What should we do with confederate monuments and statues?

Great Debates
121

…what?

Threads get godwinized precisely because people won’t stop talking about how awful Hitler was, even if there are, uh, no statues of Hitler in the town square; he’s not ‘purged’ by dint of not being celebrated, he’s constantly referenced.

You get that the folks who want to remove the statues of CSA types don’t want to purge mention of slavery from the historical record, right? That they in fact want to point out exactly how bad slavery was, maybe put up statues of people who liberated slaves? There’d be museum exhibits, and libraries chock full of books, and televised specials, and big-screen movies showing what happened back then?

Seriously, I have no idea what you’re on about. Who’s advocating for a purge?

122

Who’s advocating for a purge? Aren’t you reading this thread?

123

Well, maybe I missed it. I see folks who want the statues placed in museums; I see folks who want statues put up of those who struggled against injustice; I see a whole bunch of stuff, but that one eluded me and still does. Mea culpa, maybe.

Can anyone in this thread advocating for a purge kindly stand up and say so? I’ll wait.

124

So the Germans shouldn’t have taken down Nazi memorials?

125

Repeating and bolding for emphasis: “I don’t know much about Henry VIII or Charles Stuart statues…”

126

Oh, octopus is just employing that old tactic of aruging against extreme viewpoints as a means of ignoring common-sense ones.

It’s like if you and I started arguing with him about how terrible it is that his side wants to build 10,000 more statues of worship toward Confederates, slave owners, Nazis, and Klanners and sprinkle them all around the country.

127

OK, good, that’s progress. So you agree that the laws against doing that should be repealed?

128

Stone Mountain, Okrahoma?

Seeing as Lee is the primary figure, and that post-rebellion, Lee’s approach to solving the racism issue was to advocated for prohibiting one of the races from voting and also advocating for deporting them, it would be fitting to disenfranchise and deport the racists today.

Oh – wait a minute – I forgot that it was blacks to whom Lee was referring. My guess is that he being a particularly evil racist with the deaths of thousands upon thousands on his hands, would not like today’s racist whites to be held accountable, and that he would very much want to encourage the growth of racism in what were once the secessionist slave-holding states of the United States.

And yet here we now have a black women wanting to reduce racism, in part by removing racist shrines so as to make it more difficult for racists to gather and venerate their racist forebearers, including removing the racist shrine where the racists formed the Second KKK.

Taking away the key religious shrine from a fanatical and murderous cult is a big challenge, particularly when that cult has been supported by much of southern society for many generations and forms the base of the present stochastic terrorist in chief.

What is one to do, Okrahoma? Just what is one to do? I don’t think that you realize that the rebellion did not end in 1865. The rebellion is still being fought by the racists in 1915 when they founded the Second coming of the KKK at Lee’s shrine. The rebellion was still being found in the the 20s when the racists erected statutes of Lee and his ilk throughout the south. The rebellion was still being fought following the big fight against the German racists, when the head of the NAACP was assassinated and the governor and his fellow racists tried to outlaw the NAACP. The rebellion was still being fought by the segregationist racists in the 50s, including the racist governor who arranged for the state to purchase the racist shrine. The rebellion was still being fought by the racists in King’s day – they sure showed him, didn’t they Okrahoma. The rebellion is still being fought by the racists today, or perhaps you had not noticed. Here, watch this, Okrahoma, to help get yourself caught up on exactly what your patriotic racists have been up to recently. Watch every minute of it. Watch the murder. It’s been over a century and a half, and the rebellion is still being fought by the racists.

War has casualties. Seeing as the racists were and are not willing to stop their rebellion, their shrines will be casualties. Removing the racists’ shrines in Germany, among other anti-racist measures, has worked well. It is time to remove the racists’ shrines in the USA, including their mother of all shrines. Be thankful that some will be placed in museums.

129

There is also the issue of U.S. government veneration the Confederacy and Confederate generals:

130

"But you fuck one goat. . . "

131

As though they emitted some kind of knowledge. Knowledge that couldn’t be learned better elsewhere, like say, with books.

132

Moving shit to a museum is no purge. Please.
ETA: And even if the ridiculous monuments are shat upon, then destroyed, history will still be true and unpurged.

133

But I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he truly believes it?

Just you and me, here, octopus: I know about Benedict Arnold, even though there’s not a big fine statue to him in my hometown. They taught us about the guy in school, without ever once telling us to venerate him; and he’s in the history books, even if we didn’t celebrate Benedict Arnold Day; his life is a matter of public record, sure as he’s portrayed in museum exhibits and described in biographies; he’s not purged, is my point. He’s not commemorated, but he’s not purged.

Or – is he? Do you think he was? Is that what you think it is to be purged?

134

I don’t think Lee owned slaved because he was a race hater. He owned slaves because they were property, like horses. And he had those escaping slave whipped because he saw them as property.

Also he had no problem with blacks serving in the Confederate army and those who did, were paid in full. In contrast in the Union army black soldiers were only paid half.

Also at the time the state of Illinois had a law prohibiting blacks from living in their state, either free or slave.

Also Lee had a close personal servant who was yes, his slave, but also a close friend. I really do believe Lee was personally against slavery but so much of his personal wealth was tied up in slaves.

135

I really do believe that he was quite in favor of it.

136

The first sentence directly contradicts the second two. There is never anything but hatred in whipping people for attempting to seek their freedom from slavery. No matter what’s in his heart, those actions were incredibly hateful.

Cite?

Friendship requires free choice. There can be no “close friend” between master and slave.

LOL. Why bother trying to justify something as monstrous as this? He wasn’t against slavery, he was for it. He said it publicly.

137

I see what you did there. Also spellcheck :).

138

If you want to take the Confederate memorials down, should we distinguish? A lot of the memorials were mass produced crap, put out around the turn of the century and sold to the Daughters of the Confederacy, and its it’s probably no great loss to art if they’re destroyed. On the other hand, you also have the carving on Stone Mountain, which is the largest bas-relief in the world, and started by Gutzon Borglum, who went on to do Mount Rushmore and then was worked on by Augustus Lukeman, and finally finished in the 1950s by Walter Hancock, and Borglum, Lukeman, and Hancock were all great sculptors in their own right (Lukeman, among other things, did the reliefs on the Brooklyn Museum and the Kit Carson Monument and Hancock did the Pennsylvania Railroad WWII Memorial, the statue of James Madison at the Library of Congress and the relief of Christ in Majesty at the National Cathedral.)

And, for instance, you have Virginia Mourning Her Dead at VMI, in honor of the VMI cadets who died at the Battle of New Market, as well as the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery, both of which were done by Moses Ezekiel (who, as a VMI cadet, had been wounded at New Market). Ezekiel did the statue of Edgar Allen Poe at the University of Baltimore, the statue of Homer and the Jefferson Monument at UVA, as well as a lot of others, and was internationally honored, decorated and knighted by emperors of Italy and Germany for his art, as well as winning a bunch of prestigious art awards.

What I’m saying is that those pieces are works of art in themselves, and to destroy them seems like it would be a crime against art.

139

This is a reasonable distinction, and worth discussing. I still think even the fine-art Confederate monuments should be moved off of public property, but this is an entirely reasonable way to look at this, IMO.

140

Look, I got no problem with Art with a capital A. I don’t if we’re being honest give a wet fart what ultimately happens to the statues, as long as they’re no longer in a place of honor in our public spaces.

If some of them are good enough art to merit placement in an art museum, awesome. Put 'em there, and then just as people watch Triumph of the Will for its aesthetic merits, people can go check these sculptures out for theirs. That’s great.

But take them out of public spaces.