After weeks of rioting, looting, and unrest all across the nation and the world, the tide has profoundly shifted to a new level. In so many locations around the United States and also many other countries, symbols of history, faith, and patrimony are being destroyed, defaced, and desecrated. From Christopher Columbus to George Washington, from Jefferson Davis to Abraham Lincoln, from Frederick Douglas to Saint Father Junipero Serra, countless figures are becoming physically “canceled” for the public.

These are not just random lone wolf attacks from people who wish to gain media attention, but is rather the underpinning of an entire ideology that is behind this latest “push for change.” This “push for change,” as organized by Black Lives Matter, does not include changing police training and mentality to one that is based on human dignity. Nor does it help black populations lift themselves from all their problems in education, poverty, and family.

Instead, looking at BLM’s positions is based on Marxism and all its various ideologies, especially gender ideology.  For example, one of the key points is to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.” Therefore, this “push for change” is a revolution to dramatically change society, to destroy the past, and to replace the system with atheistic communism.

Active destruction of the past is already in progress in America as seen in the destruction of statues and other cultural symbols.

From a historical perspective, these occurrences have been repeated various times in revolutionary eras. With the French Revolution in 1789, the idea of replacing the traditional foundations in Europe of Christianity and the monarchy, with radical secularism, was tragically successful, and even inspired various future revolutions. One of the many actions undertaken by the Jacobins during the Revolution was to desecrate and loot Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and blasphemously turn it into a Temple of Reason, the new god they worshiped. Similar actions took place throughout France during this time period, all in an effort to root out religion from the traditionally Catholic nation. Moreover, again at Notre Dame Cathedral, “more than two dozen statues affixed to the church facade were publicly decapitated the same year as Marie Antoinette” and King Louis XVI.

128 years after France, Czarist Russia was attacked with its own revolution. Inspired by the French Revolution and the German Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin developed a variant of Marxism known as Leninism, and led the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  This eventually saw the end of the Russian monarchy, the purging of dissent towards the state, and a persecution of the Christian faith. This Communist revolution in turn inspired Mao Tse-Tung’s Chinese Cultural Revolution, which saw the deaths of tens of millions more than that of the Bolshevik Revolution. Just like the Jacobins in France, the Bolsheviks in Russia, and the Maoists in China, the Marxists today in America are planning to remove every memory and public symbol of the past. These historical facts demonstrate can lead to even more violence, war, and genocide.

The solution to this current problem can include various measures, but one position must be pursued wholeheartedly by any person who cares about the protection of cultural heritage. Any symbol of the past and of history, whether it be negative and positive, must be protected and remain standing. If one of the purposes of knowledge of history is to prevent the repetition of past errors, how can that goal be achieved without studying both the good and the bad in an objective and honest manner? As the philosopher George Santayana rightly stated, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Moreover, the destruction and vandalism of sacred images, such as the recent toppling of the statues to Father Junipero Serra in California, deserve far more scrutiny than that of Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, or Andrew Jackson. Because, statues to the saints, angels, and God, are at a spiritual level, and are owed far more reverence than any political or government figure. Thus, in viewing statues or other symbols of history, the persons and actions that they represent must be objectively analyzed in the context of the historical time period, taking into account both the faults and the positive aspects of the persons, so as to learn from the past and build a better future based on the principles of human dignity.