Georgia has its share of controversial monuments. They embrace Stone Mountain, which has America’s largest Confederate memorial carved into its aspect. And till final week the state was dwelling to the Georgia Guidestones, sometimes called “America’s Stonehenge” (to not be confused with an attraction with that identify in Salem, New Hampshire). Located about 100 miles (160km) north-east of Atlanta, the 19-foot (six-metre) landmark had messages sandblasted onto its granite surfaces in a dozen languages, together with English and Babylonian cuneiform. It additionally served as a sundial and an astronomical calendar.
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In the pre-dawn hours of July sixth a shadowy determine, caught in a grainy picture on digital camera, apparently planted an explosive machine on the website of the Guidestones and broken them. Authorities ordered the remnants destroyed, involved that the unstable construction may collapse on investigators. They have but to establish any suspects, however an area prosecutor described the assault as an “act of domestic terrorism”. The perpetrators face a minimal of 20 years in jail.
Although the most recent thriller is discovering out who bombed them, the Georgia Guidestones have been an enigma since their inception. In 1979 a person utilizing the pseudonym Robert C. Christian commissioned the monument on behalf of a “small group of Americans who believe in God”. Many conspiracy theorists got here to consider that the Guidestones had been the work of an evil cabal bent on controlling the world: inscriptions on the stones included what appeared like commandments, equivalent to “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature”.
Others merely noticed the monument as a testomony to the abilities of the craftsmen of close by Elberton, the self-proclaimed “granite capital of the world”. Still others noticed the Guidestones as nothing greater than a wacky roadside curiosity.
Those who subscribe to sinister notions concerning the stones had been as soon as largely confined to the fringes. Now they are often discovered amongst politicians (a lot of whom have additionally embraced different conspiracy theories, together with the concept the 2020 presidential election was stolen). Earlier this yr one candidate for governor made it a part of her platform to destroy the “satanic” stones; Kandiss Taylor finally misplaced the Georgia Republican main in May with solely 3.4% of the vote, however the latest occasions have pushed her into the highlight once more.
In an interview with Alex Jones, a infamous conspiracy theorist, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a controversial Republican congresswoman from Georgia, stated that the stones known as for “population control”, a coverage she linked to the “hard left”. Whether or not the bomber of the Guidestones purchased into such fantasies, the influence of the monument’s destruction might be all too actual. Elberton has misplaced its “Stonehenge”—and an eccentric vacationer attraction that every yr lured 1000’s of intrigued guests from around the globe.