Elle Purnell writes for the Federalist about a disturbing trend on the political left.
The centerpiece of a new exhibit in Los Angeles is a mangled junkyard of a statue, with horse and human limbs glommed together like some kind of zombie Ichabod Crane. Now dismembered beyond recognition, the piece was once a statue of Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
In 2021, the statue — along with its better-known counterpart, a statue of Jackson’s friend and commanding officer Robert E. Lee — was removed from downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, four years after the city council voted to remove them. Lee’s statue met its demise in 2023, torn apart and melted down in secret. The haunting footage was later broadcast, as if to taunt those who hoped to see it preserved.
Now, it is Jackson’s turn for public defacement. His head has been severed from its body and his face from its head, which hangs from the top of the newly configured statue like a 21st-century head on a pike. The two men, both depicted atop their beloved war horses, once stood two blocks apart. Now, they have met similar ends, pulled apart piece by piece by those who fashion themselves their cultural conquerors.
The Jackson statue — if you can call it that anymore — is part of a new exhibit presented by two Los Angeles galleries, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Brick, titled “Monuments.” Along with Jackson’s mangled remains, the exhibit showcases other Confederate memorial statues, which also bear scars from the abuse of angry mobs. The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which once stood in Baltimore, is still doused in red paint. A dual statue of Lee and Jackson bears the spray-painted caption, “BEWARE TRAITORS.” …
… The display is a statement of not just provocation but subjugation. Ancient armies once put the corpses of their conquered enemies on display to reinforce their defeat; the same is happening here.
