As I write, this contemporary Iconoclasm of the Woke seems to be accelerating, particularly in Britain. There is a website advising the Topplers where else they might chuck statuary in rivers: maybe Sir Francis Drake in Plymouth, or Captain James Cook in Teesside. And it’s not just statues, for the New Iconoclasts are targeting street names, movies, sitcoms, art: one particular target, much lusted after by the Topplers, is the Winston Churchill mural in Croydon (a borough heavily bombed in the Blitz). At the weekend the threats of further iconoclasm, in particular against the image of Britain’s wartime leader, lead to large numbers of ‘statue defenders’ turning up in central London.[...]
What provoked this national self-harm? Khmer Rouge leaders were steeped in a radical form of Maoism, acquired in Paris in the 50s. But that insane ideology needed a suitable place to breed, as mosquitoes need standing water. Cambodia in 1975 was a nation horribly traumatised by the neighbouring Vietnam War. Despite the nation’s neutrality in that conflict, the US government dropped more bombs on Cambodia than they dropped on Europe in all of the Second World War; the US bombing caused millions of refugees, and killed at least 250,000. A different kind of God was angry. [...]
What do these examples tell us of the Great Topplings of 2020? First, iconoclasms are far from rare (I could analyse two dozen more). Second, iconoclasms often burn out quite quickly, because there is only so much denouncing you can do before the denouncers denounce each other, the Revolution devours its own, and the cycle is done. Thirdly, they are commonly caused by external factors, unrelated to the broken images themselves: war, invasion, disease and economic disaster, many things can provoke these frenzies.
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