Launched today, the first political performance Non-fungible token (NFT) happens to be a video recording of the destruction of an ancient Nazi plaque in Lithuania. This destruction according to the press release is a way of opposing the Lithuanian government’s Holocaust warlords’ glorification.
In the last decades, the Lithuanian government in an attempt to glorify key figures in the Adolf Hitler Holocaust has created over 100 monuments of Nazi origin. Found in schools and streets, these monuments according to the press release glorifies Nazi criminals for their effort in the liberation of Lithuania, despite the mass-scale murder of over 210,000 Jews.
In a bid to show his irritation and disapproval of these monuments, Prof Stanislovas Tomas (Ph.D.) of multiethnic Lithuanian origin on April 8, 2019, with a sledgehammer destroyed the memorial plaque of Nazi warlord Jonas Norelka who ordered the killing of over 14,500 Jews from 1941 to 1943.
This destruction as expected has been condemned by most ethnic Lithuanians. Vilnius Capital mayor Remigijus Šimašius described the plaque as one Lithuanians of true origin can look up to with pride. Likening the destroyed plaque to the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, Šimašius urged native Lithuanians to forget Tomas’s name as the people of Ephesus forgot Herostratus the Greek arsonist responsible for the destruction of the Artemis Temple.
Making 13 strikes in 38 seconds with the sledgehammer, Prof Tomas managed to destroy the plaque which surprisingly was rebuilt in 10 days.
Having received multiple death threats from ethnic Lithuanians who see the plaque as a symbol of hope, Prof Tomas was arraigned in court and sentenced to 3 months in prison but secretly fled from the hands of Lithuanian police and is currently in an unknown location.
With the United Nations (UN) carrying out investigations and reassessing the 3 months prison sentence, over a thousand articles have been written by Neo-Nazi news outlets condemning the professor's action.
Currently available as NFT on the OpenSea marketplace, this video recording will not only gain traction and maybe justice for Prof Stanislovas Tomas but will become the very first political NFT to be launched on any marketplace.
With the OpenSea marketplace playing host to various NFT drops like the luxury watch auction reported by BTC Peers, it is becoming a go-to platform for all things NFT.