There\u2019s a reason the first two of the Ten Commandments prohibit worshiping false gods and making false idols. And a reason iconoclasm \u2013 the desecration of the monuments of a hated ruler or regime \u2013 is one of the oldest and most powerful symbolic forms of political revolt.<\/p>\n
The revolutionary power of iconoclasm is also why Donald Trump<\/a> \u2013 who understands the manipulation of imagery as well as anyone on earth \u2013 has had a huge blue and white tarp draped across the facade of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts while the letters of his name are pried off under court order.<\/p>\n Sooner or later, the tarp will fall \u2013 and with it, more of Trump\u2019s already diminishing prestige.<\/p>\n The Kennedy Center was temporarily renamed<\/a> The Donald J Trump and the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in December. Accusing<\/a> the arts venue\u2019s administration of mismanagement \u2013 which they denied \u2013 the president sacked<\/a> the center\u2019s chief and members of its board of directors and replaced them with allies, who immediately installed him as chair. Along with the shakeup in leadership came the layoffs of staff<\/a>, the flight of artists<\/a>, an overhaul in programming<\/a> and a plummet<\/a> in ticket sales. In February, the board announced the closure<\/a> of the institution for two years of renovations, beginning 5 July 2026.<\/p>\n Despite the president\u2019s machinations, however, only Congress<\/a> has the legal power to rename the institution, and renovations were already in the works, to be completed while the place stayed open. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democratic representative and ex officio board member, sued the Trump administration. US District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled Trump\u2019s name be taken off the center\u2019s signage, website and even officials\u2019 signatures, and set a deadline of midnight on 12 June, for the removal of the bronze<\/a> letters from the facade. The judge also blocked the administration from closing the venue for repairs.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s lawyers put in a last-ditch appeal to pause the deadline, during which scaffolding was slowly erected.<\/p>\n When the appeal failed, the Department of Justice filed a certification<\/a> the court order would be obeyed. The crew draped the scaffold with the tarp. In its shadow, workers began the demolition. The only evidence that this was happening is a photograph taken by the AP<\/a> through a gap at the side.<\/p>\n The words \u201cDonald J Trump\u201d are reportedly gone, but the tarp remains in place. Public witness to an act of iconoclasm \u2013 even if a legal, orderly one rather than the wild strike of a mob \u2013 is postponed. It is unclear when the drapery will come down \u2013 or, for that matter, what will happen<\/a> to the Kennedy Center going forward.<\/p>\n The destruction of despised structures<\/a> and monuments does not a revolution make. But it can provide the catharsis that enlivens a resistance movement and tell the world that change is coming.<\/p>\n When the Declaration of Independence was read aloud in the streets of New York on 9 July 1776, patriots toppled the 4,000-lb gilded statue of King George III. It was melted down to make more than 42,000 lead bullets that helped oust the king as ruler of the 13 colonies.<\/p>\n The French revolutionaries of 1789 laid siege to the crown\u2019s brutality, the Catholic Church\u2019s corruption, and the very bodies of the royals all at once \u2013 storming the Bastille prison, trashing Notre Dame Cathedral and other churches across the country, and disinterring the bodies of kings from their tombs beneath the Basilica of St Denis.<\/p>\n During Hungary\u2019s 1956 October Revolution against the Soviet Union, crowds marked Stalin\u2019s birthday by decapitating and practically pulverizing<\/a> his bronze statue in Budapest, leaving nothing but his boots intact. The 2003 image<\/a> of Saddam Hussein\u2019s giant, rigid likeness being dragged down with ropes is indelible in modern memory. That war was cataclysmic \u2013 leading to millions of deaths and a resurgent Islamic State \u2013 but the tyrant\u2019s downfall is something to exalt.<\/p>\n