Yesterday, California’s Marin County District Attorney’s office announced that it would be reducing felony charges against the Black Lives Matter rioters who dismantled and demolished a St. Junipero Serra statue outside St. Raphael parish in San Francisco. The vandals will only be charged with a misdemeanor.
These vandals join countless other Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioters across the country, who left-wing prosecutors have granted excessive leniency after their “summer of love” resulted in multiple deaths and $2 billion in damage. More recently, in 2022, nearly 100 pro-life organizations and churches were attacked by pro-abortion domestic terrorists, yet the FBI has largely ignored these crimes.
During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, another group of young leftists was allowed to commit heinous crimes that went largely, if not entirely, unpunished. Communist revolutionaries known as the Red Guards were allowed to torture and murder “class enemies” of their movement since it aided the revolution.
It is clear that in America, left-wing arsonists, vandals, and murderers are part of a similar protected class. Like China’s Red Guards, America’s Blue Guards evade prosecution because they are politically useful, hence why many believe we are living under a two-tier justice system.
In a letter to the district attorney and deputy district attorney, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone decried the weak charges for what they are, another example of America’s two-tiered justice system:
“It is clear to me that this course of action would not have been taken with anyone else. In fact, if the same kind of offense had been committed against another religious congregation or group, it would almost certainly have been prosecuted as a hate crime. There have been more than 100 attacks on Catholic Church property across the nation, including in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, one of which was someone firing a bullet into our Cathedral. Anti-Catholicism has a long and ugly history in this country. Now, with this decision, the Marin County District Attorney has given the signal that attacks on Catholic houses of worship and sacred objects may continue without serious legal consequence.”
The similarities between China’s Red Guards and America’s Blue Guards go deeper than simply corrupt justice systems. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the communist decimated Chinese history and heritage, burning ancient scrolls and books, looting temples, and defacing relics. Likewise, in 2020, Marxist rioters looted and vandalized churches and burned and toppled American monuments and memorials.
The American Blue Guard took aim at Junipero Serra not because he was a symbol of racism but because he is a symbol of American values and history. The Red Guard claimed they were dismantling classism, and the Blue Guard claims they are fighting racism, but the real enemy in both cultural revolutions is national heritage.
Far from a racist, Junipero Serra, a Franciscan, was a defender of Native Americans against violence and prejudice from Spanish government authorities. He served the Indians by evangelizing, educating, and providing them with food, shelter, and jobs. And he was instrumental in teaching them about agriculture, which allowed them to advance past hunter-gatherer societies.
When a mob destroyed a different statue of Junipero Serra in San Francisco, the Hispanic Council, a think tank whose mission is to share and preserve the Hispanic heritage of the United States, decried the vandals’ lack of “historical rigor.” Likewise, the Spanish Embassy expressed its “deep concern regarding these attacks to federal, state, and local authorities,” asking “that the memory of our rich shared history be protected.”
What both the Hispanic Council and the Spanish Embassy recognized is that the mob’s attack on Junipero Serra was entirely ahistorical. He was no Confederate general. Indeed, if we learned anything from the summer of 2020, it was that young leftists are not at war with racism; they are at war with America itself.
In 2020, innocent business owners had their stores looted and torched, restaurant go-ers were forced to participate in communist struggle sessions, our founding documents were rejected, and our forefathers demonized. Anything that had to do with American history and heritage, from the Junipero Serra to the pilgrims, and even Abraham Lincoln, was deemed counter-revolutionary.
The impulse to try and minimize the events of 2020 and repress those memories as simply a bad dream is understandable, but we simply cannot forget them. America’s cultural revolution continues unabated. We do not have equal justice under the law, radicalized school teachers prefer critical theory to American history, our federal agencies are thoroughly weaponized, and our country has been divided into protected and enemy classes.
The only way we can put a stop to this madness is by holding onto our history and values and diligently passing them down to our children. Who was St. Junipero Serra? A racist symbol of Spanish imperialism and Indian victimization or a defender of the vulnerable whose Christian faith and evangelism led to the conversion of thousands? Tell your children the truth. It’s the only thing that can set us free.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
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