railways, telegraphs, hospitals, lawyers, doctors and such like will have to go.” 

While claiming to represent the untouchables, the immiserated underclass under Hinduism, Ghandi did in reality very little, unlike, say, B. R. Ambedkar, whom almost nobody knows. Gandhi also advocated that the Chinese, while been slaughtered by the Japanese, not to retaliate and that Britain might let the Nazis “take possession of you beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself man, woman and child, to be slaughtered…” It doesn’t take a great intellect to see what would have transpired if Gandhi’s advice were taken and that Gandhi’s rather ostentatious postures had more affect than effect. And why Churchill called him a ‘seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir.’

What about: “I’ll have those n*****s voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.”? That’s Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36^th President of the US and a hero of the regressive Left, though a robust argument can be made that his policies, like those of Hoover, damaged the lives of the underclass of America in the attempt to generate a voting block. Compare this sentiment with Jefferson’s, over a hundred years ago. And: “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call him Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a great man.” That’s Louis Farrakhan, with whom the Democrats have always been friendly with, and who just recently delivered another vile anti-Semitic speech. It seems obvious that the regressive Left is happy to abandon almost any moral lines to defend those they see as on their side. Needless to say, tribalism is never a good way to conduct intellectual arguments.

The past is past. One cannot alter it. All one can do is to learn from it. Just as nobody is without sin, one must not denounce a person whole-sale, especially erroneously and vapidly, and especially people who have contributed in such obvious, momentous, pivotal and positive ways as Jefferson and Churchill. 

The starting point of this movement is masochism and the end point nihilism, where nothing anyone achieved in the West is of any value because they inevitably have done, said or wrote something unsavoury. Off the top of my head: Einstein and Bohr’s work contributed to the atomic bomb; Henry Ford, who provided cheap automobile so that it was accessible to the masses, was a Nazi sympathizer; the poet Yeats, who wrote beautiful poetry, was a Fascist; Newton believed in the occult; Wagner and Shakespeare wrote caricatures of Jews in their works; even Mandela broke away from the African National Congress due to its unwillingness to use violence. I can go on. Are you happy to say that all the above mentioned people and all their achievements should be delegitimized? Or do you think it might be better to use their interesting, varied and complex lives to teach ourselves and society how to become better? 

As E.H. Carr wrote: 'History is an unending dialogue between the past and present.' It is complex, morally and ethically gray and has chapters so dark that it chills your soul. But to throw the book of history out the window or burn it to ashes because of this is childish, churlish and crude and will lead very fast to perdition. 

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

                                                                                                                                    - Cicero

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. 

                                                                                                                                     - Milan Kundera