Why did the “woke” academics at the University of Leicester throw away an archive entrusted to their care?

We now know they did. They threw away the archive of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism (IST) – compiled painstakingly over many years and often at personal risk by me and my fellow researchers – as unwanted trash.

My complaint to the university elicited this response from Professor Henrietta O’Connor, the spokesperson charged by the Principal to deal with the complaint: :

The School of Criminology, as with all Schools and departments, prioritises collections in their care which are most pertinent to contemporary research and teaching. A recent search for material relating to the IST proved inconclusive. Any IST material located in future will be appraised by a professionally-qualified archivist and, if appropriate, transferred to the care of our University Archives and Special Collections.

It’s a confession. They keep what is “most pertinent to contemporary research and teaching”.

What is “most pertinent to contemporary research and teaching”? They declare unequivocally, “Ethnicity, sexuality and diversity.”

That is the agenda of the Left to which they are committed. They are “woke”. They have chosen to implement the current Leftist policy known as “cancel culture”. They are erasing records of the past that do not fit with the current – or as they say “contemporary” – political beliefs of the Left.

The IST archive, recording thousands of instances of the savage crime of terrorism – almost all of it by organizations on the Left, with support from the USSR and some from Communist China, through the Cold War years 1968-1990 – was an affront to the ideology of the “woke”.

The search for the archive was not “inconclusive” as the professor claims.  The searcher – the chief archivist of the university – concluded that the archive was lost.

But let’s say some “IST material” may be  “located in future”. Would it be preserved?  Not necessarily. Not probably. Frankly, not a chance.  It would be subject to a process of “prioritising”.  And as it would not be wanted for the teaching of  “ethnicity, gender, and diversity” – and would even pose a threat to such studies – it would not be judged “appropriate”, would not be “prioritised”, and so would be discarded.  

The professor implies, by saying the person who would make the judgment would be “professionally-trained”, that the profession of archivist requires its practitioners to adhere to “woke” ideology as routinely, normally, correctly, as the profession of medicine requires its practitioners to adhere to the ethics of Hippocrates.

Most universities in the Western world now are conscientiously trying to erase history. The IST archive is just one of an incalculable number of records, relics, depictions, monuments that are being destroyed by the very institutions that were founded to preserve our cultural inheritance.

To what end? Is there a  supremely desirable objective that can only be attained by perpetrating this vast relentless destruction?

The answer is to be found in a column by Conrad Black at American Greatness, in which he points out how like George Orwell’s Britain of 1984 America has become in 2022:

Since the Party controlled the present, it also controlled the past.

“One could not learn history from architecture any more than one could learn it from books. Streets, inscriptions, memorial stones, the names of streets—anything that might throw light on the past had been systematically altered.” In other words, “History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

“Purges and vaporizations were a necessary part of the mechanics of government.”

Down came the statues, inscriptions and “anything that might throw light on the past.” As in 1984, America’s founding documents are pure crimethink. Teacher unions now force feed this propaganda in the schools and when parents object, the Department of Justice calls them domestic terrorists.

The past is falsified, statistics are meaningless, and the Party is always right.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only pure power.” As Winston Smith learns:

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

In 2022, embattled Americans are beginning to understand the parallels.

As are the citizens of most of the countries of the late “free West”.

Is it too late to save our culture before it is gone beyond recovery?

Jillian Becker      February 1, 2022