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Baltimore removes Confederate Monuments overnight

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Someone I know (which is odd considering we're not american) has been calling this 'PC Justice' and that its racist on facebook because they never took the pyramids down and there's still stuff the nazis built in germany.
 

Kin5290

Member
Hopefully they remove them and put them in a museum storeroom somewhere.

While they celebrate something bad, they are still a part of the United States history.
Most of them are not. Instead, they are alt-history, with most being erected decades after the fact (in the early 20th century) by Lost Causers trying to create a history far more sympathetic to the traitor cause.
 

Carn82

Member
Hopefully they remove them and put them in a museum storeroom somewhere.

While they celebrate something bad, they are still a part of the United States history.

They did something like that in Budapest, moved all the communist statues to a park outside the city and made it a museum.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
We must never forget our horrid, racist past, or we are doomed to repeat it.

We dont need to preserve every racist vanity project that comes along. Document, sure because we need to not forget the past but theres no need to put every single Confederate monument it in a museum so people can bask in the presence of a slaver traitor nation and its leaders. How many statues of Rommel are there in front of German courthouses? These monuments are garbage.
 

Nepenthe

Member
We must never forget our horrid, racist past, or we are doomed to repeat it.

Can't forget your racist past when your present is also racist. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Good on the city for getting this done. Don't care how the rest of them around the nation are removed-- "properly" or not-- so long as they all get torn down.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I looked at that list and saw that there was one in California. I thought "Not for long. I've got this." but then I saw that it's already been taken care of.
 

Amneisac

Member
I wonder how much OT these guys got paid to come out at a moments notice in the middle of the night and take apart statues. wish i could be a part of that life

Shit, I'd want some hazard pay, too. Who knows what crazy people might be camping around to "protect" those statues.
 
We must never forget our horrid, racist past, or we are doomed to repeat it.
We're not going to forget our past by destroying some, most, or even all of the hundreds upon hundreds of confederate monuments that exist. Books exist. Pictures exist. Videos exist.

Many of these monuments were produced so far after the Civil War and in such quantity that it's akin to suggesting we need to put every single modern day swastika flag in a museum. Monuments to the Confederacy are still being erected in the 21st century!

It's mass-produced racist trash.

Yes, some of them can go to a museum and serve as a reminder of our nation's continuing problem of white supremacy, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that these things need to be preserved.

They don't.

We'll never forget.
 
Seems like a simple proposition to me. Take it down yourself, or have others take it down for you. This subject has come up enough times now to give them a heads up, should they care.

The biggest question to me is what you'd do once you've taken it down yourself. Put it safely in a museum or whatever that frames it in its context, or perhaps auction it off to some wealthy bigot and use the funds to invest back in the community. The latter option even has the possibility some TV show picks it up and ritualistically wrecks it with a hammer.
 

Amneisac

Member
Seems like a simple proposition to me. Take it down yourself, or have others take it down for you. This subject has come up enough times now to give them a heads up, should they care.

The biggest question to me is what you'd do once you've taken it down yourself. Put it safely in a museum or whatever that frames it in its context, or perhaps auction it off to some wealthy bigot and use the funds to invest back in the community. The latter option even has the possibility some TV show picks it up and ritualistically wrecks it with a hammer.

In most cases these are being taken down by the same or similar organizations that put them up in the first place, not by the community/government.
 

TAJ

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
We're not going to forget our past by destroying some, most, or even all of the hundreds upon hundreds of confederate monuments that exist. Books exist. Pictures exist. Videos exist.

Many of these monuments were produced so far after the Civil War and in such quantity that it's akin to suggesting we need to put every single modern day swastika flag in a museum. Monuments to the Confederacy are still being erected in the 21st century!

It's mass-produced racist trash.

Yes, some of them can go to a museum and serve as a reminder of our nation's continuing problem of white supremacy, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that these things need to be preserved.

They don't.

We'll never forget.

I just saw that one went up in AZ in 2010 and another in 1999. Trash for a trash state.
 

Metal B

Member
We must never forget our horrid, racist past, or we are doomed to repeat it.
Take a note from us Germans. We don't have statues of Hitler or Nazi symbols staying around in public spaces. Instead we have art representing the horror of the regime and the victims. Why are there statues of the Confederates and not of slavery, racism or how the war was reaping you apart?

No surprise, that the American people forget their past and the land is still overall racist and reaping itself apart again. You already doomed yourself to repeat the same mistakes.
 

traveler

Not Wario
Book burning doesn't sit right with me either, but, like others have said, most of these might as well be memorabilia produced after the fact. I do think there should be a discussion around how to handle actual Confederate pieces to ensure we don't pull a library of alexandria, but most of these can go without a fuss.
 

cameron

Member
Well done. Respect to the night crew.

We're not going to forget our past by destroying some, most, or even all of the hundreds upon hundreds of confederate monuments that exist. Books exist. Pictures exist. Videos exist.

Many of these monuments were produced so far after the Civil War and in such quantity that it's akin to suggesting we need to put every single modern day swastika flag in a museum. Monuments to the Confederacy are still being erected in the 21st century!

It's mass-produced racist trash.

Yes, some of them can go to a museum and serve as a reminder of our nation's continuing problem of white supremacy, but do not fall into the trap of thinking that these things need to be preserved.

They don't.

We'll never forget.
The bolded, many times over. There's no need to keep / preserve every single one in storage.
 

Previous

check out my new Swatch
Fuck yeah Bmore!
These are Confederate monuments in goddamn Maryland, part of the union. These hold no historical significance beyond a reminder of white supremacy.
Tell that to all the idiots in Ocean City with giant confederate flags hanging off their pickup trucks.
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
Take a note from us Germans. We don't have statues of Hitler or Nazi symbols staying around in public spaces. Instead we have art representing the horror of the regime and the victims. Why are there statues of the Confederates and not of slavery, racism or how the war was reaping you apart?

No surprise, that the American people forget their past and the land is still overall racist and reaping itself apart again. You already doomed yourself to repeat the same mistakes.

This is exactly it.
 
Fantastic. Hope the rest of the state follows suit. We really didn't have that many (going by the list on wikipedia) but it's an embarrassment to even have any. Especially since we were part of the union.

Looks like the Taney statue here in Annapolis is now set to be removed as well. Can't happen quick enough.
 
If they want these statues up so bad, why doesn't the city make individuals pay for them to stay up..... and then donate their money to anti-racist causes!
 

Mirado

Member
Hopefully they remove them and put them in a museum storeroom somewhere.

While they celebrate something bad, they are still a part of the United States history.

Our founding fathers weren't concerned with history when they pulled down the 4,000 pound lead statue of King George III in Manhattan and melted it into musket balls to fire at the British, and a pile of cheaply made monuments of racists and traitors erected decades after the fact by a bunch of white supremacists in order to romanticize a period steeped in oppression aren't even worth a tenth of that.

Tear them down, melt them into a giant middle finger, and embed that shit in David Duke's yard.
 

Oriel

Member
Hopefully they remove them and put them in a museum storeroom somewhere.

While they celebrate something bad, they are still a part of the United States history.

Yeah, and I guess German cities should maintain statues of Nazis since they are a part of German history. Jesus H. Christ, history can be still taught and remembered without keeping statues in place of some vile human beings. Status are to commemorate individuals.
 

Amneisac

Member
destroying some confederate statues will hardly erase slavery from the textbooks especially in 2017 with the internet being what it is
You say that, yet look at the rise of Nazism barely 70 years after the fall of the reich.
Edit: was in a rush getting to work and misread content of your post so my post is a bit out of context rereading it.
 

EGM1966

Member
Good move and a good way to take them down without incident Trump and co can try and exploit.

I'm amazed they've lasted so long but it's clearly time for this weird element of post civil war discord to be put to bed officially.
 
I said it in another thread, but the biggest supporter of removing the statues is ironically Robert E Lee himself.

Also wtf, wasn't Baltimore on the Union side of being as Maryland was a border state?
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Fantastic. Good job, Baltimore.
Most of these monuments were raised during the Civil Rights movement to tell black people to know their place.
I just saw that one went up in AZ in 2010 and another in 1999. Trash for a trash state.
Wait what? What the fucking fuck? Good gods that's disgusting. People putting up monuments and statues to literal traitors to the US just out of sheer racism. Barf.
 
You say that, yet look at the rise of Nazism barely 70 years after the fall of the reich.
Are you trying to argue that the current rise in white supremacy is because we somehow forgot about the Holocaust because we don't have enough statues of Hitler and Goebbels hanging around to "remind" people of the Nazis?

Otherwise this doesn't address the point of that post at all.
 
Book burning doesn't sit right with me either, but, like others have said, most of these might as well be memorabilia produced after the fact. I do think there should be a discussion around how to handle actual Confederate pieces to ensure we don't pull a library of alexandria, but most of these can go without a fuss.

Please don't compare this to torching the fucking Library of Alexandria, even if it's just a hypothetical. I get where you're coming from, but just don't do that. That's an insane false equivalency.
 

libregkd

Member
http://www.wcjb.com/content/news/Confederate-statue-removed-from-downtown-Gainesville-440391033.html

The Daughters of the Confederacy or whatever organizations are in some cases preemptively removing the statues so they aren't destroyed. I don't know about Baltimore, but this being done so quickly doesn't really seem like something most governments could pull off. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same thing.
Yup this is exactly what happened with the sole Confederate monument in Los Angeles (a bit different than those pictured in the OP as this monument was located in a cemetery and was generally not even known to exist until there was a piece about it in the LA Times earlier this month).

Since 1925, the 6-foot monument has stood in the Confederate section of the cemetery, where more than 30 Confederate veterans, along with their families, are buried. The monument will be taken to a storage site within the next 24 hours, cemetery officials said, but the grave markers will remain.

On Tuesday, someone vandalized the granite boulder monument, Cassity said, using a black marker to write “No” across its bronze plaque.

Cassity said he reached out to the Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which owns the monument and ultimately made the decision to take it down to prevent further acts of vandalism. .

“I was afraid to leave it overnight,” said a spokeswoman for the organization, who asked that her name not be used for fear of reprisal. “We have had the cemetery remove it until we decide what to do.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-forever-monument-20170815-story.html

Also little known fact but there was a fear that Southern California would secede to join the Confederacy. While a majority of the state's population was in the Northern part of it and were sending troops to the Union, the vast majority of population of the Southern part, particularly Los Angeles, came from slave states. The Union clamped down and had forts setup around the Los Angeles area.
 
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