There is a difference. The former Soviet “republics” were (arguably) occupied by USSR and Stalin/Stalinism were a foreign influence.
A better analogy would be removal of monuments to Stalin in Russia itself - which mostly happened during communist era some time after his death, not after the fall of the Soviet Union, AFAIK. And yes, I feel similarly about that. Removing monuments to Stalin not only did not remove the Stalinist influences/ideology, but nostalgia and reverence for Stalin and his time is growing in Russia today. Removing statues is silly and didn’t prevent that.
All I know is, if my mom had been kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in one of Stalin’s purges, I’d’ve been stoked to see that motherfucker’s statue toppled.
I’ve spent most of my life in the south. Mostly in the Deep South. And I’ve never come across a “southern pride” monument. What is memoralized in such a monument? A big platter of fried chicken?
Robert E. Lee doesn’t make me proud of being a Southerner. Nor does he make me have warm and fuzzy feelings about Virginia, where I currently live. What his monument does do is remind me that I’m surrounded by people who have been raised to view the Confederacy and its principles in a soft forgiving light. And that makes me feel uneasy. If I can’t trust someone to know that the Confederacy was founded on white supremacy and the subjegation of black people and that these notions still linger today, why should I not be aloof and suspicious around them? Why is it fair to expect black people to be especially patriotic, when its clear they aren’t the ones with conflicting loyalties?
The footage from Charlottesvile makes me uneasy. I can’t help but to scan the angry faces to see if any of my coworkers are in that number.
It’s not fair to expect me to let go of my paranoia and weariness for the sake of unity, when the symbols being fought over literally represent disunity. Conservatives love to preach against the divisveness of the left’s identity politics. It is about time they listen to their own advice.
I insist we don’t need monuments to Confederate generals to remember the Civil War or the causes of it If we want to memoralize the evils, we can turn plantation houses and slave auction houses into museums or something. But a monument to a general doesn’t showcase evil. It glorifies it. And I also think it would be great if we could begin the process of forgetting. As a country, we’ve had eleventy billion wars–quite a few which have been collosal acts of hubris and embarrassment. If it’s okay to let those incidents fade from our collective memory (outside the walls of academia), why not give ourselves the opportunity to do the same for the Civil War? Once we do that, maybe then we can discuss the thing dispassionately and objectively.
So you’re okay with the concept of removing monuments, at least in some circumstances? If so, then the only disagreement is about which monuments can/should be removed. I assume you’d agree that there was nothing wrong with the Germans removing Nazi monuments and memorials after WWII? If not, then why is it wrong to remove Confederate memorials and monuments today?
Monuments celebrating treason and slavery should never have been permitted on American soil in the first place. After all, the secessionist states supposedly rejoined the United States. Melt them all down.
We all cheered when the Iraqis topped the statue of Saddam Hussein. As far as I know, there wasn’t a vote to do it. People just did it because they didn’t like Saddam or what he represented. And people like us thousands of miles away cheered, even though that statue didn’t mean a damn thing to us.
I love the artistry of the Robert E. Lee monument here in Richmond. But I would cheer if someone had the cajones to topple it, and I wouldn’t give a flying fuck what some self-professed “patriot” thought about it or my cheering. They aren’t the ones who have to look at that statue on their way to work everyday, and they aren’t the ones who have to deal with the negative feels.
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We all cheered when the Iraqis topped the statue of Saddam Hussein. As far as I know, there wasn’t a vote to do it. People just did it because they didn’t like Saddam or what he represented. And people like us thousands of miles away cheered, even though that statue didn’t mean a damn thing to us.
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Yeah, they just did it and yeah, many cheered. But I don’t think we want to model our own society after post-Saddam Iraq wrt such things. If we, as a society want to take the things down then down they will come. But it should be something more than the fiat whims of a bunch of angry folks. Don’t you think?
If we want angry folks to not tear down repugnant shit, we need to have a functional democracy. We don’t get to deny folks the right to fair representation and then complain when they dump the tea in the harbor.
We have a functional democracy though. You claim this isn’t so in North Carolina, but I only have your word for it that the democracy is so dysfunctional that the only recourse is to go hog wild and tear down monuments.
The wheels of progress grind slowly, but they do grind, and even in North Carolina if this is something the majority want then they will get their way. Think of how the south was 50 years ago and how it is today. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than it was 50 years ago? Well, that’s probably debatable, depending on who you are, but I’d say the answer is mainly yes. And in 10 years it will almost certainly be better than today. 50 years ago it would be unthinkable to tear down the old Confederate monuments for the majority of people. Today, it seems we are at or have already crossed over to where a majority are considering it, and considering it in light of actually doing it. I’ve seen politicians on the news from southern states saying, on TV and on the record, that they want to put forward initiatives to do so. Again…that would have been unheard of even a decade ago.
If you are right and North Carolina doesn’t have a functional democracy (:dubious:) at all, then that seems to be a better place to start than what is basically a mob tearing down some old Confederate statues and monuments. It’s not like tearing them down is going to make a dysfunctional democracy magically start working, after all.
No, I think that monuments celebrating the rape, torture, and murder of lack Americans at the whim of white Americans should come down, period. If racists and people who rely on racists to stay in power block taking them down by legal means, then they should come down by other means. If you don’t want ‘angry folks’ to do it, then stop working to keep them in place so that people don’t have to get angry about it.
That’s not what I said. I didn’t say there was no other recourse. However, if you have “only my word,” you need to tell me what specific thing I’ve said that you doubt. Do you doubt the racial gerrymandering? Do you doubt the state legislature’s removal of local folks to self-govern regarding these statues? What is it that you doubt?
If there is recourse, then that should be used. I guess I don’t understand your own point. If there is a functional democracy then use it. Functional democracy doesn’t mean ‘it does what I want when I want it too’, it means that it does what the majority of people want it to do. Timing is more tricky…just because there is a majority, doesn’t mean it will happen tomorrow. There has to be enough of a majority, and enough of a majority who care to actually make progress happen.
Do I doubt there is racial gerrymandering? I don’t doubt that there is gerrymandering of all kinds going on. I know that, in many cases, the Republicans have been pretty good at gerrymandering to give them a big advantage, and for whatever reasons the Democrats have been outmaneuvered for years on this, which is coming home to roost. Are some of that or even a lot of that racial? I’m sure it has been since clearly, minorities don’t usually vote Republican. But a majority is still a majority, and if a majority (which would include white voters in North Carolina too) want those statues down then down they will come. If it’s a slim majority of some white and some minority voters, then they will come down anyway…eventually. As I said, I don’t know that much about the vagaries of North Carolina politics, but I don’t like mobs and don’t approve of mob actions, even if I agree with the sentiment. I saw video of people pulling down that statue and, frankly, I was more than a bit dismayed by such actions, as I see a slippery slope. YMMV of course.
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No, I think that monuments celebrating the rape, torture, and murder of lack Americans at the whim of white Americans should come down, period. If racists and people who rely on racists to stay in power block taking them down by legal means, then they should come down by other means. If you don’t want ‘angry folks’ to do it, then stop working to keep them in place so that people don’t have to get angry about it.
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There are always a lot of angry folks. Are you good with all of the angry folks getting to run amok and tear down monuments they don’t approve of, or only those you approve of? And do you not see the issue with any of this?
We aren’t (or shouldn’t be anyway) a country governed by the whim of a mob of angry folks, and we have mechanisms in place to, eventually, make changes and right wrongs. There has been and continues to be a sea change in attitudes in the south. This has caused a backlash of those wanting to hold onto their racist and privileged ways, but it’s similar to the backlash by those same people on the wrong side of history who, when I was a kid, turned fire hoses and dogs on black school children trying to go to class. That was wrong, and those wrongs are still in the process of being righted, but there IS progress.
Nitpick: Cooper’s in office. I think you mean McCrory’s out of office.
There’s not a functional democracy right now, and the USSC more-or-less backs me up on this (inasmuch as they say the people in office now got there due to unconstitutional gerrymandering). The recourse is to wait around and to live under this messed-up regime. Or to make a deliberate strategic decision to engage in civil disobedience despite the antidemocratic legislature we’ve got.
Your “hog-wild” is insulting and inappropriate to describe people taking an action against white supremacy in the direct aftermath of the murder of a protestor against white supremacy.
Indeed. I’ll gently suggest that before you wag that finger at the folks who pulled down the statue, you change that.
Pride in the Confederacy isn’t pride in being tough. Pride in the Confederacy is pride in fighting for the right of white people to rape, torture, and murder black people on a whim. I don’t respect anyone who is in favor of glorifying the system of raping, torturing, and murdering black people, period. If they want my respect, they should take pride in the actual good stuff that the south has done, not try to glorify or whitewash the horrible things.
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Your “hog-wild” is insulting and inappropriate to describe people taking an action against white supremacy in the direct aftermath of the murder of a protestor against white supremacy.
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I saw the video. I saw another lady nearly get crushed by the statue. And I saw the crowd. I don’t care what the cause is…that shouldn’t be how things get done in the US. I won’t apologize for the fact that such things appall me, regardless of the cause.
I don’t see this as a viable protest against a woman killed by a crazy asshole white supremacist, nor do I see how this helps the cause in any way. I also don’t see how any of this fixed the problems you mentioned with politics in North Carolina.
This is like saying that because the US does stuff wrong they can’t criticize China for human rights violations. Sorry…I don’t buy that. I also don’t live in North Carolina, nor do I have any intention of doing so. If I DID, and if it bothered me then I’d get active in the political scene and try and make changes from within the system, not support people breaking the law simply because, this time, I agreed with their sentiment. Again…would you be good with other mobs doing other things that you didn’t agree with? If your answer is yes, then all well and good. But if, as I suspect your answer is no or it depends then perhaps you could try and see where I’m coming from.
Well, maybe that will work out for you and for those arrested in tearing down that statue. Sometimes civil disobedience works and a sea change can be made. Saw that in the 60’s. By and large, though, I think working within the system and making changes slow and steady, especially wrt public opinion, are the better way to go. I think the public reacts better to scenes of quiet protest, especially in the face of hostile censure than to scenes of mobs doing whatever, but that just may be me. Let me ask you think…was this ‘strategic decision’ helpful in rectifying the gerrymandering problem? Will it make substantial changes to how districts are drawn now that the statue is down? Is it going to enable black voters who have been disenfranchised from the system through nefarious means? Will it shift North Carolina politics to a more democratic footing? What’s the strategic pathway that these actions have allowed? All I see is a statue toppled by a mob, but maybe I’m missing the bigger picture here. It’s not a trick question or sarcastic…I don’t see it. You live there, help me see.