There is much to dissect in the barbaric removal, destruction, and eventual “remolding” of Charlottesville’s statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee. But the most astounding aspect of this destruction is the brazen and intentional publishing of a video showing Lee’s dismemberment — his face being cut off and melted.
The radical left in the United States has embarked on a path distressingly similar to Hungary’s experiences during its 40-year Soviet occupation. The left has rewritten American history and perpetrated the iconoclastic destruction of its past. Now the left desires to mold a new future. A quick comparison, however, shows that while the United States is on a tragic and dangerous path, it is not an irreversible one.
Communist Iconoclasm in Hungary
Hungary’s first experience with revolutionary iconoclasm came not with the Soviets in 1945 but with the 1919 communist uprising. Hungary, like many countries in the aftermath of World War I, endured a short-lived communist revolution. For several months, radical revolutionaries controlled Budapest, and they immediately sought to remake it into a proletariat city. As one of their first actions, they “modified” many of the existing statues.
The communist government, for example, desecrated the Millennium Monument in Heroes’ Square. The communists covered the monument, which depicted important historical figures. They replaced a statue of the original seven Hungarian chieftains, who led the Hungarian tribes into the Carpathian basin in the ninth century, with a socialist, realist statue of Karl Marx. Throughout the city, the revolutionaries covered statues with
