"Alt-right" Parading Ignorance, Stupidity, Malice, Etc.

[Brian Peacock]

It's not just 'a slap in the face for African American' either. This isn't just a White vs Black issue - though clear this is how it manifests in the media - it's an issue about honouring slavers and slavery in a country in which all people are declared equal. Lee's importance as a historical figure is that he willingly stood on the wrong side of the line, and lost. To honour him as some kind of hero is to honour what he stood for - a social-economic system dependent on the exploitation of labour as property, wholly built on the threat and actuality of extreme violence.

[JimC]

Well, I disagree. It is simply a historical statue - to remove it after all these years is PC revisionism. Having the confederate flag flying over a government building would be a better example of something clearly designed to say "fuck you, niggers".

[laklak]

That's "Running Dog Lacky of the Imperialist War Monger Oppressors of the Proletariat" to you.

I do understand the sentiment, but where to end it? There's already a bunch that wants to remove all references to Thomas Jefferson, because he owned slaves. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay owned slaves, though Franklin and Jay later supported abolition. Alexander Hamilton did not personally own slaves, but acted as a broker for his wife's family. Something like 40 or so signers of the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. Do we remove all statues, rename all universities (Washington and Lee, anyone?), all streets, cities, and even states, redesign the currency?

Lee never owned slaves, he was executor of his father in laws estate and the slaves came with it. According to the terms of his will, they were freed in 1862, 3 years before the end of the war. The same can be said for U.S. Grant, who managed his father in law's farm from 1854 to 1859, and used slave labor. Grant, though, personally owned one slave, who he freed in 1859, one more than Lee ever owned.

George Washington inherited 10 slaves when he was 11 years old, and at the time of his death there were 317 at Mount Vernon. 140 were personally owned by him, and were freed on his death, but 153 were "dower slaves" owned my Martha Washington's first husband's (Daniel Parke Curtis) estate. They were freed (somewhat illegally, if truth be told) in 1801. Interestingly enough, the father of Lee's wife, Mary Anna Curtis Lee, was George Washington Parke Curtis, who was the grandson of Martha Washington and Daniel Parke Curtis, and step-grandson of George. Since the "dower slaves" only accounted for 1/3 of Daniel Parke Curtis's slaves, I wonder if descendants of the 2/3 that weren't freed ended up owned by Lee's father in law, and were eventually freed by that racist scallywag, Marse Robert.

Is it not somewhat hypocritical to remove statues of Lee and leave Washington? I'm very interested to see what happens to Arlington National Cemetery, as Arlington House was Lee's home and is a designated Federal monument to....Robert E. Lee.

[pErvinalia]

Well, I disagree. It is simply a historical statue - to remove it after all these years is PC revisionism. Having the confederate flag flying over a government building would be a better example of something clearly designed to say "fuck you, niggers".

A statue is something that honours someone. Why would a modern society honour someone who fought on the side of slavery?

[pErvinalia]

Is it not somewhat hypocritical to remove statues of Lee and leave Washington?

I don't know anything about this Lee bloke, but wasn't Washington one of the nation's founding fathers? He deserves recognition for that.

[laklak]

Lee was a complex man, personally against both slavery and secession, but loyal first to his home state of Virginia and only second to the Union.

I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honour for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labour, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual Union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession: anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.
Letter to his son, G. W. Custis Lee (23 January 1861).

[laklak]

And this.

In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence.

Nuance, it ain't easy.

[pErvinalia]

Sure, but he fought on the losing side that was fighting to retain slavery. He made a choice, and a bad one. Why honour someone like that?

[JimC]

Historical monuments have a significance to the true history of a period. By all means, people should have a discussion about Lee, why a statue to him was commissioned, what the people of the South though of him etc, but getting rid of a piece of history just because the person symbolised had politics that are viewed as wrong today is vandalism, IMO. History exists, warts and all. As I tried to say earlier, that is very different to wanting a government building to stop flying the confederate flag, a purely modern decision by red-necked current politicians, not a pice of continuing history.

Edit - Springing from this, I guess you could argue that commissioning a statue of Lee today and wanting it to appear in public could be legitimately opposed (I'm assuming that the statue they want to get rid of dates back more than a hundred years, say...)

[pErvinalia]

He still exists in the history books. A statue shouldn't take precedence over the expectation of a civil and just society. I personally wouldn't care either way. It really about how African Americans feel about it. And that's something that you and I can't really empathise with.

[JimC]

I think that there are many other things which people concerned about the treatment of black people in America could be doing that are vastly more important than worrying about whether old statues might be causing angst. Removing historical monuments is revisionism, and I simply do not agree that it is a sensible move.

Having said that, I would suspect that the statue removal was simply a pretext for the right to have a Nazi style march, and their parade of hate in itself of course deserved a counter protest, not really to defend the statue removal, but to make it clear that red-neck racists are opposed by many.

[Animavore]

All I know is I would not be happy if someone tried put up a statue of Oliver Cromwell or King Billy in Dublin.
I know which side I take here.

[pErvinalia]

Removing a statue isn't "revisionism", Jim. It's removing a statue. The record of history doesn't change one bit by the removal of that statue.

[Hermit]

I do understand the sentiment, but where to end it?

How about at the point where people, slave owners or not, did not participate on the side of the slave-owning states of the most costly war in terms of lives lost the United States of America was ever involved in? I trust you are aware that the US has lost more lives during its civil war than in all subsequent ones combined. Roughly 2% of the population, an estimated 620,000 men, lost their lives in the line of duty.

It is also worth noting that moving a monument from a prominent public space to a less prominent one is not nearly equivalent to attempting to write Robert E. Lee out of history. Anybody who tries to rewrite it will quite rightly be laughed out of court. Not even Stalin succeeded, though he did try.

Removing historical monuments is revisionism

No, it's not. Firstly, the monument is not going to be destroyed. It's going to be moved to another, less in-your-face location. Secondly, revising history consists of rewriting history. Unless you know something I don't, moving a monument does not cause written history to change, documents to disappear or anything else to happen that can be called revisionism. Further, even if the monument were destroyed rather than moved, the underlying history would remain known.

[JimC]

All I know is I would not be happy if someone tried put up a statue of Oliver Cromwell or King Billy in Dublin.
I know which side I take here.

Which is quite a different matter to removing an existing historical one - if you read my earlier post, I indicated that adding flags or monuments to reviled historical figures now, for dodgy political reasons, could fairly be opposed. But there are heaps of statues around the world, erected in past times, of people now frowned upon. Should they all be torn down to usher in a bright, shiny future?