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Statues, Monuments, and When to Take Down or Leave Up Ones Dedicated To Flawed Historical Figures


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2 minutes ago, williamjm said:

There is a statue of George Washington in London if you wanted an example of someone who could have been regarded as a traitor to Britain.

Good to know. :)

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2 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

It's in the title, and I didn't say without redeeming qualities. The irony of basically accusing me of making something up then making something up about what I said in the next sentence.

And if you can look at the man who helped caused greater than 2 million deaths due to famine and not see him as monstrous, then yeah don't engage with me.

Apologies on the “flawed” comment. I missed that. I still disagree. Yes, he was partially responsible for the Bengal famine, but surely you can see a difference between deliberate starvation and the unanticipated results of poor organisation resulting from attempted protection of food reserves from the advancing enemy, particularly considering a number of other matters that were concerning him at the time.

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1 minute ago, Hereward said:

Apologies on the “flawed” comment. I missed that. I still disagree. Yes, he was partially responsible for the Bengal famine, but surely you can see a difference between deliberate starvation and the unanticipated results of poor organisation resulting from attempted protection of food reserves from the advancing enemy, particularly considering a number of other matters that were concerning him at the time.

The denial policy was not a result of "poor organization". British policy directly and with foresight caused much of the issues that caused the famine, no different than the Irish Potato Famine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study

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53 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

The denial policy was not a result of "poor organization". British policy directly and with foresight caused much of the issues that caused the famine, no different than the Irish Potato Famine.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study

OK, thanks for that. I concede the point that the famine was partially caused by indifference. And that’s shameful.

Still, without his leadership and moral stance, WWII would have been lost. Any memorial should surely prioritise that while, if necessary, still noting, appropriately, other factors?

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1 minute ago, Hereward said:

OK, thanks for that. I concede the point that the famine was partially caused by indifference. And that’s shameful.

Still, without his leadership and moral stance, WWII would have been lost. Any memorial should surely prioritise while, if necessary, still noting, appropriately, other factors?

The last time I looked WW2 was mainly won by the Soviet Union and the USA. 

Even if the UK had fallen the outcome would not have changed much.

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2 hours ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The last time I looked WW2 was mainly won by the Soviet Union and the USA. 

Even if the UK had fallen the outcome would not have changed much.

That’s ridiculous. If Britain had been defeated in 1940 Germany would have had control of the world’s largest navy, the Suez canal and India and the resulting raw materials of which it was short. The US wouldn’t even have joined the war, and if it had, it would have had no way of doing so. Germany would have been able to devote its entire strength against the USSR, possibly with UK support, and the UK and the US would have had no means to supply the hundreds of thousands of tanks, trucks and weapons, plus food and oil, that the USSR relied on. Frankly, the accusation is offensive.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Wait, there isn't a Hitler Base in the U.K.? 

This is painful to hear. 

I’m not actually aware of any British army bases named after people, that seems to be an American thing.

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9 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The last time I looked WW2 was mainly won by the Soviet Union and the USA. 

Even if the UK had fallen the outcome would not have changed much.

Not to turn this into a completely different topic, but strongly disagree. Maybe you have some links to show this analysis.

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Jefferson

He was THE founding father of white supremacy, and THE founding father of protectionism for the slave breeding industry by which already Virginia's white political caste lived, and THE founding father of eugenics.

He profoundly betrayed both Washington and Adams. They were only two of the people he betrayed -- he also betrayed the people who he got to do his dirty work and dirty political tricks. He was a physical coward as well -- which nobody ever thought to suggest about either Washington and Adams. He was all together a despicable being.

As John Quincy Adams and Henry Adams both extensively documented, he was a lousy president, founding father of political parties, malicious, petty, dishonorable and utterly ignorant of finance.

I feel very differently about Washington, despite the ugliness of his behaviors as a slave owner. There was a slave who successfully escaped to New England; he never ceased trying to get her back, until the day he died.

 

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In chile, after the october 18 uprising, we removed allot of monuments and statues of spanish colonizers, and monuments and statues of military people that had a bad (to put it lightly) record with the popultation (massacress, human rights violations, etc.). And im in full support of removing these statues and monuments, cuz they weren't put there to be history (with context) or so we could remember our mistakes and the horros of colonization, they were put there for the exact oppostie reason. 

Edited to say that, i couldn't care less about the "possitive" that colonizers like pedro de valdivia or diego de almagro had to the spanish empire or culture. 

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1 hour ago, Ormond said:

At what point in American history exactly does being a "racist" per se disqualify one from any public recognition

O, say, just for starters, when he removed all the people of color from holding offices in the federal government, from which he proceded to officially prohibit the federal government from hiring people of color for anything -- except the post office, because white people deliver the mail to people of color.  That's for starters.

 

 

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25 minutes ago, Zorral said:

He was THE founding father of white supremacy, and THE founding father of protectionism for the slave breeding industry by which already Virginia's white political caste lived, and THE founding father of eugenics.

He profoundly betrayed both Washington and Adams. They were only two of the people he betrayed -- he also betrayed the people who he got to do his dirty work and dirty political tricks. He was a physical coward as well -- which nobody ever thought to suggest about either Washington and Adams. He was all together a despicable being.

As John Quincy Adams and Henry Adams both extensively documented, he was a lousy president, founding father of political parties, malicious, petty, dishonorable and utterly ignorant of finance.

I feel very differently about Washington, despite the ugliness of his behaviors as a slave owner. There was a slave who successfully escaped to New England; he never ceased trying to get her back, until the day he died.

 

He was a complicated guy. A Founding Father that hundreds perhaps thousands of scholars have devoted their lives to understanding his life, thoughts, accomplishments and yes, failures. The declaration of independence alone is worthy of a statue.

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That's a...complicated issue, to put it mildly. For starters, almost every person being commemorated in a statue was part of a society that was

- slave-owning
- deeply classist
- patriarchal
- warmongering

and the list goes on. And that's saying nothing of their personal failings - some of them were huge assholes on purely personal level. But the point was, they were part of deeply unfair societies, societies that shaped them and instilled values in them. Judging any of them in inseparable from judging a period they were born in, and pretty much any historical period was terrible by our standards.

Take Edward Colston, British merchant, philanthropist and politician whose statue was recently brought down in Bristol. Did he trade in slaves - absolutely. But did he live in a society which was perfectly fine with the concept of slavery - also absolutely. While not every British man and woman of 17th century was a slave trader, all of them profited from it. Slave work made them rich, or at least increased their standards of living. They all enjoyed products from slave plantations, and so no problem with it. There were no massive anti-slavery campaigns, or any widespread notion how horrible slavery is. The concept of universal human rights was nonexistent, and they probably saw slave trader the same way we see wine or silk trader today. And they weren't alone in that: pretty much everyone in the world thought slavery was a-okay: other European countries, China, India, African countries, pre-Columbian American civilizations etc. ... yeah, all of them engaged in slavery as well. So the toppling of a Colston statue is less of a judgement of him as a person, and more of a judgement of a period that he lived in. Even if you topple Colston's statue and replace it with another 17th century British(wo)man statue - the issue will remain the same. They might not have profited of slavery in the same direct manner that Colston did - but profit from slavery they did. And the same applies not only to 17th century Britain, but for 19th, 14th, 10th or 8th century Britain as well - each of them had its own set of deeply unfair or wrong ideologies. Needless to say - Britain is not alone in this: you could apply the same logic for every other country on earth too.

I'm certainly and definitely not saying that we should brush it off with "oh well, he was just a man of his times" and leave his statue standing. Each society has a right to name their own heroes and villains; and by 21st century British standard - Colston is not a hero deserving of statue. That much is clear. Nor it is about Confederate statues - which, frankly, I find rather ridiculous. Not only did Confederacy fight a war for the wrong reasons, but they also lost it. What exactly is there to celebrate or commemorate? In fact, the two most common examples discussed here and elsewhere (Colston & Confederacy statues) are the two that are pretty easy to judge, in my opinion.

What I'm saying is, that if you continue down that road, soon you'll find yourselves in a society with no statues at all. Soon you'll find examples that are a lot more complicated and nuanced than either Colston and Confederacy generals. Separating one person's great achievements from his flaws; and separating a person from the time and place he grew in is a hell of a lot of difficult job - way way harder than simplistic oh, we'll just remove all the statues of bad people and then we'll be swell idea so popular nowdays.

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5 minutes ago, Knight Of Winter said:

What I'm saying is, that if you continue down that road, soon you'll find yourselves in a society with no statues at all. 

So? Is there a valid purpose that they are serving other than draining funds from the municipality/government that pays for ongoing repair and upkeep?

This does not sound like a terrible world devoid of history that scolds warn of.

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32 minutes ago, Zorral said:

As John Quincy Adams and Henry Adams both extensively documented, he was a lousy president, founding father of political parties, malicious, petty, dishonorable and utterly ignorant of finance.

Actually, Jefferson almost always winds up in the top 5 of scholarly presidential rankings. It's amazing how many things about him were contradictory (including his relationship with John Adams), but there is no doubt he was brilliant.

More generally, the problem a lot of historical figures who have made the world (or at least some part of it) a better place have is that the things they fought against were defeated so completely that their importance has been forgotten today and we remember them more for what we currently consider to be wrong than we do for the changes they helped bring about.

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2 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

That's a...complicated issue, to put it mildly. For starters, almost every person being commemorated in a statue was part of a society that was

- slave-owning
- deeply classist
- patriarchal
- warmongering

Which is why the nation is founded in sin and so is the Constitution.  So we keep paying the moral, ethical and spiritual price and people continue to suffer profoundly from this, because we will NOT RECOGNIZE the truth, or recognize that this TRUTH matters.  In other words we keep turning ourselves inside out to deny the truth and go so far as to KILL people who want it recognized and the behaviors that are the system due to these truths changed.

Nor was Jefferson brilliant.  He was an indulged, selfish, narcissist asshole who destroyed nearly everything he touched, including killing his own wife by breeding her to death -- and o how he suffered from that! Couldn't marry again, but could indeed keep a secret mulatto concubine and father many children on her too.

I have been studying Jefferson and his documents and his works for many years and the more I learn of him the more I despise him.  I think he's in hell.

 

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1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Nor was Jefferson brilliant.  He was an indulged, selfish, narcissist asshole who destroyed nearly everything he touched, including killing his own wife by breeding her to death -- and o how he suffered from that! Couldn't marry again, but could indeed keep a secret mulatto concubine and father many children on her too.

I have been studying Jefferson and his documents and his works for many years and the more I learn of him the more I despise him.  I think he's in hell.

You left out how he left his estate in grave debt.  Jefferson is most certainly in hell if there is that silly sort of thing.  Doesn't mean he wasn't a genius, for all his faults in so so many ways.  I'm not sure how far you want to go with this.  If we're going to judge every historical actor by certain standards, then almost literally all of the DC monuments are going to have to be abolished.  Including the Capitol and the White House.

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Well pretty much everyone was monstrous in the past.  Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa, but also committed some major atrocities along the way. Same with Columbus. And pretty much every major historical war hero, politician or king.

It is preposterous to erase our history as a civilisation and start from scratch from a time deemed acceptable to modern sensibilities.

Keep statues of the monsters Caesar, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and everyone in between. None of then live up to our modern sensibilites.

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