Ash heap of history

The phrase "ash heap of history",^[a] is a derogatory metaphoric reference to oblivion of things no longer relevant.^[1]

Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran and his prediction about Trump in "Ash heap of history", after his loss to Biden in the 2020 United States presidential election. Khamenei's prediction failed as Trump won the 2024 presidential election and became president.

In 1887 the English essayist Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) coined the term in his series of essays, "Obiter Dicta": that great dust heap called 'history.' ^[1]

A notable usage was that of the Russian Bolshevik Leon Trotsky referring to the Mensheviks: "Go where you belong from now on – into the dustbin of history!" as the Menshevik faction walked out of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 25 October 1917 in Petrograd.^{[2][3][4][5][b]}

In a speech to the British House of Commons, on 8 June 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan later responded that "freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history".^[6] The speech was written by Reagan's chief speechwriter, Anthony Dolan, who stated that they had deliberately echoed Trotsky's statement "to throw it back in the communists’ faces.”^[7]

See also

• Memory hole

Notes

1. Alternatively: "dustbin of history", "dust heap of history", "trash heap of history", "garbage heap of history", and "ashcan of history".^[1]
2. Trotsky actually said "на свалку истории", "to the dump of history".