The symbol goes back hundreds of years before Hitler the reverse swastika is a Buddhist symbol the swastika used by the Nasties was taken from the Hindu’s and is supposed to be a symbol of good fortune.
Google origins of swastika
I was just in Kerala for a few days last month and they have Che Guevara / hammer and sickle iconography everywhere. Of course most of that is put up by the actual communist party, so it’s what you would expect.
Che iconography is also very popular in Latin America, and a lot of countries (notably, Russia, but many others) have large and influential Communist Parties which still use the hammer and sickle.
The obvious difference here is that people who use Communist iconography or Che Guevara pictures do so because we don’t think communism in general was a bad thing or that Che Guevara was a bad guy. Sorry to disappoint you, but there are people in the world who don’t share your value system.
On another note, do you have any names of any individuals that were ‘murdered’ by the ‘murderous thug’ Che Guevara? Jon Lee Anderson tried to find examples when writing his biography (and again, Anderson is not a hard leftist- just look at his more recent writings about Venezuela if you don’t believe me, he’s extremely anti-Chavez), of Guevara executing anyone who was very plausibly innocent, and had this to say:
"I have yet to find a single credible source pointing to a case where Che executed ‘an innocent’. Those persons executed by Guevara or on his orders were condemned for the usual crimes punishable by death at times of war or in its aftermath: desertion, treason or crimes such as rape, torture or murder….Che studied the evidence in each case with methodical care. The executed were all torturers and murderers of women and children. I should add that my research spanned five years, and included anti-Castro Cubans among the Cuban-American exile community in Miami and elsewhere.”
Yes, the post-1959 trials were hasty and probably not up to perfect procedure, but then that’s the case in most societies immediately after a war (look at France in 1945, for example), and plenty of trials in the US have procedural flaws too.
“Special permission” just means petititoning the local planning authority. In a case like this there is no reason to believe the authority will refuse permission.
Not in the U.K. Hell will freeze over before they even think about considering the case and then they will say no, there is also the cost involved
There is no fee for a listed building consent application. And Oxfordshire County Council has never declined a listed building consent request by an Oxford college, as far as I can tell.
Ah, so it’s the college itself that’s listed, not the statue. Makes sense.
If it were my child, I’d find that unacceptable. YMMV.
This is actually the opposite of whitewashing history. Putting up a statue to Rhodes and treating him like a great hero is the whitewash. Considering all the facts of history is revisionism, not whitewashing.
No one is proposing pretending that colonialism never happened. Instead, they are proposing that we stop honoring the colonialists, especially at a college with students from all over the world.
In theory. What’s your proposal, exactly?
That’s what history class is for. The statue isn’t part of any instruction, to my knowledge. It’s merely a statue honoring Rhodes.
To return to my earlier example: would you fault the East Germans who removed statues of Communist leaders in the same way? Why or why not?
Hard reflection and nuance can lead one to the belief that the statue should be removed. Try some of that reflection and nuance yourself, instead of tarring those who disagree as children throwing a tantrum.
My proposal earlier in the thread was to put an educational sign underneath the statue explaining why he’s a controversial figure. You can even embed a QR code / URL at the bottom of the sign going to complete essays on the subject that anyone can access with their phone.
or perhaps place a statue underneath him that expresses something of the atrocities of African colonialism. Lots of ways it can be turned into something educational without removing the statue.
To their unending discredit and shame. Communism killed more people in the 20th century than Fascism or any other ideology, and Che Guevera was a murderous revolutionary for the cause of enslaving millions of people.
No, because most of them were powerless peasants and unknowns. The fact of the matter is that Che personally shot people, and enjoyed doing it. There are many accounts of this in the historical record. He ordered many more shot for being ‘enemies of the revolution’. As you say, often summarily without any due process, and for crimes like opposing the Communist revolution or ‘treason’ (i.e. not playing ball with the Communists).
Have you forgotten that Che was the head of Castro’s secret police after the revolution? One of his first acts was to establish the first Soviet-style Gulag in Cuba, and many dissidents and undesirables were sentenced to hard labor in the prison camps he established.
And Che was no troubled humanitarian conflicted over the harsh measures required. He LOVED it. He enjoyed killing people who opposed the revolution. He thought hatred was a wonderful thing when directed at enemies of the revolution.
Anderson wrote his book while living in Cuba, and with the approval of the Cuban government. Many of his sources were people inside the Castro regime or family of Guevera. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the book a hagiography, but I also wouldn’t consider it the last word on Guevera. Not while so many other people who were actually there are still alive and strongly disagree with much of what’s in the book.
You’re seriously trying to equate the procedural flaws in American jurispudence with a totalitarian state that executed or sentenced to hard labor thousands of people whose only crimes were that they were dissidents? Unbelievable. Immediately after the revolution, La Cabaña and Santa Clara prisons were used to try and execute enemies of the state under the direct orders and personal attention of Che Guevera. Eyewitnesses said that he personally executed many of them with a pistol shot to the head. That goes a little beyond ‘procedural flaws’.
If you want to know what kind of person Guevera was, how about his own words? Here are some choice quotes from him:
His terror training camps were used to export terror and revolution to Central and South America, and trained such wonderful people as Carlos the Jackal.
Anyone who thinks Che is a hero is either ignorant or a fellow revolutionary who thinks it’s okay to kill, torture, or imprison a lot of people for the cause. Because that’s what Che believed, and that’s what he did.
That’s a reasonable compromise, if done properly. Anything that re-contextualizes the statue would be, whether the statue is physically moved or not.
You… shakes fist
Let’s be fair, keeping a controversial statue up is also a political move. So the question again is why should a statue, or any work of art, have the right to exist simply because its up?
With really old historical monuments, like Monk’s Mound, the people who lived there are pretty much gone. There is little, if any, living people to be offended by it, victims included. Thus its not a continual blight to the people who are alive, being reminded that their ancestors were tortured and sacrificed on top of it. It becomes a historical footnote, an oddity where modern people can marvel at with detached curiosity.
On the other hand, with things like confederate statues, there are many people still fighting that war now, only the war is being fought among the hearts and minds of its descendants, who trivialize their brutality and lionize their accomplishments. Because its relevant now, the continued upkeep of such a monument projects a message that affects people right now. I cannot see a statue of Robert E. Lee and think that’s a time in America where things happened but is a footnote now. Not with actual elected officials praising them, marginalizing minorities, taking away food stamps, and pretending that “states rights” stood for anything other than the right of states to own slaves. This is a current issue that’s being fought in the here and now, so damn right I want those statues destroyed for political reasons.
You would have to apply to get the statue unlisted
Communism and its symbolism will always get a pass from academia because it’s a far left ideology.
50 or so shot in Chicago during January. What statutes should we tear down or flags remove to stop inspiring these murderers?
I don’t know…is there a Sculpture Of Limitations?
What other statues in London should we tear down while we’re at it? Churchill was a great colonialist, after all. And so was Disraeli. And Victoria? Worst of the lot.
We’ll have a lot of empty plinths.
Nope, no disagreement
But you are making a judgement on the merit of art vs not-art. So, for instance, if the Rhodes statue was, instead, a mass-produced plastic Rhodes head, you’d be fine with that being destroyed? That’s the attitude I’m trying to unpack.
Even though they’re mass-produced artefacts created in a factory setting?
I’m against unfettered heritage protectionism, as well, BTW - I think the case must be made for each instance of protectionism, rather than the other way around being the default.
Then we will eventually drown in a sea of meritless historic artefacts (with attached plaques!), unable to create anything new of our own, because there will be no space to do so (and no bronze to do it with).
Churchill, it’s fair to say, has a fairly large sum on the credit side of the ledger what with the defeating of the Nazis and all. Disraeli had a fair few domestic and non-colonial achievements as PM and in government. Victoria was Head of State and they get statues by default.
What achievements of Rhodes stand alongside Disraeli’s, let alone Churchill? The only reason he got a statue is because he was extremely rich, and the only reason he was extremely rich is because he was good at shooting Africans and taking their land. There is literally nothing else to the man except racism and theft. Even *Cromwell *has a better claim to a statue than that and he was a military dictator who seized power from Parliament at swordpoint.
And, to reiterate, Rhodes views and actions were *not *unexceptional or run-of-the-mill by the standards of the time. He was recognised, criticised and condemned *at the time *as an extremist in his views on race, humanity and property rights, and for the means by which he put those views into practice.
Now, now, be fair…
…he was also good at shooting Boers and taking the land they’d taken from Africans.
I would like to take this opportunity to apologise wholeheartedly for my erroneous remarks.