• Nobody@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    If the confederate monument was installed in the 19th century, I’ll hear the history argument.

    If it was installed as an overtly racist response to civil rights movements in the 20th century, that shit is racist as hell and needs to disappear from public lands.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Nah. Tear 'em all down. The history can be left to the written word, detailing how they got destroyed. They don’t deserve any monument trying to extoll their “glory”. Rubble-ize them and put up memorials to the slaves in their place.

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        A collage/university in the UK (unfortunately can’t remember which one) dealt with a similar problem well. It had statues of the founders out front. Unfortunately, they made their money from the slave trade. There were calls to destroy the statues. They instead, moved them to a small, half forgot garden in the back. As well as their original descriptive plagues, some more were added, explaining how they made their fortunes, and the various moral failings we now see in them.

        It seems to me like this struck a good balance. It acknowledged the good they did, while emphasising the bad. Failing to recognise both good and bad can occur in individuals is often how history can repeat itself.

        In short, don’t destroy them. Instead, stick them at the back of a museum to the horrors of slavery, half forgotten, except for their crimes.

        • stoy@lemmy.zip
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          7 months ago

          I like this approach, if we destroy the physical object, the history books will have less impact for future generations.

          Add info about what horrible things they did, remove them from their place of honor, and put them in an alcove of shame.

      • Rodeo@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        No. Preserve them in museums as a reminder of what can happen.

        History should never be destroyed, but that doesn’t mean it has to be celebrated.

          • maniclucky@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Perhaps, but it should be measured. Discarding harmful traditions and such is good, forgetting what we did wrong is bad. I think museums are a great place for these. We certainly don’t care for human sacrifice, but that doesn’t stop us from putting ritual daggers on display from ancient civilizations. No sense in forgetting something important and having to learn it all again, and large objects that stand as a monument to bad decisions can be subverted to a good cause.

            With big bold letters that say “SLAVERY IS BAD” for any museums located anywhere that uses the phrase “War of Northern Aggression”.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I vote we melt them down and recast them into statues/memorials for civil right’s people. at least the bronze ones.

        maybe even southern civil right’s people.

    • TehBamski@lemmy.worldOP
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      7 months ago

      That was a fun read. Haha.

      I’d like to see what the properly backed up statistics of the Republic States vs the Democrat States are not days.

    • ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Everything to do with the confederacy, except from teaching about the civil war, should be banned in the US. That flag they love, ban it. Statues, rip them down. Locations named after conspirators, rename them. The civil war was an attempt to destroy the US and divide it in two. They lost, fortunately. All associations to the traitors they were should not be allowed. People who claim “it’s my heritage” heritage of what exactly? That you’re white? Your skin says that. That your family was racist? Not a good quality to be flaunting and something you should probably come to terms with.

      • maniclucky@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I think the better action, over a blatant violation of the 1st amendment, would to push back ourselves instead of trying to get the government to break its own rules.

        Anytime someone uses the phrase “War of Northern Aggression”, pointedly correct them in saying “(American) Civil War”. Anytime they spout “states rights”, amend them with “to own humans and demand other countries return the people they want to enslave”. Rock the damned boat and use the 1st amendment how it should be. They are not protected from other people having disdain for them for being stupidly proud of atrocities. And you know what, being proud of being descended from racist slave owners is not a protected class. Just saying.

        The government shouldn’t suppress speech. But we can certainly give them consequences for being assholes.

        • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          “War of Nothern Aggression” - Started by the confederates firing on Union soldiers at Fort Sumter.

          “State’s Rights” - If you leave the Union, you’re no longer state in the Union with rights in the Union.

          “Not about Slavery or race” - Articles of Confederacy first and foremost highlighted white supremacy and the servitude of negroes.

          “It’s my heritage” - Fuck off. If you actually knew your heritage and history, you wouldn’t be loud and proud about it.

  • Facebones
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    7 months ago

    I wish I saved that meme I saw responding to “confederate statues are my heritage” with “destroying the confederacy is MY heritage”

    EDIT:

  • zeppo@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Sure is weird how these people are obsessed with being traitors and also think they’re patriotic.

    • Ech@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      “thE PArtY oF LIncoLn” waves the flag of his enemies

      - these fucking idiots.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        It’s hilarious to me that redneck conservatives love to wave the flags of the Confederacy and the Nazis - the recipients of the two biggest beatdowns in US military history. Losers in every sense of the word.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      Well the are historic in that they’re a part of the history of oppressing black people that continued after the Civil War. But doesn’t seem like history someone in the South should want to celebrate.

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
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      7 months ago

      The sad part here is that you’re probably wrong.

      As horrible as the Holocaust was, from a numbers standpoint alone, the transatlantic slave trade accounted for more people stolen from their homes.

      Now, that’s the entirety of the transatlantic slave trade. A couple of hundred years of pain and torment. But it also only counts the number of people stolen from home and sold into slavery, not the number of children born into slavery who lived their entire, and often short, lives working backbreaking labor. Well, that’s what the men did. The women were raped until they were no longer physically capable of giving birth again.

      Contrast the Holocaust, at most you have 10 years of horror, from the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 until the end of the war in 1945. It was traumatizing for the survivors, but the strong could move on with their lives.

      Slaves who were freed at the end of the civil war were often basically re-enslaved via that fun little loophole in the 13th amendment. Corrupt judges in the south had a full racket going. They would assign court fees to and black man arrested by their corrupt police, and then sell said black man to a plantation owner as part of covering the debt.

      If you thought the horrors of slavery were bad, the convict leasing and debt peonage schemes were so much worse. Literally working people to death because the plantation owners could simply pick up a new slave at the courthouse for a small fee. A smaller fee in places where the plantation owner was the judge.

      Fun fact. The whole debt peonage thing did garner the attention of federal prosecutors, who thought it was fucked up. See, Debt peonage was actually outlawed by Congress in 1867. So one enterprising prosecutor actually took a bunch of assholes to court.

      Those assholes argued that since the debt was fictitious, it wasn’t peonage, but was actually slavery. And since congress had never actually passed a law against slavery, they wanted their slaves back. This was in 1903.

      The worst part is, the courts agreed.

      Various fake debt schemes and other overt slavery shit was still going on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beeville\_couple\_arraigned\_on\_charge\_of\_holding\_Negro\_in\_slavery\_on\_farm\_(1942)\_The\_Brownsville\_Herald.jpg. You’ll note that 1942 is after the US joined WW2. That’s the entire reason for the final crackdown on chattel slavery schemes in the US…

      Well, I say that. Sadly, there’s more to the story.

      • gmtom@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I’m pretty sure he’s saying that, like slavery, the holocaust is worse than criticising monuments to confederates.

  • original2@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Is yankee offensive? I am british and have called americans “yanks” for the past 10 years at least… Should i stop or is it ok?

  • saltesc@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Imagine you go back to the 1860s and you see a cohort of this capacity start something. No wonder they got their arses kicked.