Why free societies have a tradition of knocking down statues
In the tumultuous summer of 1776, New Yorkers learned of the signing of the Declaration of Independence when George Washington ordered it read aloud to his troops assembled there. Their reaction was to go tear down a statue.
The likeness of King George III had stood on the Bowling Green for six years. That night, much to Washington’s chagrin, a crowd of soldiers and townspeople tore the monarchical effigy off its 18-foot pedestal and battered the body to bits.
Americans were throwing off the British monarchy; a statue intended to celebrate it no longer had a place, and it needed toppling.
Soviet invaders built monuments to Lenin and Stalin across their Eastern European satellites to assert their control over those countries’ destinies. Later, uprisings sought to topple these statues by way of opposing all they represented. Last year, racial-justice protesters beheaded Christopher Columbus in Massachusetts, toppled him to the ground in Minneapolis, and prompted officials to remove Confederate generals across the South. Champions of genocide and racebased slavocracy, they were asserting, will be championed no longer.
And that’s how it ought to be, argues Alex von Tunzelmann in her thoughtful and fast-paced new book, “Fallen Idols: Twelve Statues That Made History.” Surveying centuries of highprofile statue topplings on five continents, she makes a compelling case that scrutinizing monumental statuary is an integral part of what open societies do as they reassess past values and seek new ones to guide their futures.
Von Tunzelmann, a London-based historian and screenwriter, focuses on a particular type of portrait statuary: sculptures representing historic individuals that are erected to celebrate and promote their virtues. The 12 she considers include Cecil Rhodes, Rafael Trujillo, Vladimir Lenin and King George V.
Her thesis is that portrait statues are inherently problematic. They’re a highly visible form of historical memory-making, an assertion of what values, experiences and stories define and should be venerated by the community. The problem is that societies frequently reconsider these essential stories as they undergo invasions, liberations, revolutions, and quieter forms of evolution and change. And unlike a museum exhibition or history curriculum, they’re inflexible, closed to revision.
The stories she relates follow distinct trajectories but have a common pattern. From George III in Manhattan to Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to Robert E. Lee in New Orleans, one subset of citizens erected a statue to assert a story about a people. Years later those stories had been discredited, the values they asserted now offensive to great swaths of the societies over which the statues loomed.
As von Tunzelmann demonstrates, new ideals often arise long before the statues representing old ones can be brought down.