特朗普在白宫欢迎哥伦布——并重燃了美国的历史战争
Trump welcomes Columbus to the White House – and reigni…
By resurrecting statues toppled in protests during his first term, Donald Trump wants to reverse attempts to ‘erase history’. But history is never that simple.
通过复原其第一任期内抗议活动中推倒的雕像，唐纳德·特朗普希望扭转“抹去历史”的企图。但历史从来没有那么简单。
Christopher Columbus is back. At least, a statue of him is back, reinstalled by US President Donald Trump on the White House grounds in late March – part of the president’s stated mission to cancel “cancel culture”.
克里斯托弗·哥伦布回来了。至少，一座纪念他的雕像回来了，由美国总统唐纳德·特朗普于三月下旬在白宫内重新安装——这是总统为取消“取消文化”而宣布的使命的一部分。
The resurrection of Columbus made good on Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.
哥伦布的“复活”兑现了特朗普2025年发布的行政命令：《恢复美国历史的真相与理智》。
The statue is in fact a replica of the original thrown into Baltimore Harbor by protesters on Independence Day 2020 during the Black Lives Matter upheavals of the first Trump presidency.
这座雕像实际上是原件的复制品，该原件是在2020年独立日，在第一次特朗普总统任期内“黑人生命至上”运动的动荡期间，被抗议者扔进巴尔的摩港的。
The protests targeted monuments “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers”. But damaged pieces of the Columbus statue were later salvaged and became a model for the copy.
抗议活动的目标是那些“纪念白人至上主义者、奴隶主、种族灭绝犯和殖民者”的纪念碑。但哥伦布雕像受损的碎片后来被抢救出来，并成为了复制品的模型。
Trump has since championed Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”.
从那时起，特朗普一直推崇哥伦布，称其为“最初的美国英雄、西方文明的巨擘，以及有史以来行走在地球上最英勇和最有远见的人之一”。
He might have chosen any statue of the explorer and navigator from Genoa who pioneered European colonisation of the Americas. But clearly reinstating one removed by his opponents sends a more powerful message.
他本可以选择任何一位开创欧洲美洲殖民化的热那亚探险家和航海家的雕像。但显然，重新安装一座被其对手移除的雕像，传递了一个更强烈的信号。
‘Improper partisan ideology’
“不当的党派意识形态”
Restoring statues to their original location isn’t simply about undoing their previous removal. It’s designed to reverse what some see as attempts to “erase history”.
将雕像恢复到原始位置，不仅仅是取消其之前的移除。其目的是扭转一些人所认为的“抹去历史”的行为。
And it has a long history of its own. Roman emperors once feared being condemned to obscurity through “damnatio memoriae” – having their statues destroyed, coins melted down and names chiselled from the facades of buildings.
它本身也有悠久的历史。罗马皇帝曾担心通过“记忆剥夺”（damnatio memoriae）而被遗忘——让他们的雕像被毁，硬币被熔化，名字从建筑立面上被凿除。
Trump’s executive order was very much about retaliating against those who want to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology”.
特朗普的行政命令很大程度上是为了报复那些想要“延续对美国历史的虚假重构、不当低估某些历史事件或人物的价值，或包含任何其他不当的党派意识形态”的人。
Relocating a memorial to a more prominent location – from Baltimore to the White House, for instance – goes one step further. It amplifies the significance of the historical figure and the symbolic restoration of their reputation.
将纪念碑移到更显眼的位置——例如从巴尔的摩到白宫——则更进一步。它放大了历史人物的重要性，并象征性地恢复了其声誉。
But sometimes just restoring a statue to its original site is symbolism enough.
但有时，仅仅将雕像恢复到其原始地点就足以构成一种象征意义。
The memorial to Albert Pike, for example, was and is the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in Washington DC. Pulled down by protesters in 2020 and returned in 2025, its merits have long been debated.
例如，阿尔伯特·派克的纪念碑，是华盛顿特区唯一一座户外的邦联将军雕像。它曾在2020年被抗议者拆除，并在2025年返回，其价值一直备受争议。
Pike was a disgraced figure, accused of misappropriating funds and allowing his troops to desecrate the bodies of Union soldiers. There are also alleged ties to an early version of the Ku Klux Klan.
派克是一位名誉扫地的人物，他被指控挪用公款，并允许他的部队亵渎联邦士兵的遗体。他还被指控与早期版本的“库克克莱克氏族仇杀团”（Ku Klux Klan）有关联。
In the words of congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the Nation’s capital.”
根据国会代表埃莉诺·霍姆斯·诺顿的话说：“派克代表了邦联最糟糕的一面，没有资格在国家首都被纪念。”
Advocates for the statue’s retention note there is no mention of the Confederacy or depiction of a military uniform, only Pike’s contribution to the American Freemasons.
支持保留雕像的人指出，上面没有提及邦联，也没有描绘军装，只有派克对美国共济会（American Freemasons）的贡献。
But when the statue was pulled down in 2020, Trump certainly took sides: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”
但当雕像在2020年被拆除时，特朗普无疑表明了立场：“华盛顿特区警察没有尽职，他们眼睁睁地看着一座雕像被撕毁和焚烧。这些人应该立即被逮捕。这对我们国家是一种耻辱。”
‘Woke lemmings’
“觉醒的雪盲”
Of course, history isn’t always simple, as memorialising the American Civil War shows.
当然，纪念美国内战所展示的，历史并非总是简单的。
Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was established in 1864 as a national military cemetery, with a Confederate section dedicated in 1900 as part of the effort to promote reconciliation between the North and South.
弗吉尼亚州的阿灵顿国家公墓于1864年建立，作为国家军事公墓；其中于1900年设立了邦联部分，这是促进南北和解努力的一部分。
Its Confederate Memorial (designed by a Confederate veteran) features a female figure representing the South holding symbols of peace. A bronze relief below depicts sanitised images of slavery: a woman caring for white children, and a man following his owner into battle as his servant.
其邦联纪念碑（由一名邦联老兵设计）描绘了一个代表南方的女性形象，她手中拿着和平的象征物。下方的青铜浮雕描绘了“净化版”的奴隶制图像：一位照顾白人孩子的妇女，以及一位作为仆人跟随主人上战场的人。
A biblical quotation below preaches peace: “They have beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
下方有一段《圣经》引文宣扬和平：“他们将剑磨成犁铧，将矛磨成修枝钩。”
But another quote in Latin – “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” – references Julius Caesar’s victory in the Roman civil war and casts the South’s defeat as a noble lost cause.
但另一句拉丁文引语——“Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton”——提到了尤利乌斯·凯撒在罗马内战中的胜利，并将南方的失败描绘成了一场高尚的失败。
The monument was erected in 1914, removed by Congress in 2023, and is scheduled to return in 2027. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on social media it “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”
该纪念碑于1914年竖立，于2023年被国会移除，并计划于2027年回归。战争部长皮特·赫格塞斯在社交媒体上声称，它“不应该被觉醒的雪盲们拆除。与左派不同，我们不相信抹去美国历史——我们尊重它。”
Defiant choices
蔑视的选择
Similarly, an equestrian statue of Founding Father Caesar Rodney – installed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1923 and removed in 2020 to prevent damage by protesters – highlights these contested readings of history.
同样，一位名为开国元勋凯撒·罗德尼的骑马雕像——该雕像于1923年在特拉华州威尔明顿安装，并于2020年因防止抗议者破坏而被移除——凸显了这些有争议的历史解读。
Rodney is famous for riding all night from Delaware to Philadelphia, through a thunderstorm, to break a deadlock and cast the deciding vote in favour of American independence in 1776.
罗德尼因其在1776年穿越雷暴，从特拉华州骑马到费城，打破僵局，并投下支持美国独立的决定性一票而闻名。
But as well as being a brigadier general and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, he owned 200 slaves on his family’s plantation.
但除了作为一名准将和《独立宣言》的签署者之外，他还拥有其家族种植园的200名奴隶。
The statue is now scheduled to reappear for six months, this time in Washington DC, to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. It will be installed in Freedom Plaza, named in honour of Martin Luther King Junior.
该雕像现在计划在7月4日为庆祝美国建国250周年而在华盛顿特区重新出现，持续六个月。它将被安装在以马丁·路德·金纪念的自由广场。
Placing the contested statue of a famous slave owner in a space dedicated to a Black civil rights leader is a provocative, if not defiant, choice. And it shows again how powerful symbols and symbolic actions can be.
将一位著名的奴隶主有争议的雕像放置在一个献给黑人民权领袖的空间里，是一个具有挑衅性，如果不是蔑视性的选择。这也再次展示了符号和象征性行动的巨大力量。
The argument that removing statues also erases history doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It conflates public visibility and symbolic placement with actual knowledge of the past.
“移除雕像也会抹去历史”的论点经不起推敲。它将公共可见性和象征性放置与对过去的实际了解混为一谈。
In that sense, reinstalling controversial memorials is, in itself, an attempt to rewrite history by erasing a more recent past and returning to an old, disputed status quo.
从这个意义上说，重新安装有争议的纪念碑本身就是一种试图改写历史的行为，它通过抹去更近的过去，回归到一个古老、有争议的现状。
Garritt C. Van Dyk has received funding from the Getty Research Institute.
Garritt C. Van Dyk获得了盖蒂研究所的资助。
