The attack on the portrait of Lord Balfour can be seen as part of a broader trend of tearing down statues of once-revered (and often still-revered) historical figures, a trend that reveals as much in whom it targets as in whom it does not. Take, for instance the statue of the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh that was erected in 2007, on the 80th anniversary of his solo flight across the Atlantic, in St. Louis, the city after which his aircraft was named. While Lindbergh was one of the most admired people in the U.S. in 1927, by 1941 his apologetics for Nazism, and his anti-Semitism, had put him in a bad odor.
Shula Neuman takes a careful look and Lindbergh’s career, his associations with St. Louis, and in particular his attitude toward Jews, which he often expressed in thinly veiled terms:
[At] times, as in this speech from June 15, 1940, the anti-Semitism was more direct: “The only reason that we are in danger of becoming involved in this war is because there are powerful elements in America who desire us to take part. They represent a small minority of the American people, but they control much of the machinery and influence and propaganda. They seize every opportunity to push us closer to the edge.”
For the thousands of people who attended America First rallies, heard Lindbergh’s speeches on the radio, or read them in the newspaper, this was familiar territory. . . . “I have listened to every one of your radio programs so far, the only one I failed to catch was your program last Monday which was cut off of station W.O.R. New York City,” wrote Albert K. Dawson of Jackson Heights, NY. “This station is run by a bunch of Jews who want to drag us into this war in order to take out their spite on Hitler—and I would appreciate very much receiving a copy of this speech if you have a spare available.”
Read more on St. Louis Jewish Light: https://stljewishlight.org/charles-lindbergh/confronting-the-lindbergh-legacy-in-st-louis/