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Sadiq Khan Sets Up A Commision For Vandalising London...

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ToraToraTora | 14:38 Tue 09th Jun 2020 | News
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jim360 - // There is a clear gulf between statues celebrating people who, perhaps, should not be so celebrated, and between the buildings their ill-gotten gains have provided. // Actually, there isn't, quite the opposite in fact. If you start analysing philanthropy based on the income source, where on earth do you stop? Are you going to say that millowners...
16:35 Tue 09th Jun 2020
RSA remains a racist country.

They have a policy of expropriation without compensation of farms of white South African farmers.
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looks like Robert Milligan is next....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52977088
"The Canal and River Trust said it "recognised the wishes of the local community concerning the statue of Robert Milligan" - So they took a vote did they? Bovine Faeces they just caved into mob rule.
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steady DD, that might be a bit uncomfortable for some.
Perhaps these moronic imbeciles would like to tear down the Oxbridge colleges that have benefitted from the proceeds of slavery, and how about the homes that were built for the poor and the hospitals, and schools, and the major art galleries and stately homes? History cannot and should not be eradicated - ever. There are lessons to be learnt from history. Learn them.
There is a clear gulf between statues celebrating people who, perhaps, should not be so celebrated, and between the buildings their ill-gotten gains have provided. Nor is it clear that the lessons have been learned from history previously, with the statues, anyway. What does the presence of Confederacy monuments in the US teach us, except that some people never quite got over their crushing defeat?

//There is a clear gulf between statues celebrating people who, perhaps, should not be so celebrated, and between the buildings their ill-gotten gains have provided.//

Is there? What? We'll carry on taking what their ill-gotten gains provided - but we won't mention where it came from?
Interesting that you decided to tag on something I didn't say. I would have thought that being more open about history includes acknowledging where the prosperity came from, but it doesn't mean having to tear up and start again. Statues are not buildings, however, nor are they scholarships.
So, we’ve gone from idiots in Westminster to RSA now?
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jim, good point, interesting that they chose to vandalise Lincoln's memorial, what with him being the guy largely responsible for the defeat of the South and the abolition of slavery. Is there a message I missed or rather than some noble cause could it be just a case of indiscriminate destruction and looting by moronic imbeciles who don't even know who their friends are?
I can’t keep up here :0(
Jim, //Interesting that you decided to tag on something I didn't say.//

Not that interesting. I didn’t tag on anything you didn’t say. I’ve asked questions.

What hypocrisy! You feel so strongly about our sordid past - and yet will take what it provided without turning a hair.
There's only been limited targeting of the Lincoln Memorial in the recent protests, but I would suspect that the defacing of the Lincoln Memorial is in part because he didn't, in the protesters' eyes, go far enough. Whether this is fair or not is a judgement that is extremely difficult to make. My own understanding is he went as far as he was reasonably able to, given that the response to the steps he tried to take was a Civil War, and that trying single-handedly to undo the damage Slavery had wrought is to great a task for any one man.

By all means, Naomi, get angry at something of your own invention, but that's all it is. Nothing you've said even remotely characterises my attitudes or my response.
You know something, I am sick to death of people moaning and complaining about MY country and demanding that this that and the other symbol of whatever be destroyed to appease them. It all happened so long ago in a different time. WHY ARE WE PANDERING TO THESE PEOPLE (sorry for shouting, but I am mad)!
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jim: "but I would suspect that the defacing of the Lincoln Memorial is in part because he didn't, in the protesters' eyes, go far enough. " - what fighting a civil war and forcing the abolition of slavery isn't far enough? what did they have in mind?
jim360 - // There is a clear gulf between statues celebrating people who, perhaps, should not be so celebrated, and between the buildings their ill-gotten gains have provided. //

Actually, there isn't, quite the opposite in fact.

If you start analysing philanthropy based on the income source, where on earth do you stop?

Are you going to say that millowners who paid their workers slave wages and let them work in seriously dangerous conditions are going to have the buildings they endowed torn down?

Because surely, if we start demolishing the statues that commemorate such people, you can't stop there, we have to dig deeper and start erasing every trace of them walking the earth before our ludicrously retrospective social conscience in appeased.

// Nor is it clear that the lessons have been learned from history previously, with the statues, anyway. What does the presence of Confederacy monuments in the US teach us, except that some people never quite got over their crushing defeat? //

That's a perspective, and on that basis, we can start destruction in the morning.

As naomi points out, the essentiall point to remember in all this post lock-down 'we can all go out now, let's smash something and let off steam' activity - is that history cannot and should never be eradicated.

Our history is all around us to remind us of where we came from, how we got here, what we got right, and more importantly, what we got wrong.

Just because a statue erected two hundred years ago does not reflect modern attitudes is no reason to destroy it. Rather, it should be relocated in a museum as part of an exhibition in social history, with appropriate context to show how it came to be made and erected.

That is how future generations will learn that we didn't always get it right, because we are human and fallible, and those are valuable lessons that history has, and always will, teach us about ourselves.

This fatuous nihilismm of a demented few who think that destroying an image of something means that it never happened is utterly naïve, and should be stopped for the nightmare '1984' activity that it clearly is.

History is not always pretty - but that does not mean that it does not belong to us - it has made us who we are.
Drake butchered more than 600 Scottish refugees who had hoped to find shelter and safety on the Irish Island, Rathlin.
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AH: "This fatuous nihilismm of a demented few who think that destroying an image of something means that it never happened is utterly naïve, and should be stopped for the nightmare '1984' activity that it clearly is. " - bang on Andy, BA.
Your entire post is a "slippery slope" argument that contains every single one of the flaws inherent in that fallacy.

The answer to the question "where we stop" is quite simple: we stop once we are open and honest about our history, and when doing so isn't seen as some sort of affront to society. Statues are a visual symbol of the distinction between the two.

Take Colston's statue as an example. A more desirable alternative to tearing the statue down would have been, for example, a plaque explaining why the statue was erected along with why it perhaps shouldn't have been: "Colston was a man who gave much to the city of Bristol, but in doing so took much away from the slaves whose lives he traded." But that plaque never went up, despite years of trying, because any mention of his involvement in the Slave Trade was seen by some as an affront.
We should crush this stupidity harshly. Come down like a ton of bricks onto the heads of the instigators and the propagators. Then close down the agitated anarchists Cells that fester And encourage discontent. If we have the will, it could be done. IF.

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