By Charlie Kirk
Washington D.C. just took the long-needed and long-awaited step of disassembling the Black Lives Matter street mural that has for too long adorned “Black Lives Matter Plaza,” just a few hundred feet from the White House. I’m happy to see it go, and not just because that garish yellow paint was the second-worst eyesore of our nation’s capital (after the HHS building).
Our cities and municipalities should go further, though. It’s time to fully exorcise the demons of 2020. We should take down all of our country’s monuments to Floyd and BLM and restore those that were destroyed in their name.
At this moment, public statues honor George Floyd in Newark, New Jersey and in New York City’s Union Square. Minneapolis has named the street where Floyd died in his honor. Dozens of murals and lesser memorials dot the country.
Palestinian artist Taqi Spateen poses before a previous mural of his creation depicting George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after a white policeman knelt on his neck during an arrest in the US in May 2020, painted on a section of Israel’s controversial separation barrier in Bethlehem on June 30, 2021. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via Getty Images)
Public statuary should honor great individuals, great causes, or at least the heritage of the country or a given community. Statues honoring George Floyd do none of those things. Floyd himself lived a sad, wasted life of drugs, violence, and crime. He died from the strain of resisting arrest while on a lethal cocktail of fentanyl and meth. He was not a hero. He was a tragedy, and we shouldn’t immortalize tragedies in bronze. (CHARLIE KIRK: Shut Up About Egg Prices — Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions)
The “cause” that George Floyd honors, in turn, is one of the most destructive and harmful in American history. “Black Lives Matter” never protected black lives – in fact, it destroyed thousands of them. BLM’s anthems were Abolish the Police, Abolish the Law, and Abolish America. The movement was founded on the provable lie that American police are systemically racist and that they kill black Americans because of their skin color.
BLM’s chief accomplishment was the worst wave of urban destruction since the 1960s. Its chief legacy is the 36.7% increase in America’s murder rate from 2019 to 2021. It’s by far the largest increase in American history. It represents literally thousands of deaths that should have never happened. BLM killed more Americans than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. Every George Floyd statue, every BLM street and plaza and mural, is a middle finger to the Americans who watched their cities burn, saw their businesses looted, or watched their neighbors live in fear amid the chaos. These monuments aren’t tributes to justice — they’re trophies for anarchy.
Meanwhile, countless monuments and markers that should still be here in America are missing. In 2020, statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and even nameless American pioneers were vandalized, destroyed, or removed by lawmakers before the mob could get to them. Many were never repaired or returned. Names were scrubbed off buildings and graves were defiled in cemeteries.
None of this helped “heal” America. It attacked American unity, and hurt our country, which was the whole point – BLM’s radicals attacked America as an illegitimate and irredeemably racist country. What they wanted was a Year Zero, a complete reset of the entire American system. Everything they did in 2020 was seen as simply one step toward a greater revolution yet to come. (CHARLIE KIRK: President Trump’s Shock-And-Awe Strategy Is The Way To Overwhelm The Left)
The frenzy of 2020 has passed, but its scars still litter America. Things that should be there are gone, while monuments to this terrible era still loom like Communist monuments in post-Soviet Russia. It’s time to change that. Take down the Floyd statues, paint over the murals, and restore what we lost five years ago.
The authority to remove most of these public blights lies with local residents and their elected officials, but if it can happen in Washington, D.C., there’s hope for the whole country. The year 2020 was one of the lowest moments in American history. It would be better if it were blotted out.
Charlie Kirk is the founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, Turning Point Action, and host of the top-ranked podcast and nationally syndicated radio program, “The Charlie Kirk Show.”
