AIBU to ask when a crime against humanity becomes just “history“

[Flyingfish2019]

About me: I have relatives still alive today who had to do forced labour. The regime who did that to them is no longer in power, the statues gone, streets have been renamed. I think it is good that this has been done.
My relatives never talk about that time and out of respect I never discussed it with them.

However: I heard about the statue of that slave owner coming down and the first thing that I thought was that it was a good thing to happen but then when I heard the discussion about erasing history I thought they had a point.

I thought of the king of Egypt who where the worst kind of slave holders yet the pyramids are not demolished though they where build with slave labour. Because we say that this is just history. Same with Roman and Greek sites. Romans and Greeks used slave labour. But most obviously most people think that this is just history.

So my question: do you agree that a crime against humanity becomes just history one day and when is that day reached... and no I cannot answer the question myself and it’s not a rhetorical question.

I would tend to say that yes, it becomes history one day but I could not really say when the time has come.

@SchrodingersImmigrant

You can't hold someone who has been dead for over hundred years to account anyway though. Plus it's different to basically build a city to donate to National trust.

No, you cannot hold them to account but then neither do they need to be put on a pedestal as some sort of hero because they abused power and gave I’ll gotten monies to ensure a privileged position.

I’d rather the National Trust, that does educate, than immortalising someone who built parts of a city on profiting from thousands of deaths.

Living memory is important.
The chains of connection get weaker over time and societal values change- most atrocities oveŕ history weren't considered to be atrocities at the time due to victor's justice and a different value of human life.

WW1 has only just slipped through living memory, WW2 is fading. There is still effort to repatriate stolen Jewish assets with their original families but growing increasingly difficult.

When regimes change such as the collapse of Comunism in Eastern Europe, the statuary and road names had been imposed on those places as a statement of power, and they are taken down and society reverts back to its older default. I remember going to a statue park in (I think) Hungary where they'd been put out of the way, not forgotten but out of daily life (and bloody ugly things they were too, imposing a strong, hard, opressive, industial, utilitarian image on daily life).

Re-evaluating history is different to a spontaneous clear out of social change. Motivation matters- why was the statue put there? What values are being celebrated? To me there is a difference in celebrating philanthropy funded directly by trading human lives, and celebrating faulted characters who left positive legacies such as Churchill who left the UK in a better state than many of the alternative scenarios or Baden-Powell who's legacy of Scouting and Guiding promote positive opportunities for all and put a lot of work into supporting youths without privilege- the organisations have evolved and progressed but still retain roots applicable to 1907/09 and 2020. It was the legacy that is still celebrated, not the faults of character that were pretty normal for men of their social class of their era.

There's never going to clear answers. The more open and honest we are about history, the more we can learn from it and about ourselves. Purges hide and remove evidence and cause narratives to be lost, especially when carried out retrospectively.

My concern if we purge through British history is that we lose connection of how there is still a legacy of "white privilege" operating in the world today. It makes it easier for lazy racists to deny the problems. We need to add the overlooked stories into the narrative not hide what is bad by contemporary standards. History has until recent times been recorded by the elites which exclude many demographics.

My grandfathers entire family (immediate and extended including his mother) were killed in the holocaust when he was very young. Obviously I doubt the holocast ever felt like "history" to him even though he never actually spoke about it. Now the holocast is "history" to most people. However, U think what makes a huge difference is that Nuremberg and related trials took place - can you imagine if instead of the nazis being put on trial after the second world war they were pardoned, allowed to run for government positions, a few years later statues started to go up to Klaus Barbie et al, Germans/Austrians were encouraged to harbour a self image of themselves as romatic rebels tragically defeated etc etc etc.. I think Europe a a whole would feel very different now and (whilse of course antisemitism is a big problem today) much much less safe for Jewish people and other miorities... The holocasut would probably feel a lot less like history then... because thats basically what happened in America after 1865

History doesn’t stop. Pulling down statues of people who have been cruel reflects our history, and how our values and beliefs have changed in the intervening period since they were erected. I am happy for them to be displayed in museums along with accompanying text or video explaining the story of the person, and why it was pulled down.

The National Trust is a good example of adding to the narrative, rather than purging.

Increasingly at their houses, rather than focus on aesthetically pleasing, skilled assets, they are focusing on the social histories of the families that built the homes abd collections.

Far more thought provoking than shunning away the morally wrong parts of their history.

Statues are not history, they are a celebration of an individual and removing them does not mean people are deleting knowledge from history books. They are just not celebrating the white washed version of events anymore.

It's so odd how many people have issue with these statues being removed but not those of Michael Jackson, Gary Glitter, Bill Cosby, Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville being removed. These people were all philanthropists too... a lot of people with guilty consciences do philanthropic things. Doesn't mean we should celebrate them for the good they did and ignore the truly evil. Whether it has been 100 years or not. It's time now to publicly agree that slave owning has never been okay. Then let's move forward.

And I should add by the way that I didnt mean to say the holocaust was "just" history or that its repercussions arent felt today in very real ways or that intergenerational trauma as a result of WW2 isnt a thing. Just that is would have been so much worse if at least some of the horrors of that time hadnt been faced head on and at least some of those responsible for the attrocities made to face justice.

Problem is that we simply cannot properly judge something what happened well over 100 years ago by today's moral standards.
We also shouldn't do "Oh, well. Happened🤷🏻".

This is something what will take a long time to do properly without erasing parts of history and without doing it half arsed way.

As I said. Grey. Lots of grey.

History is everything that happened in the past, within living memory or not. Things dont have to be within living memory to be significant - cultural wounds that have not healed but have been compounded often by subsequent events and further opression.

As an aside - google says the pyramids were built by paid labour not slaves.

A crime against humanity is always a crime against humanity, regardless how long ago.

Imo, it becomes a historical cah when 1) at least 2 generations have lived and died since then. So nobody left who suffered through it, none of their children, none of their children.
And 2) there's nobody left alive who ordered it or did it

I say historical rather than history because history to me has an air of oh it's all in the past it doesn't matter any more whereas I feel that they should always be remembered for what they are and the impact down the generations acknowledged and understood.

Just my thoughts on it

As someone who is interested in and has studied history, I think the assumption a lot of people make is that 'history' or the past has no relevance to the modern day. When in fact it is through learning about our history and our past, that we can learn about just how much it has influenced our current lives.

As others have said, there are lots of shades of grey when looking at the past. We are amazed by the pyramids, and yet they were built as monument to the Pharoahs. They probably were built using slave or underpaid labour and at great expense when the money could have been better spent on the general population. Yet we admire them now because they are still standing after thousands of years. Rome is heralded as bringing civilization to the barbian European hoards and yet it was one of the most barbaric civilizations. It was the Roman's who used crucifixion and they didn't just do it Jesus. Abraham Lincoln is praised as the American president who freed the slaves. Yet he did it to help the American economy and to make sure that white people were still able to earn wages. He actually proposed to send the slaves back to Africa because he didn't want them to be part of American society.

Changing street names and removing status doesn't change anything IMO. I'm more than happy for them to be removed. It doesn't change people's opinions and it doesn't mean that the past did not happen. We should be able to talk about the past, talk about the positives and negatives, because otherwise we will never learn how to change from it.

History and the modern world are inseperable. You hunt down the perpatrators where they still exist.

For instance, the legacy of Imperialism and slavery is directly responsible for the racism and structural inequality that still permeates society.

Who's theory is this?
People spout stuff as if it is proven fact - is this proven fact? - I would think it could be fact but it's wrong to state 'evidence' which might not be wholly true.

The Australian aborigines weren't slaves but have been poorly treated.
The native Americans weren't slaves but were seriously wiped out.

Interestingly since you mention the Romans- quite a lot of what we know about the Romans (including the more negative aspects) comes from Tacitus - Tacitus was writing in many cases a considerable time after the events he described but still felt it appropriate to highlight the previous crimes of the Roman Empire, and he was a roman citizen (he was actually quite down on roman imperiasm). So the idea of acknowledging the wrongs of the past is not a new one at all.

Statues are not historical logs primarily. They are celebrations of an individual.

Why was there not a single peep when the thousands of Lenin statues were torn down over eastern europe? yet to receive an answer to this.

I think statues that cause harm should be removed. But not before consulting with the people who live in that local authorities. Let the council tax payers and their households members decide.

Very narrow minded to assert history doesn't impact what happens today.

Slaveowners were compensated. The debt incurred due to repayment of this massive bill was still being paid off by taxpayers up to 2015 - just 5 years ago. So their families benefitted, although their slaveowner ancestor died long ago. Descendants of enslaved Africans are still here, and were not compensated. Unless extremely lazy-minded it's impossible not to see this and other relevant links

OP, I'd say the time certainly hasn't come while the descendants of those injuries are still discriminated against or suffering from the effects or have serious reason to believe the same situation may return.

Even if we had evidence of slaves building the pyramids (which is not actually what Egyptologists believe) there are no known descendants of such slaves today who suffer in any way from their ancestors' situation. They don't have to pay compensation for the end of pyramid-building, they don't have racist language thrown at them in the street, they are not more likely than others to be stopped by the police or die in custody, and they have absolutely no reason to believe that pyramid-building will come back.

Now compare that with the trans-Atlantic slave trade or the Holocaust.

The reason the Holocaust is still alive is not just because some survivors of the concentration camps are still alive: it is because all the Nazis didn't conveniently die off at the end of WW2 nor did they all change their ideas. Holocaust-denial started pretty soon after the war, it grew quite strong in the 80s and 90s and is still with us today. One of the earliest classes I taught contained a boy whose families had been Nazis since before WW2 and hadn't changed their views since. The old tropes about the conspiracy of the Jews are creeping back into public discourse now. There is good reason to fear them and be aware of them.

The financial costs are also with us in many cases. Until 5 years ago, black taxpayers of the UK (along with the rest of us) were still having to pay off the compensation loan to the people who enslaved their ancestors. The people who had actually been made slaves and whose work had enriched Britain via the Caribbean plantations got no compensation. Edward Colston alone was responsible for 19000 people killed during the crossing over the Atlantic. The rest never saw their families again. Yet the only people who got compensated when slavery was abolished were the Edward Colstons of Britain.

Xenophobia has of course existed in all ages, but the "biological" racism that developed during the 18th and 19th century was closely tied up with colonialism and slavery. Christian plantation owners and empire builders needed a belief system that allowed them to think that what they had otherwise been taught was wrong was justifiable because of the inferiority of other races. That belief system has cast very long shadows. There is a reason why (as multiple studies have shown) black applicants find it harder to get a job in competition with candidates with the same qualifications. There is a reason black children are less likely to be encouraged to do academic A-levels or apply to Oxbridge. That a black trainee priest, adopted and brought up by a white working-class family, was recently rejected for a curacy in a predominantly white working-class parish in Durham. Long shadows.

if instead of the nazis being put on trial after the second world war they were pardoned, allowed to run for government positions,

But many many Germans were allowed to get back to normal life and not prosecuted - 6 million Jews died in the holocaust - it takes more than a handful of German senior military (Nuremberg trials) to kill those sorts of numbers. Most Germans returned to normal life despite what they contributed to or the crimes they committed.

In my history A level we stopped about 15 years before the year we did the history in and I was quite pleased to see we went that recent. We also started with the stone age in primary school.

In the UK we still have some people who benefited from the French conquering England in 1066 but probably not anyone still suffering from the Romans before that.

The police force in the Southern United States grew directly out of the slave patrols who rounded up runaways, set dogs on them and lynched them. I think that is history and a crime against humanity that is entirely relevant today.

The times we live in make more sense when you know things that that.

Why was there not a single peep when the thousands of Lenin statues were torn down over eastern europe? yet to receive an answer to this.

I know quite a few people who were unhappy about that. One of my great uncles in particular felt they should have all been left to stand as a reminder. His mother/my great grandmother fled Russia...as far as we know she was the only member of her family to survive the revolution.

History casts long shadows. Dh's grandfather was killed in the Troubles before dh was even born. His death is still impacting all of their family in different ways. Less and less perhaps with each generation but I can see that it wouldn't take much to reignite all those old hatreds. We are trying to teach our children a balanced view, especially given I have Irish family too, some of whom supported Sinn Fein but I know some of his family are taking a harder line. My mum grew up with sectarian songs sung over her cradle and she sang them to me. I found myself singing Shall my soul pass over old Ireland to my son when he had a fever and had to stop myself. It was a part of my childhood handed down without context and that I think is where the problem lies.

I think part of the process has to be an acknowledgement a crime has happened in the first place.

Which is why there's far more willingness to move on from Nazi atrocities - which were admitted by the Germans publicly after the war than there is from Turkish atrocities in Armenia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide) which to this day, every Turkish regime has denied ever happened. Indeed they've spent the past 100 years trying to gaslight the world - and history.

@Bluemoooon yes thats true. I didnt mean to say everything was fine/resolved after the second world war, or that there arent problems persisting today, or that fighting them isnt a continuous process. Just that the way the aftermath of the Civil War was dealt with left such a toxic legacy...

Creating a statue is literally putting that person on a pedestel. As a society we can be judged by who we do that with.

But lets not pretend any of this comes from a deep concern for history. Certain types were frantically looking for the first chance to write off BLM. Thats all it is about.