4 ms·

Are they revering figures from that side of the war, or are people seeing idolatry when others are simply observing historical landmarks? The distinction is qu

by belorn 6y ago

Are they revering figures from that side of the war, or are people seeing idolatry when others are simply observing historical landmarks? The distinction is quite significant. Every country is full of cultural and ritual symbols of the past, but few are actually celebrate for the original values that they once mark. To take an example of ritual, are people dancing around a may pole because they enjoy dancing or are they spinning around an erect phallus in order to impregnate mother earth? If a person go into an old church is it because the person is religious or are they a tourist looking at architecture? If you live in the southern part of the US, maybe they want objects that show that the southern has a history that stretches back further than what living people remember. Here in Sweden we have a designation called historical memory. Any object can be designated such status and once it has there is a bunch of law that exist to preserve them. The law does not care about the values behind the object. The purpose of the law is explicitly so that further generations may have access to memories of the past. Anything from a old house, a tree, a wreck, a whole in the ground, a stone, to whole living forests. Anything older than 1850 is automatically given this status, with younger objects being designated per case based on a large number of properties like historical/cultural significance and uniqueness. No one talks about revering those symbols, even if they come from past wars where people died.

ascotan 6y ago
I'd say that unlike a 'normal' war between countries this was a civil war. This was a brother vs. brother, father vs. son battle. Over 600,000 people died in what was pretty gruesome conditions (lead bullets, the first gattling gun, 23K people killed/wounded in a single day of fighting, etc.). Blood was spilled, homes were burned and not everyone agrees on who the 'heroes' and 'villians' were in this conflict. Most of the conflict was fought in the south. After the war, there was a need to bring together a divided nation. The divisions were not all territorial. The need to show the courage of the men who died and remember the fallen needed to be done before that generation passed away. Today the symbols of the south (the confederate flag, monuments, street names) are all reminders of many Americans that their parents struggled though slavery, abuse and poverty. Other Americans that don't have that legacy don't necessarily see the same things and I think the challenge that this article presents, is how to get some Americans to see these problems today. The sterotypes are not real. Not all southerners owned slaves, most were conscripted, many didn't want to be there, many were kind, many were courageous. I visited a statue of a southern solider that ran out into a hail of bullets to the rescue northern wounded in the "no mans land" and bring them to the northern lines. George Washington was a slave owner and so was Thomas Jefferson, both unarguably 2 of the most influential men in American history. But, as with so many things in life, the backstory is more complicated than the picture hanging on the wall. The civil war was and is a divisive issue. In my personal opinion, like in our own lives, we should recognize and acknowledge were we are wrong and strive to be better. We should also seek to make the future better place to live and leave the skeletons were they're buried. Digging them up will do few people any good.
- philistine 6y ago
  You are focusing on only one aspect of why the statues exist. There is another reason, insidious and evil, and people wish those statues to go not because of your reason, but because of this other evil one. Is a statue of a losing racist general erected long after the war was over as a counter against the fight for civil rights really a good way to honour soldiers? If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem. By this logic, we should tear down all statues, since it is impossible for a statue to "unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people".
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem. I'm not sure that even a statue of Gandhi could meet your standard.
- drewcoo 6y ago
  It's now been a generation since the Cold War ended. By this logic and pattern, we should erect statues to our nation's traitors during that time. To help bring the world together. Clearly that wouldn't be about slavery, but about "healing," right? Our Aldritch Ames statue and the statue of the unknown KGB mole can join world icons like the British Cambridge Five statue, Philby evasive even in statue form. No. Somehow that logic only "works" with the US Civil War, after which the United Daughters of the Confederacy waged a multi-generation propaganda campaign to convince us all that the war was not about slavery and that the south would rise again.
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Other countries have faced similar contradictory situations. The post-apartheid South Africans have completely failed to exterminate the white minority, there are still Hutus in Rwanda, and the German military was needed for a possible Soviet invasion. (Wait, that last isn't a good example.) Reconciliation was necessary if you didn't want the United States to go the way of, say, Mexico. The "Lost Cause" business just went too far, freezing the process for a hundred years.
gerbal 6y ago
I'm from the North Carolina, in US south. In my opinion, Confederate monuments are not mere objects showing the long reach of history. These monuments were built mostly from the 1890-1930 during the worst period of extrajudicial killings of black people. White mobs freely enforced violent racial apartheid with the approval and backing of state and local governments. One example, in 1898 the elected government of the majority black city of Wilmington, North Carolina was overthrown in a coup by a white mob and several dozen black people and members of the local government were executed[1]. These statues are prominently displayed in front of court houses and government buildings in towns and cities all over the south. The governments that built these monuments were extraordinarily reprehensible in their explicit and violent racism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189...
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > These monuments were built mostly from the 1890-1930 during the worst period of extrajudicial killings of black people. As a rough comparison for people not familiar with the timelines involved: this would be like Germany building Nazi statue(s) in 1970-2010. (The US Civil War ended in 1865, so +25 to +65y.)
  - makomk 6y ago
    I wonder if perhaps a better analogy is that this would be more like Germany building World War I statues in the 1940s... the Southern economy and infrastructure was by all accounts completely wiped out by the civil war, with everything that entailed.
  - belorn 6y ago
    If Germany built statues of nazi officers during 1970, and today was year 2100, ie 80 years into the future, it would very possible be that those people in 80 years from now would look at the statue in order to see a historical memory rather than nazi worshiping. 155 years (the span between 1865 and 2020) is quite a long time. If people in year 2100 would then start and go and destroy historical objects from the second world war I would suspect people to get a bit annoyed. People born after 2100 might want to actually see the physical objects from that time period and the people in 2100 would then irreversibly making that impossible. Once destroyed an historical memory can't be remade by anyone in the future. The unrevokable nature of such acts is is why Sweden has such strict laws against it. Naturally, if every object built between 1970 and 2010 would be defined as a historical memory today in 2020 it would not make much sense. It make more sense in year 2100 to define such objects that has survived as a historical memories. A statue that is 10 years old has much less historical values than one built 150 years ago.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by belorn 6y ago

ascotan 6y ago

I'd say that unlike a 'normal' war between countries this was a civil war. This was a brother vs. brother, father vs. son battle. Over 600,000 people died in what was pretty gruesome conditions (lead bullets, the first gattling gun, 23K people killed/wounded in a single day of fighting, etc.). Blood was spilled, homes were burned and not everyone agrees on who the 'heroes' and 'villians' were in this conflict. Most of the conflict was fought in the south. After the war, there was a need to bring together a divided nation. The divisions were not all territorial. The need to show the courage of the men who died and remember the fallen needed to be done before that generation passed away. Today the symbols of the south (the confederate flag, monuments, street names) are all reminders of many Americans that their parents struggled though slavery, abuse and poverty. Other Americans that don't have that legacy don't necessarily see the same things and I think the challenge that this article presents, is how to get some Americans to see these problems today. The sterotypes are not real. Not all southerners owned slaves, most were conscripted, many didn't want to be there, many were kind, many were courageous. I visited a statue of a southern solider that ran out into a hail of bullets to the rescue northern wounded in the "no mans land" and bring them to the northern lines. George Washington was a slave owner and so was Thomas Jefferson, both unarguably 2 of the most influential men in American history. But, as with so many things in life, the backstory is more complicated than the picture hanging on the wall. The civil war was and is a divisive issue. In my personal opinion, like in our own lives, we should recognize and acknowledge were we are wrong and strive to be better. We should also seek to make the future better place to live and leave the skeletons were they're buried. Digging them up will do few people any good.

philistine 6y ago
You are focusing on only one aspect of why the statues exist. There is another reason, insidious and evil, and people wish those statues to go not because of your reason, but because of this other evil one. Is a statue of a losing racist general erected long after the war was over as a counter against the fight for civil rights really a good way to honour soldiers? If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem. By this logic, we should tear down all statues, since it is impossible for a statue to "unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people".
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > If your statue doesn’t unequivocally reflect only one good message to all people, you’ve got a problem. I'm not sure that even a statue of Gandhi could meet your standard.
drewcoo 6y ago
It's now been a generation since the Cold War ended. By this logic and pattern, we should erect statues to our nation's traitors during that time. To help bring the world together. Clearly that wouldn't be about slavery, but about "healing," right? Our Aldritch Ames statue and the statue of the unknown KGB mole can join world icons like the British Cambridge Five statue, Philby evasive even in statue form. No. Somehow that logic only "works" with the US Civil War, after which the United Daughters of the Confederacy waged a multi-generation propaganda campaign to convince us all that the war was not about slavery and that the south would rise again.
- mcguire 6y ago
  Other countries have faced similar contradictory situations. The post-apartheid South Africans have completely failed to exterminate the white minority, there are still Hutus in Rwanda, and the German military was needed for a possible Soviet invasion. (Wait, that last isn't a good example.) Reconciliation was necessary if you didn't want the United States to go the way of, say, Mexico. The "Lost Cause" business just went too far, freezing the process for a hundred years.

gerbal 6y ago

I'm from the North Carolina, in US south. In my opinion, Confederate monuments are not mere objects showing the long reach of history. These monuments were built mostly from the 1890-1930 during the worst period of extrajudicial killings of black people. White mobs freely enforced violent racial apartheid with the approval and backing of state and local governments. One example, in 1898 the elected government of the majority black city of Wilmington, North Carolina was overthrown in a coup by a white mob and several dozen black people and members of the local government were executed[1]. These statues are prominently displayed in front of court houses and government buildings in towns and cities all over the south. The governments that built these monuments were extraordinarily reprehensible in their explicit and violent racism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1898 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_189...

throw0101a 6y ago
> These monuments were built mostly from the 1890-1930 during the worst period of extrajudicial killings of black people. As a rough comparison for people not familiar with the timelines involved: this would be like Germany building Nazi statue(s) in 1970-2010. (The US Civil War ended in 1865, so +25 to +65y.)
- makomk 6y ago
  I wonder if perhaps a better analogy is that this would be more like Germany building World War I statues in the 1940s... the Southern economy and infrastructure was by all accounts completely wiped out by the civil war, with everything that entailed.
- belorn 6y ago
  If Germany built statues of nazi officers during 1970, and today was year 2100, ie 80 years into the future, it would very possible be that those people in 80 years from now would look at the statue in order to see a historical memory rather than nazi worshiping. 155 years (the span between 1865 and 2020) is quite a long time. If people in year 2100 would then start and go and destroy historical objects from the second world war I would suspect people to get a bit annoyed. People born after 2100 might want to actually see the physical objects from that time period and the people in 2100 would then irreversibly making that impossible. Once destroyed an historical memory can't be remade by anyone in the future. The unrevokable nature of such acts is is why Sweden has such strict laws against it. Naturally, if every object built between 1970 and 2010 would be defined as a historical memory today in 2020 it would not make much sense. It make more sense in year 2100 to define such objects that has survived as a historical memories. A statue that is 10 years old has much less historical values than one built 150 years ago.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]