When the one individual preserving a degree of even-handedness and uttering comments supported by the facts is Donald Trump, you could not ask for more eloquent testimony to the fact that the lunatics have taken over the asylum that was once America.

Trump is the one man on earth whose every word is studied hostilely and taken exception to automatically, by a liberal establishment implacably poised to condemn and demonise him. His insistence on blaming the Antifa leftist protesters at Charlottesville as well as neo-Nazis on the right enraged the liberal elites. He did more. He coined the term Alt-Left, creating a damning symmetry between right-wing loons tricked out in pillow cases or coalscuttle helmets and their opposite numbers from Antifa, hooded in black balaclavas. That is precisely the symbiotic relationship the Left is desperate to repudiate and Trump scored a palpable hit.

The opposing thesis, the idiotic claim that left-wing violence is morally excusable, duly found someone to articulate it. “I see no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them,” said a pathetically virtue-signalling Theresa May. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, Theresa? You never were the brightest bulb on the chandelier. Why don’t you run off into a wheatfield, or organise another snap election in which, please God, we’ll finally get rid of you.

Historical illiteracy is a hallmark of the Left. Beyond that, it is a valued weapon of self-styled “progressives”, particularly Marxists, who have always exploited falsification of history and the eradication of historical memory in order to create a tabula rasa on which they can inscribe their own mythology. They are now trying to do this to America, formerly the unlikeliest of candidates, and succeeding to a remarkable extent.

If, 150 years after the end of hostilities in the American Civil War, there is to be a Cultural Revolution purging from public memory all those associated with slavery, what percentage of American history will survive? Of the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, 40 were slave owners who prated unself-consciously about “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, which demonstrates how little the hypocrisy of politicians has altered over centuries.

Robert E Lee was a slave owner, mainly by acting as executor for an estate, but, yes, he undoubtedly had ownership of slaves. His human property was modest when compared to George Washington’s 317 slaves, or indeed Thomas Jefferson’s 600. When Robert E Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, he did so to General Ulysses S Grant, later 18th president of the United States and – yes – a slave owner. Of the first 18 US presidents, 12 were slave owners.

It seems we are looking at an awful lot of empty plinths and bare walls in museums, art galleries and public buildings if this madness is followed to its logical conclusion. How to replace them? Well, there was one general in the War of Independence who offered freedom to any slaves who would join his army. Wow! That’s our guy. Put up a statue to him in every state. What was his name? Er – Benedict Arnold. Doh. He defected to the British Army.

Yet the madness proceeds. This week the mayor of Baltimore had four Confederate statues removed during the night: “They needed to come down.” Why? Who says? Antifa? In Durham, North Carolina, a mob led by communists from the Workers World party destroyed a statue of a Confederate soldier. Even a stone marking the graves of Confederate soldiers and their families in a cemetery in Los Angeles has been removed, in response to a petition with just 1,300 signatures.

Now comes the real fun. Georgian Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has called for the destruction of the Stone Mountain carving of three Confederate leaders. That is the nursery slope leading to the big one: Mount Rushmore. Two of the four presidents depicted there (Washington and Jefferson) were slave owners, but Abe Lincoln is on the hit list too for killing native Indians. The added pretext for getting out the dynamite at Mount Rushmore is that the sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, was one of the six “knights” of the Imperial Koncilium of the Ku Klux Klan in 1923.

It will not stop at sculptures. Fanatics in organisations such as Black Lives Matter, the Southern Law Poverty Center, etc, are drawing up ambitious plans to eliminate the names of streets, schools, colleges, public institutions of every kind and, of course, to ban the Confederate flag – good luck with that. Expect a burning of the books, too, with Gone With the Wind and Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the top of the pyre.

A purge that could not be effected under eight years of Obama rule threatens to take off under Trump. The Alt-Left, in despair eight months ago, has used intimidation and the support of the Democrats, the media and the deep state – notably at town-hall level – to seize power over America and its culture. Numerically they are negligible, but so were the Bolsheviks in 1917.

A casualty of this Thought Police crisis is Trump’s CEO forum, which has collapsed under the weight of resignations by CEOs condemning the President’s response to Charlottesville. So PC and globalist has corporate America become that a policy-influencing direct line to the POTUS is abandoned to placate violent Marxists and their media apologists. Across the developed world boardrooms are caving in to PC quota systems and other anti-capitalist social engineering projects, just when capitalism needs to put distance between itself and leftist elites that discredit it in the public perception. Saul Alinsky has displaced Adam Smith.

There is one conceivable consequence the liberal establishment has not considered. What if the Stalinist elimination of the entire history and culture of the South were to provoke, eventually, a dramatic reaction? What if a demonised people concluded their ancestors had been right, the Yankees were intolerable bedfellows and Secession was the only way of preserving their identity? Impossible? Like Brexit and Trump’s election? History moves now at breakneck speed and separatism is a powerful current. Spain and Belgium are only just holding together and Britain is threatened by Scottish independence. Imagine the global consequences of the breakup of the United States.

However, one city in the Union hosts a monument on the right side of history, that looks to the future and is acceptable to the Alt-Left: Seattle boasts a statue of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. If things continue as they are currently going, it will be the first of many hundreds across the USA.