Melt them down and use the bronze to roof mosques.
Don’t forget the military aviation preservation group that once called itself the Confederate Air Force but decided on a name change.
“In November 2000, the group voted to rename, using the initials “CAF” until a permanent name was selected.[1] Following a 2001 membership vote, the group changed its name to “Commemorative Air Force,” effective January 1, 2002.[4] Many felt the name Confederate Air Force was confusing, did not accurately reflect the purpose of the organization, and was detrimental to fundraising efforts.[18] According to CAF chief of staff Ray Kinney, “In many people’s minds, the word ‘confederacy’ brings up the image of slavery and discrimination. We, in no way, are associated with that kind of stuff. So, it gives us, in a way, a black eye.””
So yes, times change. The CAF’s mission doesn’t seem to have been negatively affected by its renaming. If military bases named after Confederates are renamed I doubt that will affect military readiness. Removing/moving statues of Confederate figures out of the public square won’t “erase history”. We’ll get on just fine.
A great post. Names and symbols and icons and statues and imagery definitely have meanings.
Good point. I always found that name confusing.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Irish poet Yeats wrote this in 1919 toward the end of the H1N1 pandemic that infected about a third of the people in the world and killed at least 50,000,000 people He published it in 1920, one hundred years ago, in the midst of the Irish Revolution.
Now look about at the USA – presently a massively powerful but racially divided and politically failed state led by the fascist laughing stock of the first world.
Why has the USA failed? Just as with Yeats’ Ireland, it comes down having a societal norm of bigotry used by those in power to control those not in power to justify social, economic and political inequity, including the violent use of raw power.
What the American bigots are facing right now is their fear that just as their heros of their revolution against the USA failed miserably, their ongoing insistence on the continued normalization of racist beliefs and behaviours is also doomed to ignominious failure.
Racism was evil 160 years ago when the south was convincing itself of its righteous cause prior its failed attempt to secede, and in case you have not noticed, that same racism it is still evil today. Although the south was militarily crushed, the southerners’ racist beliefs were not, such that blacks continued to suffer under the heels of southern-white social, political and economic power despite no longer formally being slaves.
Racism is at the core of Confederate culture, and is endemic throughout the once-Confederate states. Just because southern bigots have pride in their culture does not justify their maintaining their bigotry. They must learn to accept that bigotry is evil, despite it being a proud family tradition for hundreds of years.
Just because they find acceptance, respect and communion with their bigoted families and friends does not justify their maintaining their bigotry.
Just because they find stability and status in their material culture, such as their war flag that was re-popularized starting in 1948 when the segregationist Dixiecrats broke from the civil rights proposing Democrats, does not justify their maintaining their bigotry.
Quite simply, the symbols, artefacts and monuments so cherished by so many southerners are nothing more than racist sacraments that remind decent people --particularly blacks whose families have suffered in every way imaginable under the bigots – of just how vile and dangerous the bigots are.
The noble south is a myth. The bigotry of southern whites and the incalculable harm they have caused is reality. Bigots must either deal with it or be dealt with, for as Yeats so effectively expressed it, “the centre cannot hold . . . . The ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
The governor of Virginia is dealing with it. For example, the centerpiece of Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the General Lee 21’ statute and 40’ plinth, is being removed. Here’s part of an interview by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of an articulate, mature black resident of Richmond:
I encourage bigots to take her words at face value. Recognize the validity of her feelings, and recognize their responsibility to stop hurting her by insisting that reminders of past and ongoing persecution and discrimination remain physically, economically and socially embedded at the core of the culture of which she remains on the periphery.
But still the bigots cling to their relic veneration of Stone Mountain, convincing themselves that they are not bigots, that their actions and inactions are not hurting innocent people who happen not to be white, and that such inferior people are too sensitive.
Fuck the racist war mongers who rode in on the backs of Blackjack, Traveler and Little Sorre, causing the deaths of about 620,000 people solely in the cause of bigotry. Fuck the bigots today who propagate their bigotry under the guise of patriotism. Fuck their mementos ad servitutis erected by the Mothers of the Confederacy in the 20th century to remind blacks of who is master and who is slave. Fuck their Klu Klux Clan shrine to bigotry, slavery and death at Stone Mountain. A pox be upon all of them.
And not just southern. I’m not attempting any false equivalences here, and certainly the pro-slavery South was objectively, catastrophically worse in that regard than the anti-slavery North (once the Northern colonies/states themselves actually got around to renouncing slavery, that is). But I don’t think we should let northern-white culture off the hook for its own racism and racist enabling of discriminatory structures like Jim Crow, school segregation, racist policing, etc.
Racism is at the core of white American culture, and is endemic throughout all American states. No, it’s not equally virulent everywhere, but it is systemic and it affects all of us. George Floyd wasn’t killed in a once-Confederate state.
Which ones are you talking about? The wall in DC of names who died in Vietnam? That memorial is in no way a celebration of the war. It’s supposed to look like a black scar. Many of those who died were forced to be there. It’s honoring the victims of fucked up government decisions. It’s a giant “we’re sorry” to those names.
I…I can’t even read the rest of your garbage post.
To bad. You might have learned something.
So what then is YOUR criteria for taking down statues, tearing down shrines, and closing museums and putting up others?
Museum venerating Hitler = Bad
Museum to Holocaust victims = Good
It’s not hard.
You are bang on target, Kimstu.
Lemur866 already provided a reasonable and workable set of criteria for this on the previous page, near the end of the 2017 iteration of this argument, which directly addresses your Vietnam example:
In short: Grieving the deaths of Confederate soldiers on behalf of the families and communities who lost them? Fine. Glorifying or celebrating the pro-treason, pro-slavery cause of the Confederacy itself? Not fine.
The rest of your post only makes it clear that you don’t really have a clear grasp of the distinction between the fundamental aims or issues over which a war is being fought, and the contemporary moral failings of the entities and individuals doing the fighting. Could we put up a statue to the memory of the black and Native American soldiers who fought against the US in the War of 1812 in order to defend their lives from slavery and conquest? Sure, that could be a very good thing. Was Britain fighting the US in the War of 1812 for altruistic reasons in order to protect black and Native American people? No, it sure as hell wasn’t. And so on through the rest of your examples.
Related to slavery and the issue here: “In Bristol, England BLM protestors pulled down the statue of slave trader Edward Colston and threw it in the harbor.”
Google maps now shows the former location of the statue, if the article was correct, Google maps was just changed again, that early change showing the statue being in the middle of harbor was likely due to Google vandalism. Kinda appropriate.
Actually I understand the Civil War VERY well and while yes, the war was over slavery, you cannot convince me the men in Pickett’s charge died for the rights to own slaves or Sherman marched to the sea because he just wanted to free the slaves.
Ok, so your saying a statue to Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson is bad. But then what about the museum for the Hunley?
And again. I am ok with a city removing a statue and then selling it or putting it in storage or whatever. Those things were put up some over 100 years ago and times change. Peoples heroes change. I think its wrong to tell people its ok to just go around and pull down statues to whomever they dont like.
Statues of a person (or naming a building/park/etc) is used to honor the person. Putting an object in a museum is to preserve history.
What running coach said. A museum and a monument are two different things.
Then I don’t think we’re really in disagreement. I’m not seeing anybody actually recommending illegal destruction or damage of statues by angry mobs, although a lot of people are not unreasonably expressing sympathy for the understandable frustration of the protestors who are engaging in such illegal acts.
Look at posts 402 and 417 above and tell me nobody is advocating random destruction.
I live in Johnson County Kansas. People moved here for decades making it one of the best areas to live in the midwest and had no problem with the name until recently they found out that Johnson was a former slave trader and now they are demanding the name be changed.
See, it wont stop.
Oh no! The name of a county might change! How horrible!
My post 417 in no way was promoting random destruction. I was advocating deliberate, targeted destruction of a memorial to traitors.
Are you proud of living in a county named for a slave trader?
I live in King County, WA, named after an obscure politician. Recently it was renamed King County, after MLK. Logos were changed to include his picture. Everybody’s happy.
(To be that person, he was the VP of the US. The thought was if they named bigger counties for the President and VP, it might help usher in statehood faster). But for the most part the name change went very smoothly.
Did they really have no trouble with the name? or were you just not listening to the people who had trouble with the name until now?