When the Dust Settles

1,633 words

Since the dawn of time, humans have created monuments dedicated to individuals and their accomplishments. From stone sculptures to metal statues, these monuments celebrate and honor the achievements of our ancestors. As the George Floyd protests spread to Europe, many statues and monuments of historic Europeans have been vandalized and removed. Yet the removal of these statues does not represent the overthrow of a ruthless dictator or oppressive regime. Their removal represents the overt and explicit erasure of our history, our culture, and our people.

The statue of Edward Colston was toppled on June 7th, 2020. The statue was vandalized and thrown into the Bristol Harbor by violent rioters and looters. Colston was an English merchant, politician, and philanthropist. He started out in his family business trading wine and textiles in various European ports. He later got involved as an investor in the Royal African Company, a mercantile trading company that imported gold, silver, and slaves from the west coast of Africa.

In his later years, Colston gave a large percentage of his wealth to charity. He funded the construction of various schools, hospitals, and churches throughout Bristol, England. Colston passed away in 1721, but his name is found on many buildings and streets in Bristol. They even named a local pastry after him: the Colston Bun [1]. In 1895, a statue created by John Cassidy was placed in the center of Bristol to honor Colston’s charitable work. This statue stood in the city center for 125 years until looters vandalized and pushed the statue into the Bristol Harbor this week. While the statue was eventually recovered by authorities, it has been damaged beyond repair.

Robert Milligan was a Scottish merchant, shipowner, and founder of the West India Docks in London. After noticing the logistical problems of the London docks, Milligan gathered businessmen to invest in building new docks for trade ships. The construction of the new docks started in 1800 and was open for trade in 1802 as the West India Docks. The docks were named after The West India Dock Company, of which Milligan was the Chairman. The company imported rum, sugar, and coffee long after Milligan passed away in 1809. That same year a statue was created by Richard Westmacott to honor Milligan and was placed in front of the Dockyard Museum.

After 211 years, the statue of Robert Milligan was removed on June 9th, just two days after Colston’s statue was removed. Milligan’s statue was removed by the NGO Canal & River Trust. The NGO said they removed the statue to address the “wishes of the community.” Milligan also had a street named after him in the Limehouse district of London. It is unknown whether that street will be renamed.

On June 11th, it was announced that the statues of Robert Clayton and Thomas Guy would be removed. The organization removing the statues is Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. For those unaware, this foundation is a semi-autonomous organization within England’s National Health Service. They did not say where the statues would be stored or if they would be viewable by the public.

Robert Clayton was an English merchant, politician, and mayor of London. Clayton started as a successful businessman before entering politics. He became a sheriff, a mayor, a Member of Parliament, and an investor to the Royal African Company. At the time of his death in 1707, Clayton had donated considerable amounts of money to local churches and hospitals, most notably St. Thomas Hospital. Due to his charitable donations, Grinling Gibbons created a statue of Clayton in 1714 and it was placed at the entrance to St. Thomas hospital in London. 306 years later, the statue has been scheduled for removal.

Thomas Guy was an English bookseller, politician, and founder of Guy’s Hospital in London. Guy first began selling illegally-imported Dutch bibles in England, as they were of a higher quality than English bibles. In 1679, he was contracted by the University of Oxford to produce high-quality bibles under the Oxford license. From these profits, he would donate to charities in the Tamworth area. Guy would represent Tamworth as a member of Parliament from 1695 to 1707. Before his death in 1724, Guy devoted his profits from investments in the South Sea Company to building and expanding local hospitals.

Guy had two statues dedicated to him at Guy’s Hospital in London: a brass statue by Thomas Scheemakers in 1734 and a marble sculpture by John Bacon in 1774. These monuments stood for over 200 years before Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust announced that they would be removing the statues. Yes, an organization is removing the statues of the person the very same organization is named after.

There have been periods of time, such as the fall of the Soviet Union, where monuments of dictators and political regimes were taken down and removed. The crowds that removed these statues were the people of the countries that the USSR controlled for decades. Many of these people had family members who were imprisoned or murdered by the Soviet regime. They removed the statues that represented their occupiers and oppressors. They were not looting their own businesses or setting their own neighborhoods on fire. Even after gaining independence, some Baltic and Eastern European countries placed these statues in designated museums.

Memento Park is an open-air museum in Budapest that holds the statues and sculptures from Hungary’s communist period from 1949 to 1989. The statues of Marx, Lenin, and several Hungarian communist leaders have been placed in the park for historic purposes. After Lithuania regained independence, various Soviet-era statues were toppled and dismantled. Grūtas Park is an open-air museum in southern Lithuania that houses many of the communist statues that were removed after gaining independence. While the creation of the museum faced strong opposition and still sparks controversy, many locals take their families to the museum as it also contains playgrounds, cafes, and a petting zoo.

Are BLM and Antifa going to build museums, playgrounds, or petting zoos over the historic statues they vandalized and toppled in the UK this week? Probably not. These statues stood in front of shipyards and hospitals. Shipyards and hospitals that white men funded and built through their own charity and goodwill. These same white men built the healthcare and logistics that many of those rioters and looters have used and benefited from. These looters want to shame, destroy, and erase white history, all while taking advantage of the technology, infrastructure, and prosperity that only white societies create.

This is not about eliminating slavery or institutional racism. We are not going to see BLM rioters protesting the modern-day slave markets in Mauritania and Libya. We are not going to see Antifa vandalizing the equestrian statue of Genghis Khan in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Why not? Because those countries are not white. BLM and Antifa only care about dismantling white statues, culture, and history. Only white people are held accountable for the sins of their ancestors while non-whites are not even held responsible for their current actions of violence, rape, and murder.

As I have stated in my previous article [2], the importation of foreign labor is one of the major downfalls of every empire throughout history. Unfortunately, every civilization and empire has been built in one way or another from foreign slave labor. Yet it is only white societies that are shamed and expected to atone for slavery. The irony is that the British Empire was one of the first empires to end slavery. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 prohibited the slave trade in the British Empire and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery entirely throughout the British Empire. Nevertheless, non-whites have spent the last two weeks in the UK attacking the police, beating white people in the streets, and vandalizing statues because of “institutional racism.”

Our enemies do not care about facts, fairness, or hypocrisy. All they care about is destroying and erasing white history, white culture, and white people. Our police and governments have shown that they will no longer protect our statues and monuments. As stated before, the police cannot even protect themselves, let alone white people. Yet if we attempt to protect these monuments we would be smeared by the media, attacked by Antifa, and arrested. Those arrested would face a biased court system and a maximum prison sentence. As much as it hurts to admit, right now may not be the best time to risk our lives for these statues. This is the time that we must focus on defending ourselves, our families, our friends, and our own property. Statues can be rebuilt. White people, especially white advocates, cannot be replaced.

There is an old saying that pressure and heat make diamonds. We as white people have been put under tremendous pressure these last two weeks. We have been forced to watch our people attacked, our cities set aflame, and our monuments destroyed. Statues may fall, but our history exists so long as we remember it. Sites like Counter-Currents allow us to maintain our history and culture. Events like the Scandza Forum, Awakening, and Patriotic Alternative give us the chance to network and form communities. It will be in these communities that our history, culture, and people will survive. It will be in these communities that new monuments and statues will be created. Metal eventually rusts and stone fades to dust. But when the dust settles, the statues and monuments of the white race will shine brighter than all the diamonds in the world.

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