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Before the iconoclastic chaos of 2020, when historic statues were toppled both legally and via riot, the debate over Confederate monuments was generally a respectful one, but today, as a new art exhibit in Los Angeles shows, the left has replaced respect with barbaric desecration.
‘Monuments’ is a new show at the Brick in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art, and it features removed Confederate statues on display, some still covered in graffiti from protesters, some given historical context and in one case, a pure mutilation.
The New Yorker, in a glowing review described ‘Monuments’ as “at once an act of carnivalesque retribution and a recognition of the Confederacy’s zombie-like persistence.”
Let’s take both of these ideas in their turn, starting with retribution, by asking, retribution against whom, exactly?
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The statues were already removed, the men and women depicted in them have already had their place in history erased, this mockery, this retribution is not directed against them, but rather against anyone who believes that our historical monuments should be protected, not destroyed.
One statue is titled ‘Confederate Women of Baltimore,’ it 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 myriad photographs of black mothers cradling wounded children in modern urban settings.
The message is clear, it is that whatever pain the Daughters of the Confederacy who commissioned the statue or the actual sculptor sought to embody, they should just shut up about it.
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The most grotesque of the works is called “Unmanned Drone,” it was formerly an equestrian statue of Gen. Thomas ‘Stonewell’ Jackson in Virginia, but the artist, Kara Walker used a plasma cutter to tear the statue apart and reshape it into a hideous monster.
Brick Director Hamza Walker said of the piece, “Ideologically it’s an affront, aesthetically it’s an affront,” and again I ask, an affront 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 very same people who are celebrating ‘Monuments’ believe that President Donald Trump’s new White House ballroom is meant as a middle finger to the left, maybe that’s because that is exactly what exhibits like ‘Monuments’ actually are to the right.
This art says, not only did we take down your statues, usually without anybody voting on it, but now we are going to mock, mutilate and desecrate them to rub it in while all the high minded art journals call it stunning and brave.
‘Monuments’ brings to mind the Nazi’s Degenerate Art Exhibit of 1937 in which works of modern art deemed insulting to German values were displayed for the purpose of publicly demeaning them, just as the statues in Los Angeles are being demeaned.
Viewers are meant to come away with a deeper hatred of the Confederacy and more than that, an almost inhuman tolerance for desecrating works of art that once were crafted by loving, and talented hands.
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So yes, a carnival of retribution this art show most definitely is. But what about the other part of the New Yorker description, the “Confederacy’s zombie-like persistence?”
Allow me to suggest that almost the only people obsessed with the Confederacy in 2025 are progressives.
There is no neoconfederate movement to confront, nobody is trying to secede or defend slavery, rather, it is the left who constantly point to the stars and bars as if they have anything to do with today’s conservative movement.
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The original removal of the statues was an abominable act of damnatio memoriae, or destruction of memory, a practice dating back to ancient Egypt, but ‘Monuments’ is far, far worse, it is mean spirited, meant as ritual humiliation.
The good news is that there are two sides in this fight, as the Trump administration has already restored two confederate statues in Washington DC, and it’s a fight worth having, 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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Thankfully, all but the massacred Stonewall Jackson statue will go back to storage after this exhibit, no longer to be the butt of a spiteful joke, but one day, if good people stay true and work hard, we might get them all the way back to their original podiums.
The fight for the past is never really about the past, it is about the present and the future, and it is a fight that we cannot afford to lose.