We were delighted to see the statues of Lenin and Stalin beheaded. Coming out of a long totalitarian period, during which the face of Big Brother was omnipresent and monopolistic, the destruction of the hated images symbolized for the Soviet peoples the return to freedom. The recent undermining, to name but a few, of Schœlcher, Colbert, Faidherbe, reflects the desire to abolish a laudatory vision of the colonial past, of the time when the West dominated the world. It is no longer a specific regime, particularly odious, as for Sovietism. This is the whole story. These destructions of memory are part of a much larger movement: we would like to delete the names of past authors suspected of machismo or racism - that is to say all!
We cannot cleanse centuries to obtain total purity - according to our criteria which may no longer be those of our children.Nothing is built on a tabula rasa , as the 20th century has abundantly shown. You cannot cleanse centuries to get total purity - by our criteria which may not be
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