Anger is mounting after poppy wreaths made by veterans were set on fire at the Edinburgh war memorial, Scotland, in a disturbing act of vandalism.
Organisers have expressed their devastation after it appeared that the memorial wreaths were deliberately torched at the Stone of Remembrance on November 13. Investigations are ongoing and police have appealed for witnesses to come forward.
The charred remains of the Remembrance tributes were discovered by firefighters at 5:15am.
‘We are appalled by this absolutely senseless act of vandalism,’ said Chief Executive of Legion Scotland, Dr Claire Armstrong. ‘These wreaths were laid in memory of the men and women who sacrificed their lives, and this destruction shows a complete lack of respect for everything they and the Stone of Remembrance stand for.’
She added:
‘This will be extremely upsetting for all the veterans, serving personnel, and family members who paid their respects yesterday, especially those who have lost loved ones. It is also a huge blow for the veterans with disabilities at Lady Haig’s Poppy Factory, who have put their hearts and souls into making these tributes over the last few months. We will be doing everything we can to assist Police Scotland with their investigation of this matter.’
Burning a war memorial is a heinous act so disturbing that it has raised serious questions about who might be responsible and what their motivations are.
Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon took to Twitter over the weekend, writing:
‘Utterly beyond comprehension that someone would vandalise a war memorial on Remembrance Day – sickening and disgraceful. I hope those responsible are identified and brought to justice.’
But is it really that surprising?
Citizens have watched helplessly as political leaders allowed violent Marxist groups to tear down historical statues and desecrate cultural spaces while police, who are meant to protect public property, quite literally knelt at the feet of vandals.
Before the Covid lockdowns, Western streets were full of violent mobs reducing statues of the nation’s war heroes to rubble. They even demanded the removal of Winston Churchill’s statue – the man largely responsible for victory in the second world war – calling him a fascist despite leading the charge against fascism. In the end, citizens had to gather together in counter-protests to protect statues from these mobs. Who did police attack? The citizens, of course.
Is desecrating statues of military figures really so different from burning war memorials?
The torched wreaths were made by ex-service officers, just as other historical monuments previously destroyed were put there by citizens to honour the past.
When are leaders going to take responsibility for stoking cultural hatred against their own nations? Has Nicola Sturgeon forgotten that in 2020 she backed the hateful Black Lives Movement, naively posting on Twitter:
‘If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem’ – the words of the late, great Toni Morrison.’
It may be the case that she was unaware of the movement’s political roots, but the endorsement of leaders allowed youths to actively trash historical artefacts.
Sturgeon also said that she wanted to find a safe way for people to join the protests – protests that were quite vocal about dismantling Western history with a campaign to ‘topple the racists’ (destroy all the statues). Keep in mind, Black Lives Matter has shown no interest in seeking historical revenge on the African towns and families that ran the slave trade for thousands of years.
If you give weight to a Marxist mob intent on burning the West, don’t be surprised when it breaks political containment lines and becomes a nasty charred scar on society.
Under Sturgeon’s watch, protesters tried to rename streets in Glasgow – quite literally erasing the city’s past. In Australia, state governments help activists by doing it for them. New South Wales even has a Liberal government that congratulated itself on locking Australian citizens out of a public national park based on race. Words fail me.
Several wreathes were completely burnt in the fire and Edinburgh’s Stone of Remembrance blackened with soot https://t.co/XJBWIiUxg9
— BBC Scotland News (@BBCScotlandNews) November 14, 2022
We don’t know who attacked the Remembrance wreaths – perhaps it was a pack of bored kids – but there is certainly a rise in disrespect taught to our children in school that is manifesting as self-hatred. Would this have happened fifty years ago?
Nearly all of the criminals who vandalised public statues were acquitted or let off with a warning. I think we can agree it would be unlikely to see the same outcome if an Indigenous monument had been damaged. There appears to be a great deal of racial bias in our legal system where the destruction of cherished Western history is fair-game for activists. No doubt that has something to do with activist judges cheering from the sidelines.
It is not only Black Lives Matter leading the charge, Just Stop Oil seems determined to damage our great works of art in their relentless pursuit for attention while their wealthy masters wait in the wings to sell more Climate Change paraphernalia.
The same publication worried about the burning of the Remembrance Wreaths happily ran an article in 2020 titled: Amnesia, denial, and awakening – Black Lives Matter stirs Scotland into confronting its ties to slavery.
In it, the author asks, ‘what comes next?’ and replies, ‘the immediate answer should give the Prime Minister cause for concern; or at least, one of his predecessors. A memorial in Glasgow’s George Square to Sir Robert Peel, the 19th century Conservative statesman, whose father – also an MP – supported a petition against the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill, is among those earmarked on an interactive map created by activists. Entitled “Topple the Racists”, it calls for the removal of statues and monuments across the UK that celebrate slavery and racism. With a Black Lives Matter demonstration scheduled for George Square today, it remains to be seen whether the statue to Peel will be targeted, but Police Scotland officers have been on patrol in the square, as well as at the Necropolis’.
The desire to erase Western culture can be clearly heard in the words of one activist:
‘All city centres are designed in keeping with the era they were built in, and in the era of slavery, it was laid out in the image of its perpetrators to reflect their values as British colonial imperialists developing a global superpower. We are a different city in a different country today, and what we say as a city as a stage set for the world to visit has to be reflective of what our people think now.’
The act of remembrance is the exact opposite of Marxist attention-seeking behaviour. While it wants the world to forget the astonishing achievements of Western Civilisation so that it can take credit for all the best bits – war memorials, statues, and history books are there to remind us that history is messy journey that we should learn from, not burn.
The blackened Remembrance Stone, with a few remaining red poppy wreaths fanning out like blood, serves as a stark visual embodiment of the state of our civilisation. Charred, bleeding, and wounded. The Remembrance Stone has now been washed, but its edges are marked with patches of soot.
‘We remain at a loss for the reasons someone could do something like this which has caused a lot of upset for everyone who respects the memories of all who serve their country,’ said Lord Provost Robert Aldridge.
…are we really ‘at a loss’?
