Progressives in America have taken a liking to toppling statues of famous people who do not measure up to their views of purity. Statues of presidents like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are viewed as insulting to Black people because they owned slaves 250 years ago. They condemn their legacy and view them as racists who should be banned from the public sphere. So shall they be unwritten; so shall they be undone.
It is curious that these same progressives have no issue judging people who lived hundreds of years ago but cannot make a passing comment to criticize countries with racist, homophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic behavior, particularly those from Brown and Black societies.
Consider Iran, a country which progressives insist should have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. The Iranians hang gay people in the streets and execute minors. No worries. Former President Obama said they will probably come around in ten years and may even drop from the leading state sponsors of terrorism list, so his nuclear deal had a sunset while it left the country’s nuclear infrastructure intact.
Think of Ghana, home of the Khente cloth worn by the most powerful Democrats in Congress as they bent a knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. No, George Floyd wasn’t born in Ghana; he was American. But Ghana does imprison gay people for life. Seems like it’s a logical country to honor.
Somalia, birthplace of Ilhan Omar (D-MN), has public executions for adultery, usually by stoning. Gays are killed by the al-Shabab terrorists who roam the land. Yet Omar has defended Somalia.
Omar gave a pass to Turkey, one of the largest jailers of journalists every year. She refused to acknowledge and condemn Turkey’s genocide of Armenians a century ago. Could it be because she wanted Turkey to provide aid to her old homeland of Somalia, as Turkey pushes its influence into the horn of Africa to confront Saudi Arabia?
Another member of the progressive wing of Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), has Palestinian parents and is proud of her heritage. Palestinian law excuses men who kill women who “shame” family honor. The Palestinians are also the most antisemitic people in the world, with 93% holding antisemitic views. They elected the terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament with an antisemitic charter which blends Hitler’s Main Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They elected a president who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial and demands a country free of Jews. The Palestinian Authority has a law which calls for the death sentence for any Arab who sells land to a Jew. Tlaib ignores it all (or agrees with such sentiments).
Mauritania is a 100% Muslim country governed by sharia law which still has slavery. The United Nations didn’t seem to care as it voted the country to the Human Rights Council. Yet progressives still believe that the opinions and rulings of the corrupt world body should carry weight.
Uzbekistan is considered among the worst countries in the world according to Freedom House and also has slavery today – as much as 4% of the population according to some counts. Obama awarded this tyrannical country the largest military donation ever to a country in central Asia.
The Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from foreign entities, with more than 40 per cent of the large donors coming from outside the United States. Saudi Arabia gave Clinton $10 million, that same country that doesn’t allow a woman to leave home without permission of the male head of household or to drive and that publicly beheads adulterers (including women accused of rape) and those who convert from Islam, a right guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The country hit a new record of executions with 184 in 2019, many of them religious minorities.
The South American country with the worst human rights is Venezuela according to Freedom House. No matter. The champion of progressives, Sen. Bernie Sanders, was the only Democratic candidate for president who would not condemn the far left Maduro government‘s corruption and failed socialist economic policies.
Amid the COVID pandemic, Senator Elizabeth Warren along with other alt-lefters like Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Barbara Lee singled out Iran as a country to get aid to fight the pandemic. A few days earlier Warren asked for money to be sent to the Palestinian Authority. Eventually, U.S. territory Puerto Rico showed up on her radar worthy of care.
Progressives defend and support some of the worst regimes regarding slavery and human rights abuses but cannot fathom seeing a statue of the founding figures of the United States on a pedestal. To suggest that the underlying reason is because the statues are of White men and that the offending countries are headed by Black and Brown people would let your privilege show, so no one utters the obvious.
Considering that much of the world has a human rights record today that falls short of America 250 years ago is too woke for progressives. We are in the midst of a purge, and it is not of relics and racism but the position of the patriarchy.
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