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Is communism really so irrelevant, so dimly remembered that it’s now no more threatening or controversial than “The Cat in the Hat”?
That’s the message from arts bureaucrats in Memphis, Tenn., who chose to use taxpayer money to decorate the gleaming new $70 million central library with the most famous of all Marxist slogans. The pavement in front of the new building has been inscribed with the famous words “Workers of the World Unite!” – adjacent to an image of the famous top-hatted feline from Dr. Seuss.
Conservative elected officials angrily protested the Marxist message in Memphis, but leaders of the public/private partnership that sponsors the Urban Art Commission ignored demands to remove the offending words. Concerning the quotation from “The Communist Manifesto,” Carissa Hussong, executive director of the arts commission, baldly declared, “When you see it in the context of the history of mankind, it is not ideological.”
This astonishing statement, quoted by the New York Times, combines ignorance and mendacity to a breathtaking degree. If the revolutionary rallying cry of Karl Marx doesn’t count as “ideological,” what does? It is precisely “the context of the history of mankind” that reveals the devastating impact of communist ideas. When a political philosophy claims 70 million mass-murder victims in its various international applications, does it somehow take away the guilt and blood to claim that this philosophy is “not ideological”?
As Memphis city councilman Brent Taylor aptly commented: “Over 100,000 Americans were killed in two wars trying to rid the world of communism. We just don’t feel a public place is appropriate to inscribe the motto of our enemy of 70 years.”
The fact that the communist slogan is surrounded by more than 150 other quotes, ranging from Groucho Marx to Nelson Mandela and the Bible, only trivializes the unique nature of Marxist slaughter.
“The Communist Manifesto” wasn’t just another literary contribution; it was a fiery blueprint for the most monstrous tyranny in world history. The library director claims that the designers of the quotes carved on pavement and pillars merely “wanted people to be curious, to think, to find out more when they weren’t sure.”
Would this purpose justify the inclusion of a celebrated quotation from that distinguished thinker and author, Adolf Hitler, who memorably proclaimed “One People! One Government! One Fuehrer! One Germany!” Should those words be immortalized too, as a means of inspiring curiosity about the Nazi era?
Actually, the Memphis officials already answered that question with their treatment of the single reference to Hitlerism in their sprawling collection of words and images. Carissa Hussong declined an invitation to speak on my radio show (because, she said, she hopes the controversy will “die down”), but she did send me a full list of the citations selected as part of the public arts project. There, on “Scroll B,” directly between an Arabian saying and a Japanese Gingko Family Crest, is a “Nazi Swastika with ‘Never Again’ as seen at the museum at Dachau.” In other words, when the artists invoke Nazism, they feel the need to place its symbol in a disapproving context. Why not handle “The Communist Manifesto” reference in a similar way? The words of Marx should appear with their own accompanying “Never Again!” or a brief notation like “70 million killed!”
The truth is that leaders of elite opinion refuse even now to view communist butchery with the same revulsion with which they rightly respond to Nazism. Part of the revisionist attempt to make heroes of blacklisted leftists from the 1950s (the disappointing Jim Carrey movie “The Majestic” is only the latest example) involves the stubborn refusal to take communism seriously – even when recalling a period when Stalin himself ruled half the world.
We’re supposed to ignore the fact that some (but not all) of the screenwriters and directors who suffered during the McCarthy era remained dedicated Communist Party members who proudly defended the bloodiest regime in human history. Would anyone try to produce a movie or play or TV special about an uncompromising American Nazi who suffered unjustly for his beliefs?
If anything, communism ought to inspire more current discomfort than Nazism, not less. Communism remains the official ideology of close to 2 billion people – in China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba, not to mention many academic departments of American universities. Nazis, on the other hand, exist only in thriller novels and on the fringes of political discourse, while enjoying no real power base anywhere on earth.
Five words carved into the pavement in front of the Memphis Central Library won’t add significantly to the momentum of world communism, but this famous phrase does reflect the arrogance and ignorance of the arts establishment. The creators of the library’s public art project insist they are shocked – shocked – by the angry public reaction to their little Marxist memento, because they refuse to acknowledge the special responsibilities of artists who take tax money for their work.
Americans who value honesty about our historic struggle in the Cold War should support those local political leaders who demand some correction or addition to make up for this abuse of public funds. In other words: Taxpayers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but a few smug bureaucrats, and an important lesson to gain.
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