The attack on the portrait of Lord Balfour can be seen as part of a broader trend of tearing down statues of once-revered (and often still-revered) historical figures, a trend that reveals as much in whom it targets as in whom it does not. Take, for instance the statue of the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh that was erected in 2007, on the 80th anniversary of his solo flight across the Atlantic, in St. Louis, the city after which his aircraft was named. While Lindbergh was one of the most admired people in the U.S. in 1927, by 1941 his apologetics for Nazism, and his anti-Semitism, had put him in a bad odor.

The attack on the portrait of Lord Balfour can be seen as part of a broader trend of tearing down statues of once-revered (and often still-revered) historical figures, a trend that reveals as much in whom it targets as in whom it does not. Take, for instance the statue of the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh that was erected in 2007, on the 80th anniversary of his solo flight across the Atlantic, in St. Louis, the city after which his aircraft was named. While Lindbergh was one of the most admired people in the U.S. in 1927, by 1941 his apologetics for Nazism, and his anti-Semitism, had put him in a bad odor.