If there is a sphere seen by the public eye, leftists will find a way to use it as an outlet for virtue signaling.
Taken the Benin Bronzes, for example. The set of sculptures date back to the 1500s from the West African Kingdom of Benin, according to the British Museum’s display of some of these sculptures. In April, The Spectator reported another set of Benin Bronzes had been “repatriated” by the Horniman Museum in London, England, to Nigeria.
Curators were told the Benin Bronzes would be seen to by the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria, a body that seeks to preserve the country’s past.
You can find some on Benin Bronzes, metal plaques that were made by craftsmen in the Kingdom of Benin, shortly after the Portuguese first arrived in 1485 and started trading with them.
Notice the Portuguese soldier on one of these! https://t.co/7SvJHHCDsH pic.twitter.com/sNFaC67Zih
— Aristocratic Fury (@LandsknechtPike) April 6, 2025
The Spectator reported, however, that the sculptures are nowhere to be found by the public. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari signed an official statement saying they belonged to the Oba of Benin, not the commission. The evidence does not look promising that they are on display anywhere in Nigeria.
The story gets better.
How did the ancestors of the Oba depart with the Benin Bronzes? They were traded to the Portuguese for slaves, most likely, says the Spectator.
Yes, a group of guilty English leftists gave priceless artifacts back to a country who then gave them to a man whose family willingly gave them away for slaves.
Should artifacts be repatriated to their place of origin?
The Spectator reported that this magnificently idiotic decision is indicative of a broader trend by activists to pressure curators and museums to return artifacts to their country of origin.
The example of the Benin Bronzes speaks to the broader liberal ethos of oppressed and oppressor. If the Western world has something, it took it by force. The non-Western world was surely at its mercy, being the victim of thievery, oppression, or worse.
It’s inconceivable that the rest of the world — in this case the Kingdom of Benin — could have been pursuing nefarious ends by departing with the bronzes, such as by trading slaves. Surely the evil Europeans were just looting and plundering from a peaceful and harmonious people who only wished to be left alone.
Now it is time to give back what is owed.
Ironically, this mentality toward the non-Westerners breeds its own type of racism despite trying to combat exactly that.
Western leftists infantilize the rest of the world by declaring they are incapable of such great evils as slavery, warfare, and genocide. These are an innocent, childlike people, according to the left.
It is only the West that is capable of evil, so goes that view.
The Benin Bronzes are exemplary of the inaccuracy of this outlook.
The Oba probably laughed, shook his head in disbelief, and gladly took back the Benin Bronzes his ancestors departed with, having secured a tremendous deal.
His ancestors got their slaves, he got the sculptures back, and the Western world, in all its stupidity, probably felt like it was doing a good thing.
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