Not Much of a Protest

Artistic Negation in the News

Manny Soprano, our Senior Correspondent from New Jersey, has filed the following report:

There wasn’t much of a protest this week. It seems the City has agreed to move the Statue 200 feet in newly built park. My bet is the thing goes into storage and never comes out.

More on the story here.

(c) 2018 James LaFond

'Then in the Night It Was Gone' Mescaline Franklin, Post Script, Wyman Park Dell

Crackpot Correspondence Files

I wanted to hear Mescaline Franklin's thoughts about his and James LaFond's Wyman Park Dell video project. Below are some questions I put to him and his responses:

What made you return to the park this past August, after visiting it last year?
James wanted to do videos and we both thought it would be good to revisit the Lee Jackson Monument, he wrote an article on it for Counter Currents when we first visited in early 2016. We lucked out a week before Charlottesville. James and I kept discussing when they would finally take it down and then in the night it was gone.

Was your visit on a weekday or weekend? Did you see anyone else there who appeared to be there to study the monument?
I actually don't recall, I think it might be the weekend. The three times we have been there, there was no one checking out any of the monuments, not a lot of foot traffic despite the school and museum. Almost like people are afraid of something...

Have you been back to the park since the Lee Jackson monument was removed?
Not yet. We plan to go for a before and after.

Are there any other Civil War monuments that you have spent significant time with?
I have seen many in my trip. The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and Confederate Women's Monument in Baltimore were also taken down. Both monuments were quite beautiful with female figures comforting a dying male, suspending my misogyny for a moment. The base of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument was debased with red paint and graffiti. I assume the Women's monument base is also spray painted.

There is an awesome one in [redacted] but I wouldn't bring attention to it, there is also a monument for the [redacted group]. I would not reprint these last two for fear of bringing unwanted attention.

Do you have plans to visit and examine any others?

I have been looking at many monuments lately, including Federal/Union and Great War ones. They will not be safe for long either. This is about erasing white people, anyone with a brain knows this. And that white liberals lead the way makes it all the more frustrating.

I will find what I can and see if James will tag along. Not even Shakespeare's various monuments are safe.

60% or more of the country, including more non-whites than the media admits is AGAINST these actions and it does not matter one iota.

Getting James to Gettysburg would be an adventure, that place is a monument metropolis in the middle of farm country. We shall see, there is still plenty in Baltimore to see, like the old Mexican-American War monument, imagine if that thing was in your home state of California?

Thanks,
-MF

Thanks for doing this, Mescaline. This series of videos is one of my favorites of all of James' work and it wouldn't be possible without you. I look forward to helping out with any future video projects.

-Lynn

(c) 2017 Lynn Lockhart & Mescaline Franklin

Wyman Park Dell: Gloria Victis

James, I was surprised by how this series that you and Mescaline Franklin made affected me.  I have never had any more than an average interest in the Civil War.  I felt affronted by the mobs and motions to desecrate Civil War monuments mostly on aesthetic grounds, and of course, an instinctual aversion to smelly antifa mobs and whatever it is they say they want.

As the videos unfolded, I could see that you played the part of a latter day Plato, walking the grounds with your acolyte as you reached back into Plato's own era to reveal the meaning carved into the very landscape you trod.

You had covered this ground before, in the piece your wrote for Counter Currents in February of last year, Iron and Paint.  Readers should view that article for your careful descriptions of the statuary and to contrast the images of the park in winter with the summertime videos.  Lee and Jackson appear in deep shade in mid summer, and wrapped in the skeletal fingers of leafless trees on a misty winter's day.  You give the following caution, which is the strongest argument against dismantling these monuments, and which you have ably demonstrated in the video series:

One must be careful not to isolate individual works of art that comprise larger municipal monuments, as these entire parks are often integrated metaphoric schemes, which were conceived in the context of a general education that no longer exists.

You go on to describe the bond between Jackson and Lee and the significance of that bond to the composition of the monument.  The piece is a perfect companion to the video series, and all viewers are strongly encouraged to read it, and the accompanying piece posted on your main site.  I will not recapitulate them here.

James, of all the lurid video related to the events in Charlottesville and other antifa-attended riots, the one that disturbed me the most was of a mob in Durham toppling and then beating a Confederate statue as though it were a detested criminal caught in the midst of a vile act.  The two inscriptions briefly visible in the video state "DEDICATED MAY 10, 1924," and "IN MEMORY OF THE BOYS WHO WORE THE GRAY."  As noted with respect to the Lee Jackson monument, there is no mention of slavery, no mention of the Confederacy.

That this level of opprobrium could be summoned by a group so far removed from the original conflict suggests to me that this group, bravely attacking an inanimate object made in the form of a long vanquished enemy, is unrelated to either the Union or the Confederate side of the Civil War.  These Civil War monuments were created by the victors, or by the defeated under the grace and sanction of the victors, as tokens of reconciliation.  They are now being destroyed by an entirely different group, a third party which has conquered the victors of the Civil War and is intent on humiliating the defeated side of that war and, in a way, erasing the victorious side so that they can take its place.  It is as though a second civil war has already ended, and the conquerors are already busy rewriting the history books, just as pretenders have done since the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt altered the hieroglyphs describing their defeated rivals, and through the 20th century, when Mao directed university students to destroy ancient Chinese treasures in the name of continuous revolution.

Today's university students are tasked with destroying any legacy of white heterosexual men and they are well on their gleeful way.

-Lynn

Lynn, thank you.

Don't expect me to top that.  I will add that the statues of Confederate men of old have committed a terrible crime:

They, by being, suggest that things were not as simple in the past as they are now, that there was a time in this country when mankind was not strictly divided, as it is today, into a small free-speaking group of evil dissenters arrayed against a vast monolithic society of goodness and perfection, but that once upon a time, where now blooms the Garden of Secular Eden, forces beyond the ken of men placed them--good and evil both--at odds, side-by-side and face-to-face, forcing them into hellish warfare in which a young evil strove against an elder evil, one in the name of tradition and the other in the name of progress, both with the same undying animus, to snuff out the human soul.

View the entire 10 part video series at the Wyman Park Dell playlist at my YouTube channel, and use the Wyman Park Dell tag to see all the related blog posts.

(c) 2017 Mescaline Franklin, James LaFond & Lynn Lockhart

Wyman Park Dell, Parts 6, 7, 8 & 9

In these videos, James and Mescaline examine the Lee Jackson Monument, since removed from Wyman Park Dell, and discuss the importance of the placement of the statue, the symbolism of various elements of the design and inscriptions, and the consequences of the statue's removal.

Wyman Park Dell 6:  Lee, Jackson, This City Doesn't Deserve You Guys

Wyman Park Dell 7:  Low Intensity, Post-Modern Civil War

Wyman Park Dell 8: Straight as the Needle to the Pole

Wyman Park Dell 9: So Great is My Confidence

(c) 2017 James LaFond, Mescaline Franklin & Lynn Lockhart

Wyman Park Dell Civil War Monument, Parts 4 & 5

In Parts 4 & 5 of this series, James and Mescaline approach the Lee Jackson monument, noting the significance of its placement and setting.  James goes on to describe the impact of modern industrialization on warfare, tracing the lessons of the Civil War forward to World War I and World War II, through to the invasion of Iraq.

See Part 1, and Parts 2 & 3.


Part 4, A Heroic Class in Charge:

Part 5, Christians & Gentlemen

(c) 2017 Mescaline Franklin, James LaFond & Lynn Lockhart

American Empire & The Valley of ...

Wyman Park Dell Parts 2 & 3

James LaFond and Mescaline Franklin continue their observations of Wyman Park Dell in Baltimore.  See the Part 1 here.

Part 2: American Empire

Part 3: Valley of ...

(c) 2017 James LaFond, Mescaline Franklin & Lynn Lockhart

Union Memorial, Wyman Park Dell, Baltimore

Last month, before the events in Charlottesville on August 12, before the ensuing outcry against Confederate statuary, before the unannounced removal of the Confederate Monuments in the early darkness of August 16, James LaFond and Mescaline Franklin walked together in Wyman Park Dell, Baltimore.

James shared his knowledge of the Classical myth and symbolism displayed in the monuments, and Mescaline recorded video and audio as they examined the Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

(c) 2017 James LaFond, Mescaline Franklin, Lynn Lockhart