This only makes sense if you’re selective about public opinion and assume only rich donors want the statue to remain.
Is there any evidence that the majority of small donors give a shit either way?
Tearing down historical monuments because you don’t like their message is no different from Al Qaida destroying Buddhist statues or ISIS destroying Babylonian artifacts. It’s bad. Not quite Hitler bad, but not like anybody you want to be. We’re better than this.
If it’s done by a mob, then yes. If it’s done by the same institution that put it up in the first place, then no.
A shitty bronze of Cecil Rhodes is not quite the same as Petra. But I agree that in any case the statue should not be destroyed, just moved.
Actually, it’s completely different. No one’s proposing to remove the statue as attack on Christianity or whiteness.
Further, the Rhodes statue is from 1908, it’s not an ancient artifact.
Lastly, there’s no need to destroy it, it can merely be relocated.
The dead hand of the past needn’t compel us to accept the status quo for its own sake. We can make our own decisions in the here and now as to what messages should be endorsed by a major university, and which should not.
I wouldn’t have a problem with being one of the East Germans who removed statues of Lenin after the reunification. Would you?
Or an Iraqi who tore down a statute of Saddam.
Absolutely. There’s no obligation to keep something like that in place, just because it’s been there for a while.
Of note: in Germany, the head of a Lenin statue was just excavated and placed…in a “museum exhibit of key figures that played a role in Germany’s turbulent history”.](Granite head of Lenin unearthed for new Berlin exhibition | Vladimir Lenin | The Guardian) The Communist occupation isn’t being scrubbed from German history, it’s simply not celebrated or honored.
Seems like a fine model for Oxford, Georgia, and the rest to follow.
The other side of this being, just because a statue is up, it has to stay there forever? There’s no reason why present culture cannot remove something they consider offensive, for any reason, if its their statue.
Of course, but ‘present culture’ to my understanding doesn’t want it to go, so that’s moot. It might change at some point in the future of course and that’s fair enough.
To those who have suggested they ‘just relocate’ the statue…relocate it to where, exactly? What other public place would be less obnoxious to people than at Oriel?
The University Parks? Some dusty corner of the Ashmolean?
One of the university’s museums, perhaps? Where the context is an exhibit about Rhodes, as opposed to a statue proclaiming what a great guy he was.
I’m sure lots of people want the statue to remain who are not donors, or not rich, or neither rich nor donors. But Oriel had been quite clear: the statue stays to protect the big donations. That’s the sole reason they gave. Not popular opinion, not the rights and wins of the matter, just the risk of losing the cash.
I agree it should come down in South Africa, absolutely, and elsewhere in Africa, but in the UK? Absolutely not.
Would you mind elaborating on why you hold this view?
Yes, unless there’s a statue of limitations. (b’DOOM kssh)
There are plenty of statues of Mao still standing in China. Theres a rather famous one in Shanghai where is peering directly across at the massive skyscrapers of banks and insurance companies across the river. The irony is somewhat evident.
And yes the statue should stay. If we are going to remove statues of “problematic” historical figures we’d also have to remove Queen Victoria and many others. Nope.
I don’t know about Mao, but Stalin is still very popular in Russia (and even more so Georgia, actually), so I would imagine there are still a lot of statues of him around.
And here’s a statue of Hitler:
So yes there are still statues of Mao, Stalin and Hitler. Theres also a massive statue of Genghis Khan in Mongolia even though he killed millions of people.
An interesting and funny video about heroes and statues in which Rodhes’ one is mentioned.