Obliterating History

New York Democrats, unwilling to be left out of the hyper-emotional feeding frenzy over removing Confederate-linked imagery, are racing toge tin on the action. Indeed, they’re searching high and low for something — anything — to obliterate in the name of social justice. (Not to mention political self-promotion.)

Mayor de Blasio, for starters, sanctimoniously ordered a 90-day review by “relevant experts and community leaders” of “all symbols of hate on city property” with an eye to tearing them down.

He wants to start with a Lower Manhattan marker to Henri Philippe Petain, a French military and political hero who much later became an odious Nazi collaborator.

Yet the marker merely notes the fact that the city held a ticker-tape parade in his honor in 1931 — fully a decade before his collaboration. Is the memory of that parade to be struck from the history books, too?

Then Gov. Cuomo, backed by local officials, ordered busts of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson removed from the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, which sits on the campus of Bronx Community College.

Within hours, both were gone. But that only displays Cuomo’s historical ignorance — and penchant for political pandering.

The Hall of Fame, created by NYU, was once America’s great national pantheon, one of the country’s most famous sites. Membership in the Hall was deemed the highest possible honor.

And the inclusion of Lee and Jackson was intended to help heal the still-festering wounds of the Civil War and Reconstruction — which is why their busts were specifically placed together with those of the North’s Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Adm. David Farragut.

The MTA, for its part, chimed in, too, saying it will remake some century-old tile mosaics in the Times Square subway station because they resemble Confederate flags — even though the agency has always maintained they’re not rebel images.

Not to be ignored, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker introduced a bill to get rid of a dozen statues of Confederate figures from the US Capitol. Nancy Pelosi — who did nothing to remove them when she was speaker — is also on board.

All this is starting to look like a Stalinist purge of history. That it’s being done in a mad rush, with emotions and recriminations running wild, makes it all the worse.

Here’s a real danger: If communities insist on removing these historical symbols, the least they can do is make sure they are preserved and safeguarded in museums. Yet the tear-them-down rampage puts that guarantee at risk.

And be warned: The mob rage will not be sated even when all Confederate symbols are gone.

History is complicated, and so are its many key figures. They need to be remembered, studied and, most important, discussed — not erased.