When I was in Moscow a few years ago I made a special point of visiting the Park of Fallen Monuments. I have also thought a similar situation would work for monuments to America’s own discredited Southern regime.
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It’s important to remember how many of these statues aren’t period pieces; but part of a post war(often substantially post war) exercise in mythmaking in the process of solidifying reactionary power in the region and generally rolling back any bits of reconstruction that threatened to remain in place.
That, of course, is history as well; but it’s history that is generally deeply dishonestly packaged as memorializing of the civil war without ultior motive; rather than a separate propaganda project that drew heavily on civil war characters.
The narrative that touching the statuary would be effacing history relies on eliding the fact that the statuary isn’t civil war history(with some rare exceptions, I’m pretty sure the CSA didn’t put zero rocks on top of one another before collapsing, though they didn’t really have time for much aside from military memorabilia), it’s the product of a concerted postwar effort to remake history into something deemed more pleasing.
The bait and switch is effective; and if not clever, at least shows some low cunning; but it is a bait and switch: recast the incumbent attempt at writing the history as an inseparable part of that history; and respond to any attempt to challenge it as though it is a proposal to toss the history itself down the memory hole.
(Edit: not at all surprisingly, Trump has come out with a speech built on precisely this elision of the distinction between civil war history and postwar strategic deployment of civil war iconography for other purposes, going with the premise that the statues are civil war history; their removal is effacement of that history as well as an assault on the beauty of public spaces generally. I don’t know if he actually believes it; has no opinion, or just had someone else put it together for him; but the speech is a good example of how a couple of dishonest premises make it easy to put together a noble-sounding argument in favor of the statues.
Other Edit: this whole bait and switch between ‘civil war history’ and ‘postwar deployment of civil war iconography’ is also where the comparison with the Soviet statuary or German Nazi artifacts, becomes least useful: those situations are also “What to do with deeply problematic public art?” but they are cases where, for the most part, that problematic public art is the history of what people say it is: all those socialist-realist heroic peasant and soldier statues and such? Very likely actually erected by the Soviet Union for its own propaganda purposes(with a whole bunch of fascinating period variations as assorted theorists and artistic schools fell in and out of favor). That still doesn’t mean that you have to keep them; but they are actually the history of what people say they are the history of; not revisionist pieces produced a generation or more later by people looking to marshal Soviet iconography in the service of some flavor of reaction to post-Soviet government.)
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Like this?
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Also The statue of Cornwallis - the British General who founded Halifax (in Canada) has become something that people want to take down - because he put out a bounty on the first nations at the time.
I think that there’s a statue of DeSoto (or one of those Spanish conquistadors) that keeps getting a foot sawn off
to bring up the barbaric practice of what he did to many of the local people in the southwest.
So take them down, but put them some place where you can tell the whole story.
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And that is why I say add new plaques, ones that explain all of that.
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I’m all for symbolic transformation.
Melt them down into blocks, and set them in place of stones on the base of the Statue of Liberty.
The never ending reminder should be the defeat and submission of the Confederacy to the American Dream of liberty and freedom. Liberty shall ever have her foot on the forces of hate and slavery, so it may never rise again.
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Melt them down and dip neo-nazi gonads in the molten metal.
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Screw all that noise. Pull them down melt them to slag and put up a sign that says something like " in this spot was a statue of “x” that sought to normalize and glorify the confederate war to keep chattal slavery in the USA.
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Exactly what I was thinking. Or famous Abolitionists. Harriet Tubman?
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I’ve seen this on Twitter the past few days and loved it: “Confederate statues - the first participation trophies”
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I am in two discussion on FB right now about this. I haven’t had a ton of push back after my slaughter of there memes.
I agree a museum would be appropriate. Hell, put them in your back yard on private land. It shouldn’t be a public memorial.
I make exceptions for memorials of soldiers, especially at cemeteries. Or joint monuments. That seems appropriate. But statues of generals and CSA leaders is not. Battlefield markings and the like are good too.
My talking points:
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There number of Confederate monuments far out number union ones - EVEN IN UNION STATES. They also appear in states that were not even in the war. This is because of a concerted effort from former Confederates to keep the CSA alive.
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Many were also erected in history as a fuck you to the civil rights movement.
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They never should have been put up in the first place. Where else do we have statues of enemy generals and leaders? Where is Rommel and Stalin?
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What are the memorializing? Treasonous generals and leaders who failed at creating a nation? What accomplishment of these people is worth commemorating today?
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Some will bring up the fact that the Founding Fathers had slaves. They miss the point. The statues of Confederates aren’t inappropriate because they owned slaves, but because they took the right to own slaves so far they commit treason and left the United States, becoming her enemy. The founding fathers had other accomplishments that are at least worth remembering.
You know when it comes to Lee, one can still have some respect for him. He was a great general, but he also worked towards reconciliation after the war. He chastised some of the other former CSA leaders for not letting it go. But no one is making statues of when he was president of a college.
- Some people claim heritage. I suppose it is to a degree, but to what degree? It as under 5 years of their history. You’re telling me <5 years of trying to create a racist state and failing is what you want to hold up as worthy of the remembrance of your heritage?
Every nation and culture has parts they are ashamed about. The Germans on the Nazis, Italy and Spain and their fascists, Japan and their Imperialist expansion. You don’t see the Scot, Irish, and English remembering that time when they were always killing each other with a sense of pride, do you?
The South is old and extremely diverse and rich in culture. They should find something else to represent their heritage. My dad was born in Texas and raised partly in Louisiana. He has nothing to do with Confederate culture.
- If fucking NAZIS are marching to protect these old idols, perhaps you need to reevaluate what this means to you and why.
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- Put them in confederate cemeteries
- Place them on an artificial island in the sewage treatment plant.
Less seriously
- Disney’s Hall of Traitors.
- Replacement for the Rocky statue
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This is similar to something I’ve been suggesting to anyone who cares to hear my opinion. In brief, it’s this: don’t destroy the statues, but for every statue of a confederate general, put up a statue of Sojourner Truth next to it, with a plaque explaining the difference. For every statue of a Klan leader, throw up a statue of Martin Luther King. For every statue of a slave owner, a statue of W. E. B. DuBois, and so on, and so on. Relentlessly and forcefully honor the black contribution to American culture in such a way that it’s set against the savagery and bigotry that those statues represent. That’s my modest proposal, anyway. Put them all in context, so that they can’t be seen as an endorsement of the past but as a recognition of the regrets and atrocities of our past.
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Melt down the statues and use the metal for sewage pipes.
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Not to argue, as I do not have an accurate count of memorials, but have you ever been to Vicksburg?
There are an astounding number of Union memorials there.
But I had not heard of Confederate memorials in union states. Do you have examples?
Alas we have two eyes, and it’s easy to keep one closed.
I think it would be more fitting to have statues moved near to the Hitler Museum, except I don’t know if there is any such thing except maybe in a ratty trailer next to the highway somewhere down south.
Now there is a National Museum of African American History and Culture within walking distance of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.
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