It was there all the time, under our noses, yet somehow we missed it. The New York Knicks play there, as do the Rangers and, once upon a time, the New York Liberty. Built by Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, it’s where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to JFK, and where Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for president, yet somehow we didn’t recognize the dire seriousness of the location.
I’m talking, of course, of that Taj Mahal of Fascism, the Mecca of Nazism, that medieval pilgrimage shrine of Hitlerdom we all know as Madison Square Garden (MSG).
Why didn’t we see it?
The answer is pretty simple: The media hadn’t told us yet.
In case you didn’t notice, we’ve been in the middle of a revolution of sorts, a revolution of language and information.
I first noticed this when I was in business school a few years ago. We were in a leadership class, being taught about how to interact with employees, and the term we focused on most was “microaggressions.” Many of our most common words and mannerisms were an affront to other people, they told us, and we simply had to rid ourselves of this behavior. Weren’t there enough problems to solve, some of us wondered, without turning our attention to ones that, based on the term “microaggressions,” are presumably so small that we need a kind of social microscope to see them? We didn’t dare say this, of course. We wanted a good grade – we were paying lots of money for our education – and we knew this wasn’t the place nor time to question the university’s authority on the subject.
These thoughts came to me again during one of the many monument desecrations seen over the past several years. They were tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus, claiming it was racist, when the words popped right out of my mouth as I sat in front of the television with my wife: “Don’t we have enough current problems to deal with rather than fighting battles from several hundred years ago?”
“I guess it’s a battle they think they can win,” she said. “After all, Columbus isn’t here to defend himself.”
I thought about this again when all the talk about the Trump Madison Square Garden event began. With all the references to the Nazi rally held there last century, I couldn’t help but wonder why, if it was the headquarters of Nazism, the media hadn’t picked up on it like this before? Further, why were we allowing the Rangers and Knicks to play there and taint their otherwise fascist-free reputation?
The reporting about the Trump rally was more than just selective outrage. Similar to the instances above, it was just one of the more recent attempts by the humanist, progressive left to redefine meaning in our culture, i.e., to force us, through repetitive news segments and insights from so-called experts, to believe what they want us to believe.
But, thankfully, as the recent election proved, they aren’t as powerful in the area of media as was once the case. And because of this — due largely to counter voices on Twitter/X and elsewhere – it was apparent that the MSG link between the Trump rally held there on Oct. 27, 2024, and the Nazi rally from last century just wasn’t that reasonable. For, if the mere fact that a Nazi rally was once held there, might not the fact that Trump and Hitler both at times wore neckties also be a sign of Trump’s fascism? Or the fact that they both stand on two feet? Or breathe through their nostrils … and on and on and on?
Whether it’s microaggressions, centuries-old faults and failures, or forcing a connection that simply isn’t there, the left is losing its attempt to redefine reality along lines favorable to its political ends, and this is a wonderful thing. But this doesn’t mean they are defeated, or that they will even stop with these attempts. What it does mean is that conservative and traditional-minded people need to see these attempts for what they really are: nothing less than a language revolution, of the kind perpetrated in Maoist China not too long ago. They will stop at nothing, and in the coming days we will do well to be on the highest of alerts.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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