Censorship...

[Doctor Cringelord]

the thought of people not being allowed to criticize religious ideologies scares me, especially when you consider that religions evolving and adapting to changing culture and morality has often been driven very much by strong critics both within and outside of those religions (Martin Luther, for instance, and also let's not forget a lot of the devout Hindu Ghandi's activism also involved him criticizing what he viewed to be outdated and/or unfair systems upheld by his religion).

Also if religious people are so secure in their beliefs and faith, why do some act so fragile when they see those beliefs questioned or criticized? They certainly have no problem voicing their beliefs even when those beliefs might involve criticisms or outright hostility toward people not sharing said beliefs. And if they're really in the right, why so threatened?

For all the handwaving about the right being the defenders of free speech now, well look at how guickly their ideas on censorship change whenever they become the dominant political force. For every Anita Sarkeesian the right criticizes (rightfully, IMO), there's also a Jack Thompson waiting in the wings.

 

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i love tearing down crappy ass statues of losers. Pikachu existed longer than the confederacy. Hell, Jar Jar binks is older.

I'm sorry if it triggers you and you were offended.

Do you consider Thomas Jefferson to be part of the confederacy? These hooligans are defacing war memorials to black soldiers and tearing down statues of abolitionists too. They defaced Lincoln’s Memorial. LINCOLN! They aren’t exactly selective are they? You expect a mob to show good judgement? They’re nothing more than anarchists and cretinous thugs. This is why people have had enough. Including me. You aren’t the arbiter of our history and neither is a gaggle of violent imbeciles.

This isn’t up for debate. You want a statue removed? Petition to have it removed like a civilized human being! This country has made it’s fair share of mistakes but it has it’s positives too. You can’t see that? Not my problem. I’m in no mood for any of your snarky shit today.

 

[Lark]

Do you consider Thomas Jefferson to be part of the confederacy? These hooligans are defacing war memorials to black soldiers and tearing down statues of abolitionists too. They defaced Lincoln’s Memorial. LINCOLN! They aren’t exactly selective are they? You expect a mob to show good judgement? They’re nothing more than anarchists and cretinous thugs. This is why people have had enough. Including me. You aren’t the arbiter of our history and neither is a gaggle of violent imbeciles.

This isn’t up for debate. You want a statue removed? Petition to have it removed like a civilized human being! This country has made it’s fair share of mistakes but it has it’s positives too. You can’t see that? Not my problem. I’m in no mood for any of your snarky shit today.

I find this sort of grand standing about statues to be ridiculous.

I'm more concerned about the anarchists and gaggle of violent imbeciles with badges who're murdering the people they're meant to be serving with impunity because lots of the population are STILL scared of black people.

I didnt hear about any of these statues being vandalized, especially not Lincoln, which I think would have made the news. So I think you're faking out on this one with your fake righteous indignation.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I find this sort of grand standing about statues to be ridiculous.

I'm more concerned about the anarchists and gaggle of violent imbeciles with badges who're murdering the people they're meant to be serving with impunity because lots of the population are STILL scared of black people.

I didnt hear about any of these statues being vandalized, especially not Lincoln, which I think would have made the news. So I think you're faking out on this one with your fake righteous indignation.

I hadn't heard anything about Lincoln, but I did hear something about a statue of a notable abolitionist being mistaken for a confederate and vandalized.

Ultimately though, whether we're vandalizing/removing statues of slaveowners or abolitionists, we're just attacking a symbol and while that in itself can be a powerful statement, it remains a superficial gesture if real change doesn't come with it. So I'm really less concerned with the statues than what happens later.

regarding the "they're destroying history" claim, I just don't understand that. If people start burning down libraries and books and museums, I might agree with the sentiment, but as it stands, we're just talking about a few statues that say little about actual history themselves. We can still read about Lee in countless books if so inclined to actually learn and preserve said history. Most of those statues tell a lot more about the history they of the period from 1876 to 1910 then they say about actual civil war history anyway, as most were erected after the war to capitalize on and encourage romanticism for the old south.

In many cities with monuments, most of the people who live there want the statues gone anyway. Most of those who protest their removal don't even live in these cities and likely never venture in in the first place. So I don't understand the uproar from people who don't have to look at these stautues everyday.

 

[anticlimatic]

I hadn't heard anything about Lincoln, but I did hear something about a statue of a notable abolitionist being mistaken for a confederate and vandalized. Ultimately though, whether we're vandalizing/removing statues of slaveowners or abolitionists, we're just attacking a symbol and while that in itself can be a powerful statement, it remains a superficial gesture if real change doesn't come with it. So I'm really less concerned with the statues than what happens later. regarding the "they're destroying history" claim, I just don't understand that. If people start burning down libraries and books and museums, I might agree with the sentiment, but as it stands, we're just talking about a few statues that say little about actual history themselves. We can still read about Lee in countless books if so inclined to actually learn and preserve said history. Most of those statues tell a lot more about the history they of the period from 1876 to 1910 then they say about actual civil war history anyway, as most were erected after the war to capitalize on and encourage romanticism for the old south. Here in Richmond, most of the people who live in the city want the statues gone anyway. Most of those who protest their removal don't even live in the city and likely never venture in in the first place. So I don't understand the uproar from people who don't have to look at these stautues everyday.

Vandalizing the Lincoln memorial during the riots was a hoax, but this is happening:

Calls grow to remove statue of Lincoln standing over freed black man in Boston | TheHill

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Vandalizing the Lincoln memorial during the riots was a hoax, but this is happening:

Calls grow to remove statue of Lincoln standing over freed black man in Boston | TheHill

yeah, I mean it seems like a misdirection of energy and sure to get a lot of people who may have otherwise been allies or indifferent against them. I mean Lincoln of all people? I'm not a fan of monuments, they're fun to look at from an art history perspective and to appreciate aestehetically, but people literally getting choked up over them I will never understand.

I think if there is a monument of John Quincy Adams somewhere that is attacked, I might have to draw a line. He was a vocal abolitionist at a time when being one didn't always guarantee political success. But even then, it's just a statue at the end of the day. I don't see how it would really diminish his legacy.

 

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I find this sort of grand standing about statues to be ridiculous.

I'm more concerned about the anarchists and gaggle of violent imbeciles with badges who're murdering the people they're meant to be serving with impunity because lots of the population are STILL scared of black people.

I didnt hear about any of these statues being vandalized, especially not Lincoln, which I think would have made the news. So I think you're faking out on this one with your fake righteous indignation.

Grandstanding? Fake indignation? Oh I guarantee my opinion on this matter is anything but disingenuous. Perhaps try not to dictate to me what my feelings are in the future.

Erasing history is a dangerous affair, Lark. I would think a self proclaimed intellectual such as yourself would appreciate the gravity of the situation. Destroying a statue isn’t simply the destruction of an inanimate object. Anymore than burning down someone’s house is simply destruction of property. Both hold so much more meaning and significance than the materials they’re made from.


Were you also worried about all the people killed in the rioting by rioters too, Lark? The widespread property damage? The looting? How many people died during the riots at the hands of the mob?

 

[ceecee]

This isn’t up for debate. You want a statue removed? Petition to have it removed like a civilized human being! This country has made it’s fair share of mistakes but it has it’s positives too. You can’t see that? Not my problem. I’m in no mood for any of your snarky shit today.

Confederate general Robert E. Lee In Charlottesville;

The City Council of Charlottesville, VA voted 3 to 2 in favor of its removal, along with a statue of Stonewall Jackson. Finding that for legal reasons it cannot be immediately removed, the Council had it shrouded in black on August 23, 2017; a judge ordered the shroud to be removed in February 2018.

So the people of the city wanted it removed, the city council put it to a vote to remove it and a judge ordered it removed. How much more acting like a civilized human being would you like? And if you think my issue is only with confederate generals, it's not.

This horribleness needs to gtfo right now.

7,000 people sign petition calling for takedown of Boston statue of Abraham Lincoln standing over freed slave on his knees - masslive.com

Does anyone really think black Americans need a historical reminder of slavery in a statue form anywhere in the country? Lack of statues will not erase that history I assure you.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Grandstanding? Fake indignation? Oh I guarantee my opinion on this matter is anything but disingenuous. Perhaps try not to dictate to me what my feelings are in the future.

Erasing history is a dangerous affair, Lark. I would think a self proclaimed intellectual such as yourself would appreciate the gravity of the situation. Destroying a statue isn’t simply the destruction of an inanimate object. Anymore than burning down someone’s house is simply destruction of property. Both hold so much more meaning and significance than the materials they’re made from.


Were you also worried about all the people killed in the rioting by rioters too, Lark? The widespread property damage? The looting? How many people died during the riots at the hands of the mob?

I am genuinely curious why you equate destroying/removing a statue with erasing history. I'm not trying to be confrontational, just to understand, because I haven't really gotten a good answer from anyone on this.

Like, I would call burning or censoring history books an attempt at erasing history. But what purpose in educating about history do statues serve that isn't better served by books and scholarly writings on history?

I don't know, maybe it's just a lingering thing from my days of studying Buddhism and impermanence. All of this is bound to rust or crumble eventually. Even the books.

 

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Confederate general Robert E. Lee In Charlottesville;



So the people of the city wanted it removed, the city council put it to a vote to remove it and a judge ordered it removed. How much more acting like a civilized human being would you like? And if you think my issue is only with concederate generals, it's not.

This horribleness needs to gtfo.

7,000 people sign petition calling for takedown of Boston statue of Abraham Lincoln standing over freed slave on his knees - masslive.com

Does anyone really think black Americans need a historical reminder of slavery in a statue form anywhere in the country?

Did I say I disagree with the removal of Confederate statues? It’s about the methods of removal employed ceecee. Mobs don’t care about legal process. That’s my point. Expecting a tornado to respect certain property is folly. This will end with everything being torn down if it isn’t reigned in.

 

[Coriolis]

I am genuinely curious why you equate destroying/removing a statue with erasing history. I'm not trying to be confrontational, just to understand, because I haven't really gotten a good answer from anyone on this.

Like, I would call burning or censoring history books an attempt at erasing history. But what purpose in educating about history do statues serve that isn't better served by books and scholarly writings on history?

Well, why was the statue erected in the first place, instead of a historical placard with text only? One alternative is to relocate the statues to a museum, where they can be accompanied by commentary giving their history and context.

 

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I am genuinely curious why you equate destroying/removing a statue with erasing history. I'm not trying to be confrontational, just to understand, because I haven't really gotten a good answer from anyone on this.

Like, I would call burning or censoring history books an attempt at erasing history. But what purpose in educating about history do statues serve that isn't better served by books and scholarly writings on history?

I don't know, maybe it's just a lingering thing from my days of studying Buddhism and impermanence. All of this is bound to rust or crumble eventually. Even the books.

Again it’s not the rule of law. It’s mob rules. And they’re destroying anything they think is racist. Thus abolitionist statues suffering the same fate as confederate ones. It’s indiscriminate.

This also leads to wider erasure of history, not just statues.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

And if we really care about the age of Columbus, where is the statue of Bartoleme de las Casas, the friar who wrote of the mistreatment of the Indians?

Do half of the people who are upset about columbus statues being removed even have more than a passing, grade school level understanding of the man and the period (probably informed by one of the many poorly researched history textbooks that often rely on popular, long debunked narratives rather than factual, first-hand accounts of the period)?

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Again it’s not the rule of law. It’s mob rules. And they’re destroying anything they think is racist. Thus abolitionist statues suffering the same fate as confederate ones. It’s indiscriminate.

This also leads to wider erasure of history, not just statues.

when they move to start banning history books or burning libraries, then I might understand and take your side on this. Has this happened yet though? How is it going to lead to a wider erasure of history?

Statues are one of the poorest representations of history and rarely have anything to do with firsthand accounts of the history and people that said statues glorify. We don't even really know what Columbus looked like. So a statue of him not only probably tells a false visual history of the man, if likely does nothing to offer the full picture of his life and exploits. I will add that I am not in the camp who thinks Columbus was pure evil (or pure good), I just appreciate a well-rounded view of the history that takes both the good (an inspired businessman with an entrepreneurial spirit) with the bad (an imperialist who wasn't above abusing natives to advance his own glory and reputation--he was essentially a privateer working for the Spanish gov't). In my experience growing up in the south, many of the same people who defend confederate and other memorials as "history" are often uninterested in any take or reading on history that does anything less than glorify those people as infallible saints and warriors. These people are acting as if these figures are deities. I don't buy the "protect muh history" defense. It's more about protecting their egos and preferred narratives.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

If these people who defend Lee and claim he wasn't all that bad are so serious, why didn't they move to erect statues of General Longstreet all over southern cities. This is one of the only major confederate generals who hasn't been turned into multiple monuments. I wonder why that might be (hint, read about what he did after the war)

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Well, why was the statue erected in the first place, instead of a historical placard with text only? One alternative is to relocate the statues to a museum, where they can be accompanied by commentary giving their history and context.

I don't even think a history museum is the place. Maybe an art history museum, since these statues say far more about the trends in art and aesthetic designs of the late 19th century than they say about what happened in 1863

 

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when they move to start banning history books or burning libraries, then I might understand and take your side on this. Has this happened yet though? How is it going to lead to a wider erasure of history?

Statues are one of the poorest representations of history and rarely have anything to do with firsthand accounts of the history and people said statues glorify.

When hasn’t it led to more than just statues being removed (through lawlessness)? When you’ve already stepped over the boundaries of legal behavior to pull down statues are you just going to stop at that? Why? If it doesn’t bother them to break one law it won’t bother them to break more.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

When hasn’t it led to more than just statues being removed (through lawlessness)? When you’ve already stepped over the boundaries of legal behavior to pull down statues are you just going to stop at that? Why? If it doesn’t bother them to break one law it won’t bother them to break more.

But as ceecee already noted, people have been trying to pursue peaceful, lawful means of removing these statues for years. Often with majority support in their communities, only for it to be stricken down by single judges.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Why was there no move to erect statues of these guys across America? Surely they are just as important to the story of their respective periods as are Columbus and Lee, right? Statues ARE history, no? So why tell only a partial version of history with statues of only certain important players in said history?

Bartolome de las Casas - Wikipedia

Las Casas initially participated in, but eventually felt compelled to oppose, the abuses committed by colonists against the Native Americans.[3] As a result, in 1515 he gave up his Indian slaves and encomienda, and advocated, before King Charles I of Spain, on behalf of rights for the natives. In his early writings, he advocated the use of African slaves instead of Natives in the West Indian colonies but did so without knowing that the Portuguese were carrying out "brutal and unjust wars in the name of spreading the faith".[4] Later in life, he retracted this position, as he regarded both forms of slavery as equally wrong.[5]

James Longstreet - Wikipedia

Longstreet was one of a small group of former Confederate generals, including James L. Alcorn and William Mahone, to join or ally with the nationally dominant Republican Party during the Reconstruction era. He endorsed Grant for president in the election of 1868, attended his inauguration ceremonies in Washington, D.C., and six days later was appointed by Grant as surveyor of customs in New Orleans. For these acts he lost favor with many white Southerners.

A major element of the Lost Cause movement, aside from attacking Longstreet's war record, was the idea that the central cause of the Civil War was the protection of states' rights, not slavery. Responding to such arguments, Longstreet once remarked, "I never heard of any other cause of the quarrel than slavery."

In April 1873, Longstreet dispatched a police force under Colonel Theodore W. DeKlyne to the Louisiana town of Colfax to help the local government and its majority-black supporters defend themselves against an insurrection by white supremacists. DeKlyne did not arrive until April 14, one day after the Colfax massacre. By then, his men's task consisted mainly of burying the bodies of blacks who had been killed and attempting to arrest the culprits.[210] During protests of election irregularities in 1874, referred to as the Battle of Liberty Place, an armed force of 8,400 members of the anti-Reconstructionist White League advanced on the State House in New Orleans, which was the capitol of Louisiana at the time, after Republican William Pitt Kellogg was declared the winner of a close and heavily-disputed gubernatorial election. Longstreet commanded a force of 3,600 Metropolitan Police, city policemen, and African-American militia troops, armed with two Gatling guns and a battery of artillery. He rode to meet the protesters but was pulled from his horse, shot by a spent bullet, and taken prisoner. The White League charged, causing many of Longstreet's men to flee or surrender. There were total casualties of 38 killed and 79 wounded. Federal troops sent by President Grant were required to restore order. Longstreet's use of armed black troops during the disturbances increased the denunciations by anti-Reconstructionist and former Southern Confederates.[211] At the same time, Longstreet became popular with Northerners, who thought highly of his support for Reconstruction and praise for General Grant. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, Longstreet often gave speeches in the North, many of them in the presence of Union veterans, and he was received favorably.

A "reconstructed rebel", Longstreet embraced equal rights for blacks, unification of the nation, and Reconstruction,[222] After Longstreet died, his widow Helen Dortch Longstreet, published Lee and Longstreet at High Tide in his defense and stated that "the South was seditiously taught to believe that the Federal Victory was wholly the fortuitous outcome of the culpable disobedience of General Longstreet".

 

[Lark]

To be honest, if its anything in the US like it is in the UK the people complaining about the protection of statues are the same people who defund education/schools, libraries and literacy programmes, so they arent really that worried about the public knowing anything about history.

In the UK one of the hooligans that turned up to "defend" the statue of Churchill proceeded to urinate on the memorial of police officer killed defending parliament buildings from a lunatic armed with knives who wanted to stab dead politicians.