Robert Spencer is the proprietor of Jihad Watch, a website that specializes in the histories and ideologies of Islam and jihad. However, in his recent column for PJ Media, he reports on the politicization (i.e., going “woke”) of Thomas Jefferson’s legendary Virginia home, Monticello. Mr. Spencer begins:
“Who controls the past
controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us
today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has
just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has
been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and
treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white
guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to
hate it, too.
. . .
Not surprisingly, “The Thomas
Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Dem donors and former
Democratic officials.” Monticello’s descent “has largely been funded by
left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward
that effort in 2015. Rubenstein is “on the boards of the globalist World
Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign
Relations, among others.” Now it’s beginning to become clear why all this is
happening.
The endgame is not just to make
Americans despise Thomas Jefferson, but to make the average American ashamed of
being American. That’s what this has been about from first to last. . . .
What’s more, the reason why the
Left hates him with such burning intensity is not that he was a slave owner.
Leftists love Fidel Castro, who enslaved an entire nation. They love all manner
of authoritarians, totalitarians, and mass murderers. They’ve never minded the
eggs that have to be broken to make their socialist omelets.
No, the real reason why the Left
hates Thomas Jefferson is for all the things for which he should rightly be
celebrated: Because he fought against tyranny. Because he helped create a free
republic. Because he placed statements in those founding documents that would
ultimately lead multitudes of the citizens of the new nation to believe that
slavery was wrong and immoral and give their lives to bring about its
abolition.
Jefferson is just the sort of man
whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings
and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist
utopia, and their moneyed backers would despise and fear. They want a docile
American populace, frightened into submission to their authoritarian vision.
The example of Thomas Jefferson could inspire Americans instead to pledge their
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve our hard-won
freedoms. Can’t have that. Jefferson’s name must be made anathema to Americans.
Howard Zinn would be proud (see here). Read the full article here.
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