A statue that shows a giant “thumb’s up” gesture crushing the Statue of Liberty’s head, mangling her crown, and cracking her face down the middle, has appeared on the National Mall. The site is close to the space a tongue-in-cheek salute to January 6 rioters materialized last October. The statue’s pedestal bears the legend “DICTATOR APPROVED” and quotes from Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong Un, and Jair Bolsonaro.
Nearby, a man who introduces himself as a security guard is posted up in a lawn chair a few feet away. He says he’s just “keeping the statue company.” Has he seen any reactions that might warrant a security response? Not necessarily, but the public’s response has been “pretty mixed,” he says.
The installation surely attracts its fair share of attention—just about every passerby stops to get a closer look, many posing for photos. One couple, a pair of vacationers from the United Kingdom, are drawn in by the display but seem hesitant to react; they say they just arrived in the US yesterday and are still feeling out “whether they’re allowed to have an opinion” on the state of our politics. Given what they’re seeing on British news channels lately, they suspect free speech in the States—especially among noncitizens—is increasingly restricted.
Like the January 6 statue, this statue has a permit, a National Park Service spokesperson tells Washingtonian. Here’s the seemingly not rigorously copyedited purpose of the statue, from the application:
Military parade on 6/14 will feature imagery similar to autocratic, oppressive regimes, i.e. N. Korea, Russia, and China, marching through DC. This statue will call attention to that imagery by linking our American traditions to freedom to the actually praising these types of oppressive leaders have given Donald Trump.
As is customary, the Park Service blacked out the names of the permittee in the permit it sent Washingtonian, but the document offers a few clues, if nothing dispositive, to who placed the statue. The file name of the document suggests the permit may have been issued to a group called the Veterans First Initiative. A government contractor by that name in Haymarket has not yet returned a call seeking comment, and the head of an advocacy group by that name in Ohio says it had nothing to do with the display.
Like the January 6 statue, which listed a co-producer on 2020’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, the permit for this one lists a movie-biz person as an on-site contact: Carol Flaisher, a veteran DC-area location scout who has worked on Philomena, Wedding Crashers, and True Lies, among many other films. Flaisher has not replied to a phone call or an email seeking comment. Julia Jimenez-Pyzik, who was listed on the January 6 statue’s application, told the Washington Post last year that her only involvement was helping to get the permit.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
