By Garritt C. Van Dyk
Christopher Columbus is back. At least, a statue of him is back, reinstalled by US President Donald Trump on the White House grounds in late March – part of the president’s stated mission to cancel “cancel culture”.
The resurrection of Columbus made good on Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.
The statue is in fact a replica of the original thrown into Baltimore Harbor by protesters on Independence Day 2020 during the Black Lives Matter upheavals of the first Trump presidency.
The protests targeted monuments “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers”. But damaged pieces of the Columbus statue were later salvaged and became a model for the copy.
Trump has since championed Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”.
He might have chosen any statue of the explorer and navigator from Genoa who pioneered European colonisation of the Americas. But clearly reinstating one removed by his opponents sends a more powerful message.
‘Improper partisan ideology’
Restoring statues to their original location isn’t simply about undoing their previous removal. It’s designed to reverse what some see as attempts to “erase history”.
And it has a long history of its own. Roman emperors once feared being condemned to obscurity through “damnatio memoriae” – having their statues destroyed, coins melted down and names chiselled from the facades of buildings.
Trump’s executive order was very much about retaliating against those who want to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology”.
Relocating a memorial to a more prominent location – from Baltimore to the White House, for instance – goes one step further. It amplifies the significance of the historical figure and the symbolic restoration of their reputation.
But sometimes just restoring a statue to its original site is symbolism enough.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
The memorial to Albert Pike, for example, was and is the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in Washington DC. Pulled down by protesters in 2020 and returned in 2025, its merits have long been debated.
Pike was a disgraced figure, accused of misappropriating funds and allowing his troops to desecrate the bodies of Union soldiers. There are also alleged ties to an early version of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the words of congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the Nation’s capital.”
Advocates for the statue’s retention note there is no mention of the Confederacy or depiction of a military uniform, only Pike’s contribution to the American Freemasons.
But when the statue was pulled down in 2020, Trump certainly took sides: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”
‘Woke lemmings’
Of course, history isn’t always simple, as memorialising the American Civil War shows.
Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was established in 1864 as a national military cemetery, with a Confederate section dedicated in 1900 as part of the effort to promote reconciliation between the North and South.
Its Confederate Memorial (designed by a Confederate veteran) features a female figure representing the South holding symbols of peace. A bronze relief below depicts sanitised images of slavery: a woman caring for white children, and a man following his owner into battle as his servant.
A biblical quotation below preaches peace: “They have beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
But another quote in Latin – “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” – references Julius Caesar’s victory in the Roman civil war and casts the South’s defeat as a noble lost cause.
The monument was erected in 1914, removed by Congress in 2023, and is scheduled to return in 2027. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on social media it “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”
Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images
Defiant choices
Similarly, an equestrian statue of Founding Father Caesar Rodney – installed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1923 and removed in 2020 to prevent damage by protesters – highlights these contested readings of history.
Rodney is famous for riding all night from Delaware to Philadelphia, through a thunderstorm, to break a deadlock and cast the deciding vote in favour of American independence in 1776.
But as well as being a brigadier general and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, he owned 200 slaves on his family’s plantation.
The statue is now scheduled to reappear for six months, this time in Washington DC, to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. It will be installed in Freedom Plaza, named in honour of Martin Luther King Junior.
Placing the contested statue of a famous slave owner in a space dedicated to a Black civil rights leader is a provocative, if not defiant, choice. And it shows again how powerful symbols and symbolic actions can be.
The argument that removing statues also erases history doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It conflates public visibility and symbolic placement with actual knowledge of the past.
In that sense, reinstalling controversial memorials is, in itself, an attempt to rewrite history by erasing a more recent past and returning to an old, disputed status quo.
Garritt C. Van Dyk is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.
Pogo says
Hey Chip
https://www.google.com/search?q=Garritt+C.+Van+Dyk
Thanks for keeping the culture wars (and the cynical exploitation of backlashes attached to them) in this country going — and from the other side of the world.
Me?
My first priority is the survival of a legitimate government in the country where I actually live.
Laurel says
Have y’all notice that Trump always favors the dark side of things? Check out his own meme of himself (muscles he never had in his life included) of being a Jedi warrior for the dark side?
https://www.tmz.com/2025/05/04/donald-trump-shown-ripped-sith-lord-ai-photo-posted-white-house/
Believe it. Putting back statues of false heroes, who offended many Americans proves it. He does favor the dark side. Do you?
Al says
Does everything trigger a fanatical response from the left? The left has to be the most miserable people in the world, they are always upset. Now just think if the January 6 crowd had done these things, the outrage would never end . It’s okay we understand that the mental capacity of the left for acceptance of opposing views is non existent.
Instead of being upset at a statue you should be upset with the morning news. Hardly a day goes by where there isn’t a black guy killing another black guy or a child. Maybe that’s your plan to eliminate the minorities by allowing them to take each other out. Why else would a judge let a person with multiple felonies out with low bail after the just shot someone? Don’t blame conservatives for your miserable lives blame yourselves.
Laurel says
Unbelievable! Amazing how the brain works!
Pogo says
Chip asks, “Why Is Columbus Back at the White House?”
The whole world knows it is because trump is a prick who likes to stick his finger in peoples’ eyes — and he makes a living doing that.
And Chip does too.
PaulT says
Trump is an ignorant man who has no concept of actual history. If he had a clue he’d donate that Columbus statue to be erected at ‘Landfall Par’k part of Long Bay in San Salvador, Bahamas because that is the closest Columbus got to the American mainland, before he ended up in Cuba..
If he truly wants to celebrate Europpean ‘discovery’ Trump should find statues of John Cabot, the first Europpean believed to have reached the Ametican mainland and his son Sebastian Cabot who susequently explored the east coast of what is now the United States.
If Trump had a concept of actual history he’d know that Confederate generals were in rebellion against the United States and that their memorials, mostly erected during the Jim Crow era represent insurrection. tho of course he’s ‘into that’.
And shoudn’t Juan Ponce de Leon merit a White House statue? He landed in ‘La Florida’ (Saint Augustine) a few years after Sebastian Cabot’s voyage and Trum (and Ron DeSantis) should be taught that the residents of the first permenant European settlement in mainland America spoke Spanish.
..
Laurel says
When the cult corners the mind, facts no longer matter. Only “winning” at any cost, including the cost of Democracy.
True, Columbus never set foot on America. As for Cabot, I’ll stick with Leif Erikson.
“Leif Erikson was a Norse explorer believed to be the first European to reach North America, specifically a region he called Vinland, around the year 1000, long before Christopher Columbus. He was the son of Erik the Red, who founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland.”
– Search Assist, The Ohio State University, Viking
Well, you know, my heritage. That would make the first Europeans who landed in America spoke Norwegian.
But if we were to be real, the Chinese got here first. They migrated when the continents were more closely knitted together, and became what we called “Indians” (thanks to the brain trust Columbus) and later termed “Indigenous peoples.”
“American Indians got their name due to a historical misinterpretation by Christopher Columbus, who mistakenly believed he had reached the East Indies when he arrived in the Americas and referred to the Indigenous peoples he encountered as “Indios.” This term was later adopted and became widely used to describe the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.
– Search Assist, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia
Oh well, Trump the Educator and Historian.
King yema says
Laurel you are incorrect it wasn’t the Chinese who settled the americas it was proto asians who migrated from siberia about 20 thousand to 15 thousand years ago The Land Bridge: During the Pleistocene epoch, massive glaciers trapped global water supplies, lowering sea levels and exposing a 600-mile-wide tundra. This landmass stretched from the Chersky Range in Siberia to the Mackenzie River in Canada.
The “Beringian Standstill”: Genetic and archaeological studies suggest these early migrants did not cross the bridge immediately. Many ancestors of Native Americans spent thousands of years trapped in Beringia due to massive ice sheets blocking further entry into North America. Pretty interesting stuff the Chinese didn’t become a thing until a thing until 2000 bc the more you know right
Laurel says
Thank you, King yema, it’s all very interesting!
Well, we all started in Africa. Which makes me wonder about genetics. I’ve been tested in a study by Mayo Clinic’s Tapestry, and it showed northern European only. I was surprised at that, thinking it would show deeper migration influence. It also showed I have a tendency to enjoy cilantro, which is true, but I had never experienced in Norwegian cooking!
“Cilantro, also known as coriander, has a rich history in cooking, particularly in medieval Spanish Jewish cuisine, where it was widely used alongside other herbs and spices. It has been cultivated for thousands of years, with its origins tracing back to the Mediterranean region, and it became a staple in various cuisines, including Mexican, Indian, and Southeast Asian dishes.
– Search Assist, backyardtaco.com, Wikipedia
What the…?
Laurel says
By the way, Columbus landed in the Bahamas.
Gina Weiss says
Just another Trump story right out of a Roy Cohn playbook when Trumpa nd his father
were sued for racial duscrimination. It was Roy Cohn who showed Trump that he can turn
around a situation by just ignoring facts and going after his attacker.
I’ll just leave this right here: http://www.pbs.org › wgbh › frontline‘All About the Fight’: How Donald Trump Developed His …
Sep 24, 2024 · As Donald Trump, his father and their company faced a race discrimination suit in the 1970s, lawyer Roy Cohn taught Trump an enduring lesson.
Author: Patrice Taddonio