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AP: Deadly rally accelerates removal of Confederate statues

L

Lunar15

Member
I took a trip to Atlanta this past week and went to the big Oakland Cemetery where there's several confederate generals buried. The most eye opening (yet obvious in hindsight) thing was that the epitaphs described how many of these generals went on to become mayors, governors and even US Senators. It's one of those things where I feel like I knew this, but seeing it laid out with the context of all the shit that went down for blacks in the reconstruction era, a light-bulb went off.

The Civil War was a war where no one wanted to acknowledge why it was fought. Not the north, not the south. Let's just hurry up and do reparations already, Jesus Christ.
 
Nikodemos

Nikodemos

Member
Lunar15 said:
The Civil War was a war where no one wanted to acknowledge why it was fought. Not the north, not the south. Let's just hurry up and do reparations already, Jesus Christ.
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Not least because a lot of Northern politicians and generals were quite racist themselves. Their hatred of treason overrode their racism, but only for a short while.
 
K

Kinvara

Member
If anything these Confederate statues spread further misinformation about the Civil War. Tear them down.

balladofwindfishes said:
These aren't confederate statues. They are of confederates, but they are not from the Civil War, and do not honor the Civil War. They were erected during the Jim Crow era as a form of intimidation and to show African Americans who was still in charge of them.

They are more appropriate in a civil rights museum or a Jim Crow museum, but even so, these monuments are not made for historical significance or anything like that, and don't really matter if they're preserved or not since they don't provide context or historical information about the Civil War.
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I'm starting to think we need to have this disclaimer in every one of these threads but I doubt that would stop the "slippery slope" crew.
 
5

5taquitos

Member
As others have said before me, forcibly removing these statues is of far greater historical significance than what these statues represent.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
TatteredHat said:
Blow it up, hopefully. It's nothing but a modern monument to slavery and racism. There's no real historical value to it as it was only carved out about 100 years ago.

The more I read about these monuments, the more astonished I am at how okay the US is with celebrating their dark past. You don't see Germany leaving giant Nazi celebrating monuments up for display.
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It was because Reconstruction was sabotaged halfway through and then a new wave during the Civil Rights movements of installing Conderate monuments and imagery unchecked.
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
Lunar15 said:
I took a trip to Atlanta this past week and went to the big Oakland Cemetery where there's several confederate generals buried. The most eye opening (yet obvious in hindsight) thing was that the epitaphs described how many of these generals went on to become mayors, governors and even US Senators. It's one of those things where I feel like I knew this, but seeing it laid out with the context of all the shit that went down for blacks in the reconstruction era, a light-bulb went off.

The Civil War was a war where no one wanted to acknowledge why it was fought. Not the north, not the south. Let's just hurry up and do reparations already, Jesus Christ.
Click to expand...

This happened directly due to the nerfing of Reconstruction. All of the generals and machinators of the Civil War on the Confederate side were allowed to have power and rule right after the goddamn war. They of course quickly moved to solidify the Confederate worldview as much as they could.
 
O

Ozigizo

Member
Please remember that UDC is a racist organization:

"Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a Neo-Confederate group."
 
G

Geist-

Member
Vagabundo said:
TNT...
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giphy.gif
 
I

Ithil

Member
I believe a lot of people not particularly familiar with it are falling unwittingly for the "A big statue? That must be an important historical monument" thought and that's why you see people saying to put these all in a museum rather than tear them down.

I don't blame them for that, it's the standard reaction to statues, it's what we naturally expect of them.

These aren't historical, they're cheap mass produced trash put up by white supremacists during the 20th century to intimidate black people during Jim Crow era or during the Civil Rights movement. Very, very few are actually from the Civil War era. These don't have any place in a museum. Perhaps one of them crumpled and collapsed could be in a museum with pictures of the people who tore it down. That's actual history.

That instinctive reaction to a statue is exactly what these right wing folks are trying to bank on to protect their racist garbage, don't be fooled by it.
 
S

Skyball Paint

Member
DogDude said:
I'm not sure statues meant to honor after the fact even have musuem value.
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Why and when people choose to make statues says a lot from a historical perspective

Not that I would oppose melting these statues down, and creating memorials of more worthy individuals instead.
 
A

aspiegamer

Member
There are few single objects I could possibly hate more than confederate monuments. Tear them down, melt them, and throw them into the sun please. If not the sun, maybe drop them into the Fukushima reactors. Just some form where no one on earth can ever interact with even the remains of them ever again, please.
elrechazado said:
We can store them with the Joe Paterno statue
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Shit. One hunk of metal I do specifically hate more than your average confederate monument. Thankfully there aren't anywhere near as many Penn State apologists as modern-day confederates and white supremacists, though they all deserve a special place in hell.
 
S

ShadowSwordmaster

Banned
Fuchsdh said:
So maybe you might want to consider that your own view of the US and its problems compared to other countries is colored by the location you live and the news you consume?
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I'm pretty sure Nazis running around killing people and being helped by the police doesn't happen in a lot of countries.
 
P

PeskyToaster

Member
If they are historically significant, put them in a museum but many of them are statues put up in the last hundred years for the express purpose of keeping the dream alive, lost cause etc. etc. A historically significant statue is like the only known likeness of Alexander the Great or something.
 
I

IggyChooChoo

Member
tonysidaway said:
Wouldn't it be a terrible thing if something bad happened to this delightful statue of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, just off I-65 in Nashville.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-sign-nathan-bedford-forrest-statue/93429340/
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Many have considered this. The problem is that it's on private property, and access is difficult. The guy who put it up in the 90s supposedly helped defend James Earl Ray and was a member of the white citizens' council. Total fucking scumbag. The only good thing about it is how fucking hilariously stupid it looks. Such a self-own.
 
B

BlackGoku03

Member
otapnam said:
Pretty tired of people trashing the u.s. those idiots don't represent any of us
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I agree.

Trash the US but don't say they (Nazis/KKK) represent me. Not as a black man in the South. Not as someone who has to drive extra perfect so I won't get shot if I get pulled over. Not as someone who struggled to rent a house because anything Berkshire can do to not rent to a POC, they'll do it.

KKK desecrated my parent's house, spray painted it and broke stuff when I was a kid in the early 90s. Cops did nothing. Hardly cared. I didn't know what a KKK was before that and my dad had to explain that people hate me because I look different than them.

Fuck that.

Don't insult my intelligence by saying they represent me.
 
D

Dash_Riprock

Member
Kthulhu said:
We gave up halfway through reconstruction, Germany didn't.
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You're being VERY generous. Most of the policies were never even enacted thanks to Johnson.

Its like we raised our hand to begin the smackdown on the South but then stopped and slapped their wrist instead.
 
J

jviggy43

Member
otapnam said:
Pretty tired of people trashing the u.s. those idiots don't represent any of us
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Agree to disagree. Weve always been an incredibly racist and violent country. Hell we were founded on the most successful genocide of all time. Pretty much right out of the gates this was what the US stood for.
 
A

Angelus Errare

Banned
otapnam said:
Pretty tired of people trashing the u.s. those idiots don't represent any of us
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Sure as long as you ignore:

Slavery,
The civil war,
Failure of reconstruction,
Jim Crow,
Romanticising of the civil war,
"Heritage not hate",
Southern strategy and a major tenet of American conservative ideology,
Moderate America constant refusal to truly acknowledge the aforementioned and how it affects the country today
 
T

thebeeks

Banned
Tom Nook Sawyer said:
Had there been any talk of this yet?
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The idea gets brought up every few years, but the movement is small and tends to run out of steam.

But hey, now that shitcanning these statues is making national news, maybe something will actually become of it. There's a rally in Dallas this Saturday to stand in solidarity with Charlottesville and also to get try and get their confederate memorial removed. A Denton rally doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility.
 
G

GodParticle

Member
There's a statue of the old joe in our town square as well. I still think they should be relegated to a museum instead of being vandalized
 
W

WedgeX

Banned
Perhaps in response to Confederate statues coming down, someone vandalized the Lincoln Memorial today.

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/l...pray-Paint-440565873.html?cid=sm_npd_nn_fb_ma

Someone has vandalized the Lincoln Memorial, the National Park Service says.

The words "F--- law" were found written in red spray paint early Tuesday on a pillar at the monument that overlooks the Capitol building and National Mall, NPS said Tuesday afternoon. The graffiti was found about 4:30 a.m.

Work to remove the words is underway. A preservation crew is using a "mild, gel-type architectural paint stripper" to remove the paint without damaging the stone. The crew is applying a layer of the gel, rinsing it, checking how effective it was and repeating as necessary.
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