Toppling Colston’s statue was an act of intolerance

As they tore down the statue of the 17th-century merchant and slaver Edward Colston in Bristol yesterday, protesters were behaving like a woke Taliban. Just as Taliban extremists smashed huge carvings of Buddha that offended them, and just as Isis nutters took hammers to ‘idolatrous’ monuments in the cities of Palmyra and Nimrud, so British protesters are now waging war on historical statues that they claim are ‘hurtful’ to ordinary people.

It was the glee with which they tore down Colston’s statue that was most unnerving. They yanked him down and started cheering and screaming as they stomped on his head. He was then taken to the nearby harbour and thrown in the Avon river. Another rousing cheer.

It was as if evil had been defeated. As if this mere monument, this bronze entity, was a malevolent, corrupting force, and as if its disposal into the river was a liberatory moment. It really did bring to mind the wide-eyed fervour with which Isis members destroyed the first-century Lion of Al-lāt in Palmyra, again on the basis that the monument was hurtful, offensive, counter to their belief system.