I'm looking at things from what I believe to be a different angle. What if the destruction of things that people deem offensive to be a type of"Tabula Rasa" which is to the epistemological idea that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that therefore all knowledge comes from experience or perception. Aristotle writes about this in De anima (On the Soul), in the 4th century bce. If you erase/destroy all alternative experiences and ideas to what is not conguent to the official accepted narrative, you have a population of people who are willing to believe everything those in power show or tell them. It's in the Marxist hand book with Marx, Mao Tse Tung (and some would also argue Antifa) using this technique to bolster their followers.

If you want to go back even further in time, you can go back as far as the Egyptians who destroyed the name and likeness of anyone that they disagreed with from the statues and monuments. I don't see any difference with Egypt and what is happening in the US over the last little while.