Before the iconoclastic chaos of 2020, when historic statues were toppled both legally and via riot, the debate over Confederate monuments was generally respectful. But today, as evidenced by a new art exhibition in Los Angeles, the left has replaced respect with barbaric desecration.
“Monuments” is a new exhibit at the Brick, in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and features removed Confederate statues, some still covered in graffiti from protesters, some in historical context, and in one case outright mutilation.
The New Yorker described ‘Monuments’ in a glowing review as “at once an act of carnivalesque retribution and an acknowledgment of the Confederacy’s zombie-like persistence.”
Let’s look at both ideas in turn, starting with retaliation, by asking: retaliation against whom exactly?
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The images have already been deleted. The men and women depicted in it have already had their place in history erased. This ridicule, this retaliation, is not directed at them, but at all who believe that our historic monuments should be protected, not destroyed.
A worker attaches the statue of Confederate naval officer Matthew Fontaine Maury to a truck on Monument Avenue, Thursday, July 2, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia. Before the Civil War, Maury was better known for his work in oceanography and other sciences. His statue is the second to be removed since a new state law was passed on July 1. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
One statue is titled “Confederate Women of Baltimore” and depicts two women holding a dying Confederate soldier. Originally an expression of the terrible losses of America’s deadliest war, it is now displayed alongside countless photographs of black mothers cradling wounded children in modern urban settings.
The message is clear: whatever pain the Daughters of the Confederacy who commissioned the statue or the actual sculptor were trying to embody, they simply had to keep quiet about it.
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The most grotesque of the works is called ‘Unmanned Drone’. It used to be an equestrian statue of General Thomas “Stonewell” Jackson in Virginia, but artist Kara Walker used a plasma cutter to tear the statue apart and transform it into a hideous monster.
Brick director Hamza Walker said of the piece: “Ideologically it’s an insult, aesthetically it’s an insult.” So again I ask: an insult to whom? Is the idea to offend people? If so, why?
There is a strong element of projection in all of this. Many of the same people who celebrate “Monuments” believe that President Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom is intended as a middle finger to the left. Perhaps that’s because that’s exactly what exhibitions like ‘Monuments’ on the right are.
This art says, “Not only have we torn down your statues, mostly without anyone’s vote, but now we’re going to mock, mutilate, and desecrate them just to rub them in,” while all the high art magazines call it stunning and courageous.
“Monuments” is reminiscent of the Nazis’ degenerate art exhibition of 1937, in which modern works of art deemed offensive to German values were exhibited with the intention of publicly humiliating them, much as the statues are humiliated in Los Angeles.
Viewers are meant to come away with a deeper hatred of the Confederacy and, more than that, an almost inhuman tolerance for the desecration of works of art once created by loving and talented hands.
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So yeah, this art show is definitely a carnival of retribution. But what about the other part of the New Yorker’s description, the “zombie-like persistence of the Confederacy?”
Allow me to suggest that almost the only people obsessed with the Confederacy in 2025 are progressives.
There is no neo-Confederate movement to confront, no one is trying to segregate or defend slavery. Rather, it is the left that continually points to the stars and beams as if they have anything to do with today’s conservative movement.
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The original removal of the statues was a heinous act of ‘dammatio memoriae’, or destruction of memory, a practice dating back to ancient Egypt. But ‘Monuments’ is even worse, it is mean, intended as ritual humiliation.
The good news is that there are two sides to this fight, as the Trump administration has already restored two Confederate statues in Washington, DC. And it is a struggle worth fighting, between those who want to build and those who want to destroy, those who want to celebrate our history and those who seek to desecrate it.
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Fortunately, after this exhibition, everything except the butchered Stonewall Jackson statue will be returned to storage, no longer the butt of a hateful joke. If good people remain faithful and work hard, we may one day be able to return them all the way to their original stages.
The battle for the past is never really about the past. It’s about the present and the future, and it’s a battle we can’t afford to lose.
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