There is very little new under the sun. The monument and statue destruction we are witnessing has been witnessed in other times and other places. A tyrant's first battlefield is to rewrite history. Most notable were the political purges of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet government erased figures from Soviet history by renaming cities – such as the Imperial capital of St. Petersburg to Petrograd and Leningrad and Stalingrad – and eradicating memories of czarist rule. Stalin's historical revisions also included changing photographs and history books, thereby distorting children's learning within educational establishments.

Most of the effort to rewrite American history has its roots among the intellectual elite on our college campuses whose message has been sold to predominantly white college students who have little understanding of how they are being used.