Ash heap of history

{{Short description|English phrase}}

File:Final Video.webm, 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. ]]

The phrase "ash heap of history",{{efn|Alternatively: "dustbin of history", "dust heap of history", "trash heap of history", "garbage heap of history", and "ashcan of history".{{cite news|last1=Safire|first1=William|title=On Language; Dust Heaps of History|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/magazine/on-language-dust-heaps-of-history.html|access-date=13 March 2016|work=The New York Times|date=16 October 1983}}}} is a derogatory metaphoric reference to oblivion of things no longer relevant.

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.'

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.{{cite web|title=The What of History?|last=Liberman|first=Mark|work=Language Log| date=23 December 2011|access-date=23 December 2011|url= http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3654}}Sonne, Paul, {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20100604142521/http://www.oxonianreview.org/wp/the-dustbunnies-of-history/ "The Dustbunnies of History"]}}, The Oxonian Review 8 June 2009 • Issue 9.7. {{ISBN|978-0-571-22875-1}}Bertrand M. Patenade (2009) Stalin's Nemesis: The Exile and Murder of Leon Trotsky, Faber and Faber, pp. 193–194, 352. {{ISBN|978-0-571-22875-1}}{{citation |chapter= 11 Dictator in a Dumpster: Thoughts on History and Garbage |author= Maureen Healey |title= Experiments in Rethinking History |editor= Alun Munslow, Robert A. Rosenstone |edition= illustrated |publisher= Routledge |year= 2004 |isbn= 978-0-415-30146-6 |page= 225 |chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=1I4eB-nBhIcC&q=you+are+bankrupts.+Your+role+is+played+out.+Go+where+you+belong+from+now+on%E2%80%94into+the+dustbin+of+history&pg=PA225 }}{{efn|Trotsky actually said "на свалку истории", "to the dump of history".}}

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".{{cite web | last = Pipes | first = Richard|title=Ash Heap of History: President Reagan's Westminster Address 20 Years Later|date=3 June 2002|url=http://www.reagansheritage.org/reagan/html/reagan_panel_pipes.shtml|publisher=Heritage Foundation|access-date = 13 February 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130917063505/http://www.reagansheritage.org/reagan/html/reagan_panel_pipes.shtml|archive-date=17 September 2013}} 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.”{{Cite web |date=September 27, 2023 |title=Ronald Reagan famously spoke of the 'ash heap of history.' So do several GOP candidates today |url=https://apnews.com/article/ronald-reagan-republican-debate-election-2024-ce3d776fdd26bd23b3b9b7fe49e376af |access-date=November 27, 2024 |website=AP News |language=en}}