Op-Ed: Here's Why Leftists Really Want To Destroy Our History - It's as Dark as It Is Ingenious
Ed. Note: The following Op-Ed is an excerpt from “Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present” by William J. Federer, reprinted by permission of the author.
“Deconstruction” is a tactic used by socialists in taking over countries.
This is where a country’s past heroes are portrayed in a negative light so that people emotionally detach from them and their values. Then there is a period of disillusionment and searching. Finally, there is the introduction of rewritten history with socialist values.
Dystopian writer George Orwell explained in “1984”: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
“Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself.
“After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories.”
Orwell explained how to alter a nation’s trajectory:
“Those who control the past control the future, and those who control the present control the past.”
It is actually a sales technique: First, the salesman points out the negative aspects of the old product a customer is using; then the customer becomes dissatisfied with it and curious about new options; then the salesman presents the positive aspects of a new product.
Deconstruction does this on a national scale. It is like gene-replacement therapy for a culture.
This “Drive-Neutral-Reverse” method is also accomplished in the classroom: Separate students from their past by portraying negatively the country’s founders; get students into a neutral point of view where they are open-minded; then brainwash students by presenting positively a socialist future.
Socialist historian Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” (1980) is of this genre.
Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall said of deconstruction: “Along with our higher education came a debunking contest … a sort of national sport … It was smarter to revile than to revere … more fashionable to depreciate than to appreciate … Debunking is … a sign of decaying foundations.”
Cognitive psychologists have carried out experiments where researchers can actually implant false memories in people’s minds, making people believe that they remember events that never actually happened. This can be done on a national level.
Deconstruction, or “cancel culture,” involves selectively re-editing or ridiculing past individuals or events in order to advance a future political agenda – altering a nation’s past in order to change its future.
The 1975 movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” was in this vein, mocking the legendary King Arthur and England’s noble history. A scriptwriter for Hollywood sitcoms confided how they were instructed to “make them laugh at what they hold sacred.” One cannot be proud of something and ashamed of it at the same time.
Separating people from their past is mentioned in a quote attributed to Karl Marx: “Take away the heritage of a people and they are easily conquered.”
The Malaysian minister of culture wrote in The Brunei Times on Aug. 29, 2013: “A nation or generation that does not know the history of their nation is a nation that lost its identity and can be easily manipulated.”
This is why the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, who conquered kingdoms to unify China in 221 B.C., destroyed all history books.
“The Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin” reported Chancellor Li Si told the emperor in 213 B.C.: “I, your servant, propose that all historians’ records other than those of Qin’s be burned … If anyone under heaven has copies of the Classics of History [Shu Jing] … they shall deliver them to the governor … for burning. Anyone who dares to discuss the Classics of History shall be publicly executed.
“Anyone who uses history to criticize the present shall have his family executed … Anyone who has failed to burn the books after thirty days of this announcement shall be subjected to tattooing and be sent to build the Great Wall.”
President Jimmy Carter started the Department of Education in 1979, and from that time on, proficiency in math, literature and history began to decline. Lawrence W. Reed examined this trend in his article “The Myth that Americans Were Poorly Educated before Mass Government Schooling.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “If we don’t know our own history, we will simply have to endure all the same mistakes, sacrifices, and absurdities all over again.”
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