On December 19, 2022, Lieutenant General Steven Gilland, the present superintendent of West Point, announced that West Point would start removing Confederate monuments and artwork throughout its facilities during the Christmas holiday break.
In this period, Gilland stated in a letter to West Point community members that “we will begin a multi-phased process, in accordance with Department of Defense (DoD) directives, to remove, rename or modify assets and real property at the United States Military Academy (USMA) and West Point installation that commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy or those who voluntarily served with the Confederacy.”
Ari Blaff of the National Review observed that “Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy’s leading general and a graduate of West Point, features prominently in Gilland’s letter.” Blaff noted that the monument removal efforts West Point will be carrying during Christmas break “include replacing Lee’s uniform from the USMA Library, a bust of Lee at Reconciliation Plaza, and a quote of Lee’s at Honor Plaza.”
In addition, the military academy will rename several buildings and streets connected to the Confederacy in the surrounding area which include Lee Barracks, Lee Housing Area, Beauregard Place, and Hardee Place.
Congress previously appointed a Naming Commission to take on the question of renaming Confederate monuments at West Point. Back in August 2022, the report called for removing such commemorations arguing that the school was allegedly against honoring Confederates for decades following the Civil War. It wasn’t until the 1930s, following immense political pressure, that these commemorations started to be erected at West Point.
“Commemorating the Confederacy alongside those graduates honors men who fought against the United States of America, and whose cause sought to destroy the nation as well know it,” the report claimed.
The Confederacy is just the beginning. Soon the Founding Generation will be the next targets for cultural leftists obsessed with erasing American history.
The Right cannot afford to fall asleep during this fight. Some conservative “experts” will scoff and ignore these fights at their own peril. But when a nation’s history and culture is effectively erased, the pet projects of the American Right will have no way of being implemented.
A country with an identity that has been erased is one that will be easy to manipulate and easy to transform into a tyrannical, multicultural polity.