Monuments, museums, and cultural institutions were often created in the image of “militarist realism,” presenting colonialism and enslavement as eternal. Undoing this legacy is not erasing the past but combating a pernicious ideology.

After years of heated debates over statues, museums, and so-called “cancel culture,” the fight over memory and heritage shows no sign of slowing down. Across the world, monuments that once seemed immovable have been toppled, renamed, or removed. In South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, statues of the Victorian imperialist Cecil Rhodes have already fallen; in Britain, the name of the Sackler family has been stripped from museum galleries, while the Benin Bronzes are finally being returned. Yet each act of change has been met with fierce backlash — accusations o

See Full Page