"Destruction of statues: what history teaches us about this desire for purity"

Now the cinematic spectrum of John Wayne is summoned today to bend the knee in front of the unfortunately real corpse of George Floyd. The filmed image of a murder resulted in a legitimate claim for justice. But also a destructive fever of national badges in the United States and in other western countries, mainly Anglo-Saxons. However, only long history makes it possible to understand the unleashing which unfolds before our eyes.

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It is in 1871, industrialization obliges, that appears in French the formula “to unbolt statues”. The communards revive the decree of August 14, 1792 which prescribes the great revolutionary toilet of the past in order to purge the "view" of the monuments raised to the glory of "prejudice". A new era requires a new landscape: without a clean slate, no year zero and vice versa. In response, from the end of the Terror (1794), in the name of Thermidor, Father Grégoire made heritage conservation an essential rite of the religion of humanity.

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