Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

[titbumwillypoo]

I understand a lot of the anger out there right now, it's 2020 FGS and the colour of a persons skin shouldn't matter, what gender they are shouldn't matter, whether they believe in a God or not shouldn't matter. But obviously they still do and there are still massive inequalities in our society that shouldn't be prevelant in this day and age.
So when I see statues being pushed into rivers and people complaining about Do they know it's Christmas and calling it to be banned or JK Rowling being racist because she wasn't inclusive enough it bothers me that instead of trying to improve the present we are more concered about deleting the past.
How can we grow as a society if the past has been censored. Books, music and art are a snapshot of how things were at that time in history, so surely it's better to have these things to discuss and learn from than to try and write them out of our collective consciousness. Imagine the uproar if Poland decided to level Auschwitz and build something nice on it. It's there and will remain there to remind us and future generations of mans inhumanity to man.
Finally there was a 38 degree's petition set up 3 years ago about Edward Colstons statue being removed, it got 10 signatures. If people find something offensive then there are systems in place to change things if they can be bothered to engage.

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/remove-the-edward-colston-statue-from-bristol-city-centre?bucket&source=facebook-share-button&time=1591119305&utm_campaign&share=d20ed235-f13a-4959-a06a-fd99dd9d7e94&fbclid=IwAR20VPeTfcewycIMCIkFNPc_W2Sy9VVNbHncGA352K1KpEmppi-y7FUV7iA

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-45825768
YANBU: We can and should learn from history and censorship is bad.
YABU: Burn it all and start again.

[Sargass0]

*Well you clearly didn't learn about him while the statue was up, so I can't see it making much of a difference to the education of future generations whether it's there or not.

That's because I have never visited Bristol and have never walked past this statue.

When I do visit towns and cities I do look at the statues and see who they were and then sometimes go on to research a bit more.

If those statues aren't there at all - then I wouldn't know to even look, but I do get your point.

[LonginesPrime]

people didn't seem that bothered in Bristol 3 years ago when it was brought up because it would have got more people signing the pedition and more people writing to their local council if it was that big a bone of contention

So you're saying that the black people subject to racial oppression and silencing should have complained louder if they really had a problem with the statue that celebrated their oppression and silencing.

[titbumwillypoo]

How much money and how many buildings named after you makes slavery acceptable? None but my point was if you censor history then you prevent people from learning from it. Bristol council dropped the ball by not getting the more informative plaque up on it, the offended people of Bristol dropped the ball by not keeping the pressure on the council.
There will be thousands of statues and portraits of people with dodgy pasts all around the country, there are thousands of classic books and songs full of racist and sexist stereotypes. If you start hiding these things away then we are getting into thought police and firemen territory.

[tinierclanger]

It is not “censoring” to remove a glorifying monument. “Censoring” would be to write Colson out of history. Which is the opposite of what BLM is suggesting - we should absolutely be seeing this history taught in schools, which it currently barely is.

Remove the statues
Teach the history

[laidbacklife]

Personally I think the statue was inappropriate and should have been removed long before now. That’s not to say we should erase history.
Slave trading took place for millennia, across many different cultures and around the world. The Egyptians and Romans used slaves to build their empires. The Ottoman Empire enslaved people from various different races and religions (including Christians and Caucasians). It was how the world used to function and often leaders sold their own people into slavery. It is extremely unsavoury when judged by modern standards but it was accepted practice for a very long time.
History cannot - and should not - be forgotten but slavery itself is nothing to commemorate. While we live in a far more civilised world now, we are still battling against modern day slavery (ie. trafficked workers).

[ArtisanPopcorn]

@sargass0 how much of your history education came via statues? I'm going to guess a pretty small percentage.

[titbumwillypoo]

So you're saying that the black people subject to racial oppression and silencing should have complained louder if they really had a problem with the statue that celebrated their oppression and silencing.

How is a community choosing not to engage in the democratic process oppression or silencing? People have a choice who they vote for, people have opportunity to protest, people have a choice not to support financially businesses they disagree with and you cannot please all the people all of the time. Should we get rid of all the celebrations of Nelson Mandela? Should we disband Stormont because of the history of some of their MP's? Should the Royal family be stripped of their land and titles because of their history? Where do we draw the line? Censorship and rewriting the past will just lead to ignorance not education.

[Pepperwort]

Censorship and rewriting the past is just plain old destruction. It's the same as burning the books, and destroying the artefacts of Babylon. It's about control. By all means change the future, it hasn't been written yet. When people start trying to change the past I question their motives.

[LonginesPrime]

How is a community choosing not to engage in the democratic process oppression or silencing? People have a choice who they vote for, people have opportunity to protest, people have a choice not to support financially businesses they disagree with

Do you honestly believe that everyone lives in this world of plentiful choices you describe? That the oppressed have the same opportunities as the privileged to assert their rights?

Suggesting that if black people didn't step up, it's their own fault shows an ignorance of the structural oppression working against them and for the privileged.

you cannot please all the people all of the time

No, but this isn't about pleasing people, it's about not celebrating the infliction of horrific abuse on certain oppressed classes of people, especially when those same classes are still being shat on today.

Throwing one's hands up and saying 'well, you can't please everyone' is not a sufficient response to accusations of racism.

[QuickGetTheEggplants]

I don't think anyone is erasing history. I think it would be great if history encompassed more diverse perspectives than just tales of powerful white men, as told by powerful white men. I know it would make it far more interesting for me.

And I'm sure there are exceptions, but statues of powerful men that look exactly like them are a dime a dozen around the world. They are boring, uninspired, uncreative and have nothing thought provoking to say. They are not art or culture.

[ChocolatelyAsFuck]

But the statue lied. The statue presented a false version of history. That’s censorship: censorship of the truth. Putting up a statue with an inscription that is not factually true and which exists to push a fake version of history is far more “we’ve always been at war with Eastasia” than removing it to a museum.

No one walking past the statue would have learned anything from it.

[ChocolatelyAsFuck]

Censorship and rewriting the past is just plain old destruction. When people start trying to change the past I question their motives.

This is exactly what the people who put up the statue in the first place did.

[janeskettle]

In general,. I agree with you, OP, but I can't get too worked up over statues.

My general feeling is that you keep the history of what you now object to in some form - I'd have liked to see that statue reformed by a black artist, with the history of the new piece including the fact that it stood as the old piece for so long, and was overturned because...

JKR isn't being cancelled for being racist though :) She's being cancelled (by fools) for having the temerity to be unapologetically pro-woman. Nothing the raging mob (referring to JKR critics here, not BLM, not statue removers) likes more than a woman to tear apart.

[PotholeParadise]

I don't actually believe a forgotten change.org petition proves that Bristol people didn't care about that statue. On mumsnet and on facebook and on twitter, Bristol people have been explaining that pulling the statue down was the culmination of years of debate.

[PatriciaHolm]

Do you think the statues of Gaddafi in Libya, and Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, should have been left?

People have tried the democratic route for years in Bristol - even a Bristol MP agreed it should go, in 2018. I really don't think you can take non-engagement with an online poll to indicate anything.

[PotholeParadise]

www.thepoke.co.uk/2020/06/08/a-great-thread-for-anyone-in-two-minds-about-the-bristol-statue-toppling/

[janeskettle]

I do actually think it's frightening that among young people, there is an increasing rate of agreement with the idea that we should reject democracy.

What's that saying? That it's the worst form of government....other than all the other ones we've tried so far.

I wonder what people suggest putting in its place.

[Thelnebriati]

I think you are confusing removing an offensive memorial with rewriting history and censorship.

[janeskettle]

From other contexts, it's clear that there is a strain of cultural authoritarianism among some privileged white young parts of Bristol.

While I do not much care that this manifests in the removal of a statue designed to celebrate a man who made his fortune on the backs of black lives, the general impulse towards destruction in the above mentioned group is one to watch, imo.

[mrbob]

I have never seen the statue but I know what the fucker did. Education doesn’t need statues. They are about glorifying peoples’ actions and we shouldn’t be doing that to people who have destroyed the lives of so many. (Tbh that could probably be applied to a lot of statues)

[Creamcar]

Mob rule is a really terrible idea and anyone who thinks it isn't needs to give their head a wobble.

[janeskettle]

I wonder if what the OP is picking up, which is not specific to any events of the last few weeks, is an undercurrent of cultural Maoism on the far left?

It's there, 100%. Unironic use of 're-education' tends to be an indicator.

And actually, no matter how much we agree with a particular Maoist style revision, we should be wary. Very much so.

[ChocolatelyAsFuck]

The lengths racists go to to undermine and discredit anti-racism is unreal.

According to MN anti-racists are thugs, violent thugs, Marxists, mobs, legal dictators, exactly the same as TRA, racist for “seeing race”, virtue signallers, band wagon jumpers, “woke”, and engaging in North Korea-like levels of mandatory re-education.

Just because a handful of people pushed a statue put up with the agenda of LYING and presenting a false version of history (censoring the truth) into a bloody river.

[janeskettle]

There is a strain of Maoist thought running through the far left. Tbh, it's always been there. I'm politically aligned with the left, so have had plenty of up close and personal experience of it.

Any progressive movement is vulnerable, imo, to infilration from this segment of the far left. Does it make up the whole of each progressive movement? No.

And no, it's not 'just because people pushed a statue of a slave owner into a river'. It's because the OP raised some fairly big isssues around history - who remembers and how - and it's an issue bigger than this one event, which, as I've said before, I can't get worked up over.

[ChocolatelyAsFuck]

But no one complains about the fact the installation of the station was a deliberate attempt to censor history and push a false version of history. (Which toppling the statue does not.)

So clearly people are perfectly fine with censorship, destruction and “re-writing the past” as long as it pushes an agenda or political side they personally agree with.