What it doesn’t list are the names of the millions of Vietnamese and other Indochinese victims killed during the war. Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8.20pm but the rope protesters were using snapped, The Virginian-Pilot reported. Johnson, America’s first black billionaire, continued: “Look, the people who are basically tearing down statues, trying to make a statement … It will not bring about systemic change … Tearing down statues doesn’t erase history Opinion Ella Wall Prichard | July 2, 2020 Three years ago, I wrestled with the news that my great-grandmother’s statue memorializing “Uncle Jeff” had been removed by the City of New Orleans from the site where it had stood on Canal Street since 1911. This doesn’t mean there isn’t a strong argument for taking down the older statues. And some violent extremists, such as Dylann Roof, idolized the Confederate flag for explicitly racist reasons. Statue of Edward Colston, Bristol (erected 1895, toppled 2020) Murderers are not a section of society that is held in great respect in our society, much as in others. (The pre-1956 version, created in 1879, had been adapted from the first national flag of the Confederacy, the Stars and Bars.) Lea Ypi . As the years passed, more and more of the state’s population came from other parts of the United States, or from other countries. Macron rejects tearing down statues in France. In Washington, D.C., which also has witnessed protests, vandals defaced a Gandhi statue outside the Indian embassy. written by Zaid Jilani. PDF Viewer. Tearing Down Statues Won’t Undo History From the Berlin Wall to Confederate monuments, destroying a historic marker means destroying a … Why? So I think our generation thinks of public art as something that will always be around. “Pretty much every statue raised in the UK to a person living between 1660 and 1811 may need to come down… It’s a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people. Should We Tear Down Statues? The ancient Greeks made their major monuments out of bronze. Left-wing activist Shaun King tweeted Monday all statues of Jesus that portray him as a “white European” should be torn down because they are “a form of white supremacy.” “Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down,” wrote King, a self-described black man whose family says he is white. The current attacks on statues are a sign that what’s in question is not just our future but our past, I think, as a nation, as a society, as a world. But by then, the fight had exposed (and exacerbated) divisions between the two sides, both of which insisted the other side was extreme. Home Secretary Priti Patel called the tearing down of the statue "utterly disgraceful", adding that "it speaks to the acts of public disorder that have become a … So let’s think about bronze, because many Confederate statues are made out of bronze, which is a metal that you can melt down and make into something else. Our symbols should be inclusive and representative of who we are. What do you make of the comparisons between what protesters in the U.S. are doing and, say, what the Islamic State did in destroying monuments in Palmyra? proposed building a new museum to house it that would cost over 5 million dollars and almost a million dollar a year in ongoing maintenance and security. But even putting aside such crude political caricatures, it isn’t clear how any of the above-listed campaigns would materially improve the lives of African Americans, Native Americans or other disadvantaged groups. Tear them down! The removal of communist-era statues … But ordinary Georgians suffered tremendously as General Sherman’s armies delivered history’s verdict in late 1864. Tearing Down Statues Won’t Solve Them. Published: 21:16 EST, 10 June 2020 | Updated: 21:16 EST, 10 June 2020 . So I look at these statues as money sinks. The Civil War was a war over slavery, and Georgia was on the wrong side of history. The memorial lists the names of every one of them. 9. Tearing down statues - and revisiting our histories . Even Barack Obama—often described as the most liberal president in American history—was measured about his approach. (An airport in Kolkata is even named after him.) In the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the widespread spirit of protest has expanded to a wide array of cultural symbols—ranging from statues of Columbus to the movie Gone With The Wind. Protesters tear down statues of Union general Ulysses S. Grant, national anthem lyricist Francis Scott Key . “It’s not the behavior of a political movement. Stories of battlefield defeats, scorched-earth tactics, and the humiliation accompanying Atlanta’s destruction created a narrative of victimization that was passed down from one generation to the next. We have as humans been making monuments to glorify people and ideas since we started making art, and since we started making statues, other people have started tearing them down. I can’t say I agree, but I also refuse to assume the worst about his viewpoint. Yes, separating people helps reduce virus transmission and saves lives.... University of New Mexico social psychologist Tania Reynolds speaks with Jonathan Kay about Nature Communications‘ questionable decision to retract a controversial article, the intrusion of ideology into scholarship about... voted to stop celebrating Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, Many Confederate monuments in the south were erected in the mid-20th century, humiliation accompanying Atlanta’s destruction, 57 percent of registered-voter respondents, An airport in Kolkata is even named after him, absurd and unjust federal laws on the books, PODCAST 134: John McWhorter on the Ideological Excesses of the Social-Justice Movement, PODCAST 133: Cheri Jacobus on How Donald Trump Used Twitter to Destroy People’s Lives (Including Hers), PODCAST 132: Philippe Lemoine on the Case for Lockdown Skepticism, PODCAST 131: Professor Tania Reynolds on the Controversy Over Female Mentorship in Academia, Copyright © 2019 Quillette Pty Ltd | All Rights Reserved. That doesn’t mean I begrudge the memorializing of American soldiers fighting (as I see it) an unjust war, only that I’d like to see the suffering of others recognized, too. On Thursday, we called her to talk about the statues. It’s likely that Chakrabarti finds this characterization persuasive. 18th January, 2021. Zaid Jilani is a freelance journalist. Flag defenders’ claims that they were motivated by “heritage, not hatred” generally struck me as sincere. These aren't protests. The City of London Corporation's Policy and Resources Committee voted to remove memorials to William Beckford and Sir John Cass from its medieval Guildhall Jonathan Kay speaks with Cheri Jacobus, a veteran Republican Party worker and conservative media figure who was mobbed and deplatformed after she called out Donald Trump for his abusive... Jonathan Kay speaks to Philippe Lemoine about problematic assumptions embedded in the models used to support COVID lockdown policy. In fact, most defenders of the 1956 flag simply saw it as a familiar part of their heritage and history. ISIS also raised a lot of money: Their destruction was a propaganda act to get people to make donations to the jihadist cause. Favourite Quotes. But in the current environment, any claim or posture that’s seen as emanating from the Black Lives Matter movement, however indirectly, is taken as morally unassailable. The City of London Corporation’s Policy and Resources Committee voted to remove memorials to William Beckford and Sir John Cass from its medieval Guildhall headquarters. Hardly any of these survived because as soon as regimes changed, as soon as there was war, as soon as someone could steal the statue, it got melted down and made into money or cannon balls or a statue of somebody else. Earlier this week, a group of protesters involved in Black Lives Matter demonstrations spray-painted a statue of Winston Churchill in historic Parliament Square, adding the words “was a racist” under Churchill’s name. This is the history of art, of changing loyalties and changing pasts. While King is currently tweeting his remarks about statues of Jesus as violent mobs fueled by Black Lives Matter and Antifa are tearing down historical monuments, he himself was ejected from the Black Lives Matter movement by its leaders in December 2015 over questions about the “integrity” of activist fundraising. “This is just dumb now,” another user tweeted in reaction to the news. Police explain why they didn't stop protesters tearing down Edward Colston statue. In the hour of demolishing statues that are no longer accepted by YOU. Protesters have already been severely injured tearing down statues. I doubt this means that nearly 60 percent of my neighbors believe in the cause of the Confederacy. The statues were at the state capitol in Raleigh. “They’re tearing down statues, desecrating monuments and purging dissenters,” he said during a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday. It’s expensive literally in that people have to pay for maintaining these statues — a couple of journalists in 2018 did an amazing investigation for Smithsonian magazine and found that in the previous ten years, taxpayers had spent at least 40 million dollars preserving Confederate monuments and sites. Start tearing down statutes.”. Fewer and fewer Georgians remained attached to Confederate symbols as markers of heritage or history. Confederate statues and statues of other historical figures, including slave traders and Christopher Columbus, are being toppled throughout the U.S. and around the world this week — an outgrowth of weeks of protests over entrenched racism in the United States, reignited by the killing of George Floyd in police custody. You mentioned that we’re seeing people rebel against the ideas represented by these statues. When I found out that US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, has a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of Subhas Chandra Bose, I was perturbed. Many of those lives were smothered out by napalm, cut down by chopper fire, or massacred at My Lai. Tweet on Twitter. (CNN) A protester climbed up and wrapped a strap around the neck of a statue on a Confederate monument in North Carolina and pulled it down. Tearing Down Statues - the band has formed in the days of change, the time of online democracy, an era of organising a power of change via the world wide web. And, if it belongs to a government, then the decision needs to be made by those government officials." In Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina, it was another night of tearing down Confederate statues. There are statues from the ancient Near East of Assyrian Kings that have curses carved on them that say ‘he who knocks down my statue, let him be in pain for the rest of his life,’ that sort of thing. Police Stand by as Vandals Tear Down Statues Fred Lucas / @FredLucasWH / June 22, 2020 A young boy stands near the statue of Confederate Gen. Albert Pike after it was … And think about all of the amazing sites of African-American history or Native American history that are disintegrating from lack of funding and think those dollars could be better spent elsewhere. Churchill also supported Britain’s colonial grip over the Indian subcontinent. We have to think about who is doing the destruction for what purposes. If I’d designed it, Stone Mountain—a massive rock-wall carving outside Atlanta overlooking a public park—would feature Jimmy Carter and Ray Charles, not Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson. I know, because I lived through a particularly raucous instalment when I was growing up in the southern state of Georgia, once the site of some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles. But I did have family member who served in the Second World War. He was a slave owner too, before the Civil War. Share on Twitter; Share on Facebook; Share via email; Share on Reddit; Share on Linked In; Captain John Hamilton is removed from the square Photo: RNZ / Andrew McRae. ISIS was destroying monuments of a tolerant past in order to achieve a future of violence and hate. Some of these campaigns are questionable. Here in Washington, D.C., last night, protesters in Lafayette Square right by the White House tried to take down a statue of President Andrew Jackson. Find the perfect Tearing Down Statue stock photos and editorial news pictures from Getty Images. Visit Monument Avenue in Richmond, VA, for instance, and you will see statues memorializing Virginian Confederates from the Civil War, including Robert E. Lee, J.E.B. What do the attacks on statues in recent weeks tell us about the protests themselves? We have been in a period of peace and prosperity — not peace for everybody, but the U.S. hasn’t been invaded, we’ve had enough money to maintain statues. These protesters are attacking symbols of a hateful past as part of fighting for a peaceful future. The campaign to tear down monuments in towns and cities across Britain gathered pace today as a 'hit list' of statues and memorials deemed to be 'celebrating racism and slavery' reached 78. But since 1996, there has also been another statue—this one honoring African-American tennis legend Arthur Ashe (1943–1993), who grew up and trained in the Richmond area. It has always struck me as strange that our war memorials memorialize only the dead on our side. 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