They did their best

What is worse is that the statues were not put up after the civil war, but much latter, as an FU during a wave civil rights protests.

@Carewolf I did not know that, thanks for that.

@StatsTheProducer, John Oliver has done a good piece on that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5b_-TZwQ0I

@molotovinpeikko He ignores a LOT of counter points. Don't trust him too much. Just think of Custer and remember he fought for the North.

@Recon250

> Don't trust him too much. Just think of Custer and remember he fought for the North.

Sorry, man, I'm not very big on American history. We Russians rather prefer to shape your future!
(just kidding)
If you have some handy link clarifying your point, I'll be glad to read up on that.

@molotovinpeikko I'll check it out.

Look, people. The purpose of Confederate statues is not to honour the war dead -- it's to send a message to Southern blacks, saying, "This is not your land." How do we know this? Because almost all of those statues were put up during the Civil Rights era. Links: http://theweek.com/speedreads/718507/striking-graphic-reveals-construction-confederate-monuments-peaked-during-jim-crow-civil-rights-eras and https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/8/15/16153220/trump-confederate-statues

There was also, directly after Brown vs. Board of Education, a spate of renaming schools (especially majority-black schools) after Confederates.

To everyone who says, "Well, why don't they just put the statues in museums?" -- those statues are cheap, mass-produced crap that's not worth putting in a museum. Notice how, in the videos of people pulling down Confederate statues, they fold like taffy? There's a reason for that: https://qz.com/1054062/statues-of-confederate-soldiers-across-the-south-were-cheaply-mass-produced-in-the-north/

Oh, also? The Civil War was about slavery. How do we know this? Because each state's Articles of Secession says so. The ones that don't say it baldly say they're seceding because of "states' rights"... but when you read further to see which rights, it turns out that it was the "state's right" to own slaves. Some links: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/02/04/582468315/why-schools-fail-to-teach-slaverys-hard-history https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1030256938834165760.html

@ShifterCat "Look, people. The purpose of Confederate statues is not to honour the war dead -- it's to send a message to Southern blacks, saying, 'This is not your land.' How do we know this? Because almost all of those statues were put up during the Civil Rights era."

This is indeed the purpose of many of the Confederate statues and I think is the best argument for getting rid of them. It may not apply to all the statues, but any statues should be taken down that were put up in response to Civil Rights advances.

And if a town wants to replace that statue they have taken down with a new statue to honor their ancestors, I think that is fine too so long as they make that purpose clear in part by denouncing the cause of slavery and racism that was the leading factor in starting the war.

@ShifterCat Museums is a good solution. The build quality doesn't matter, as long as the statue hold historical significance. In a museum, we can have interpretive panels explaining the racist history behind each statue. We would ensure that the real history would not be forgotten.

@ShifterCat
That's mighty ignorant of you, say that to this proud black man.
https://youtu.be/3TXWWpQgwRw?t=20s

@Keremline Congratulations, you've found a person of colour who agrees with the white supremacist spin rather than historical record.

If you know where to look, you can also find videos from people who sincerely believe that if you stick both fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence. Those hold about the same weight.

(And yes, I only now noticed I'd gotten this reply.)

@ShifterCat the war was not technically about slavery, it was about keeping the country together. Those states were seceding (because of slavery) and the union wanted them to remain a part of the country, therefor the war to keep them. It didn't really matter why they were seceding, the war was to keep them from doing so no matter the reason.

...We tried statues removal several times in Russia. Firstly the Tsar statues. Then the Stalin statues. Then the Lenin statues.

And you know what?

It never helped to solve anything.

@Dilandu Probably made the doves lives a little more boring though :P

@Dilandu As an opinonated Westerner I still think all those statues should have been re-carved into Yuri Gagarin. OK, it might have been hard to do that with the Tsarist ones, given he wasn't alive then, but the other lot could've been altered...

@Dilandu Did you remove the Zhukov statues too, because he worked for Stalin? Anyay, at least the Confederates weren't as bad as Stalin. The Confederates only enslaved people. Stalin enslaved AND murdered.

That moment when a Danish webcomic author knows what's happening at a university in North Carolina (I'm from the rival school).

And yes, Confederate monuments are history that remind us of the US South's ugly past, which lasted well after the Civil War. As such, monuments like these belong in a museum. They're nothing but symbols that some Southerners can't suck it up and get over that they lost the war and they can't own slaves anymore, even when they tell their opponents to get over that an orange is now president. Remind me again, who are the snowflakes?

It's a harsh reality, so do tell me again about how big and tough you are when you still can't get over it 150 years later.

And just in case non-Americans get worried, these people are a minority. Most people, at least here in North Carolina, know their history.

@StuckovertheAtlantic Greetings from Raleigh

@StuckovertheAtlantic I get where you're coming from, but I think you're off on a key point. Many of these statues aren't of leaders or generals, but generic "soldier" memorials. I don't think it's right to deny them the right to memorialize their dead - we didn't even deny the Germans that right after WWII (and the Nazis where abhorrent).

I get that it's a sensitive subject to many black Americans, but I think we all need to take a step back and recognize that there's a difference between remembering the dead, and glorifying the cause they fought for. We can do one, without doing the other.

I'll get off my soapbox now...

@EndgameOnyx The thing is, most of the statues that are the subject of controversy aren't those simple soldier memorials you're talking about. People aren't campaigning to have those removed. They're campaigning to remove the statues glorifying people like Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, or Stonewall Jackson.

Side note: most of those statues were not erected around the Civil War. Most of the ones that were are the aforementioned soldier memorials at actual battlefields, little more than simple slabs with text dedicated to everyone who died in that battle. The statues glorifying the generals and leaders came up in 2 main waves: The first was between around 1900-1918, the height of the Jim Crow era; the second was between around 1960-1966, the height of the Civil Rights movement. With that in mind, it's pretty obvious what the intent was: to intimidate black people into "remembering their place" and to tell them that they will never truly be considered equal.

@Tumpynuts I agree that the statues glorifying their leaders/generals have no place in the public eye, aside from a museum. However, I do think it's dangerous to assume intent simply because they built them at a time where that intent fits a certain narrative. Case and point is that, during that first wave you mentioned, the final surviving remnants of Civil War veterans were dying out. That perhaps, could have been a motivation for building memorials, as the final living reminders were disappearing.

However, in the end I'm only doing what you are - assuming intent based on some convenient details that fit the narrative. Instead, we should be looking at what the statue actually "is". Who is it of? If there is engraving, what does it say? Who is it speaking to? Those factors matter a hell of a lot more than what some racist thought 100 years ago, in my opinion.

@EndgameOnyx Here is the transcript from the dedication of the "Silent Sam" statue in North Carolina.

http://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcription-carr-speech.html

Read the excerpt below, you will see just how racist this is.

It is true that the snows of winter which never melt, crown our temples, and we realize that we are living in the twilight zone; that it requires no unusual strain to hear the sounds of the tides as they roll and break upon the other shore, “The watch-dog’s bark his deep bay mouth welcome as we draw near home”, breaks upon our ears—makes it doubly sweet to know that we have been remembered in the erection of this beautiful memorial. The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South – When “the bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States – Praise God.
I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.

@EndgameOnyx

"I get where you're coming from, but I think you're off on a key point. Many of these statues aren't of leaders or generals, but generic "soldier" memorials. I don't think it's right to deny them the right to memorialize their dead - we didn't even deny the Germans that right after WWII (and the Nazis where abhorrent). "

You've never been to Germany - have you?

There isn't a single statue of a German WWII soldier in uniform there.
They've dealt with their history far better then the US south ever have.

Any depiction of those that fought for Nazi Germany is still highly controversial in Germany and even their many war cemetaries all over Europe are very low key.
No monuments at all, very simple gravestones with name and dates - nothing else.
Not even naming the branch of service or units they belonged to - which the British and US war graves does.

They died fighting for an evil regim who sought to exterminate a people and enslave countless others - all in the name of white supremacy and racism.
Those they know the name of get a tombstone - but that's as far as their memoralizing of them goes, and not an inch further.

@StuckovertheAtlantic And just to clarify in case someone is a bit confused (and as some have already pointed out), much of the talk right now is about Confederate monuments erected long after the Civil War ended. The memorials at battlefields and other notable locations, which were made right after the war in the 1860s and 1870s, those are not in question; 99.9% of Americans, left and right, agree that they are there to memorialize soldiers who died and should stay there as historical markers.

What is being debated is the fate of Confederate statues that were erected in the 1910s and 1920s, those were made specifically to promote white supremacy and degenerate African-Americans. For example, the "Silent Sam" statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which was pulled down by protesters (and I assume is the basis of this week's comic, I could be wrong), a speaker at its dedication ceremony bragged about "whipping a Negro woman." Almost all these statues made at that time were not about honoring Confederate soldiers, but rather to promote the Anglo-Saxon race and tell blacks that they are not people worthy of human rights.

Imagine if in the 1970s, monuments honoring Nazis were erected across West and East Germany and dedication speakers bragged about gassing Jews and slaughtering Slavs and gypsies. Sort of like that.

@StuckovertheAtlantic Hello, fellow North Carolinian,

Hooookay, looks to be a lot of "Lost Cause" revisionism, that insidious pseudohistory that claims the American Civil War was about States' Rights, repression, or anything other than slavery, going on in here. So let's set the record straight; the Civil War was about slavery, period.
And don't take my word for it, look at the declarations on the matter from Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas, the backbone of the Confederacy. Every one of them names as an immediate cause for the war the threat posed to "the institution of negro slavery."
Maybe y'all live in an egalitarian paradise but my white ass lives in a zipcode where racism and discrimination are a real problem for real people every bloody day and this "Lost Cause" nonsense, propped up in part by these statues dedicated to traitors, comes up constantly in its defense.
Tear 'em down. Tear it all down.

@Jsconn90 if anyone argues that the confederacy wasnt about slavery pull out the quote from the vp of the confederacy

“Its foundations are laid its cornerstone rests upon the fundamental truth. That the negro is not equal to the white man. That slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition”

I usually am against knocking over statues. Why? Because usually people do so to wipe out parts of their history. You should be able to see your history no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel. This is different though. These statues were erected very recently. The confederates themselves felt they should not get statues.

“As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated, my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt ... would have the effect of ... continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour." Robert E. Lee

[Edit: Several commenters have pointed out that some of the statues are older memorials for the fallen rather than newer statues glorifying past leaders and generals. Finland descended into madness of civil war in 1918 and there are monuments all across the country to commemorate those who died. Monuments like that have nothing to do with keeping old wounds open and sore. They are about respect for people who had to make an impossible choice and died as a consequence of that choice. I have no objections regarding such monuments. I still maintain that the more recent statues that exist only to rewrite history are a very bad idea.]

@AinoKyllikki I agree with you there.

@AinoKyllikki how about Stalin statues were in the soviet block's countries made from other statues whiches were part of their history. Is it bad that they knocked down the Stalin statues?

@csizmawarrior No. The will of the people is what matters the most. I just hope you left one somewhere to remind future generations of what happened. We have a statue here that some people want to tear down. It was a gift from Soviet leaders, is called World Peace, and represents Socialist Realism. I think it is a healthy reminder of the questionable things Finns are capable of. Never again.

@AinoKyllikki yes that statue seems like a good reminder. I think ee have some soviet statues somewhere too

@csizmawarrior I just spoke with an Estonian (on discord), who reminded me that Estonians did not destroy their statues but removed them from prominent places to a single place. A very smart move.

@AinoKyllikki well yeah idk if there were the statues made from other statues and things or fresh material but yeah smart maybe could use its material for better things

'@AinoKyllikki' "These statues were erected very recently."
"The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American hereditary association of Southern women established in 1894 in Nashville, Tennessee."
I don't think that very recently is something that has happened over 100 years ago. Most obvious explanation for 30 year delay would be that at that time veterans would have started dying from old age.

"The confederates themselves felt they should not get statues."
Lee had a lot of authority among veterans, but he wasn't all of them. If I remember correctly, at least some of the markers at Gettysburg were requested by still-living participants of the battle from Southern side.

@comrade_Comrade Thank you for giving more info on the matter. These things are rarely simple.

'@AinoKyllikki' it's just to me this debate always reminds how butthurt Russian tourists become around certain monuments in Finland, like one near Officer Reserve School in Hamina.

@comrade_Comrade You mean the monument of fallen officers? Interesting. Did not even think about the possibility of someone getting offended by that. What other monuments do they find offending?

Well, good old Alexander still has the best spot in Helsinki. Centuries of kings and emperors, and he was the only one who was not a complete shithead. Pushkin has a nice bust in Kuopio too. Some people see only what they want.

'@AinoKyllikki' in USSR and Russia image of stahlhelm is closely associated with Nazi Germany, same goes for swastika on WWII-vintage planes and tanks, not to mention that Continuation War is viewed mostly negatively by those who cared enough to remember it from school textbook. As usual with historically complex issues, most people either don't know the context or view it from perspective of their preferred side alone.

I'd say that anyone who kept fighting in terrain and climate like those deserves a monument.

@comrade_Comrade We also have a monument for Finnish SS men. Germans get very upset about that one.

Ah. Stahlhelm and swastikas. As if a failed art student ruining Nietzsche and the moustache of British WWI pilots was not enough, he had to ruin practical headwear and a global symbol of nice things as well. It is funny how symbols can get to you. I remember finding an old toy in the forest as a child. A wooden plane with swastikas, older than the Nazi party. I was old enough to have heard about Hitler, but too young to know about the earlier swastikas. I was so freaked out.

'@AinoKyllikki' Estonian veterans got it worst. Conscripted by Germans, _warmly welcomed_ by Czechs, surrendered to Soviet care, and all they've got is a reputation of serving in Waffen SS. Russian media's coverage of their reunion events was less than nuanced and positive.

@comrade_Comrade I was told on discord that they were guards in Nuremberg during the trial.

'@AinoKyllikki' at some point it was decided that conscripts should not be held responsible for crimes committed by SS as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS_foreign_volunteers_and_conscripts#Post-war

That happened well after this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Hell

@comrade_Comrade Thank you for the links. This has been a very informative chat.

Thank you @AinoKyllikki and @comrade_Comrade for this interesting and informative conversation. I've enjoyed reading it.

@AinoKyllikki I agree

Remember when a young bloke went to one dressed in a confederate uniform and saluted the statue. Well as it turns out he was honoring a passed family member. He was told what he did was equal to a hate crime. All because of some statues.

I live in Denmark and this is my take on it: If it's that much of an eyesore to you, then don't look at it.

PS: Also who knows. The dude they made a statue for might have done some amazing shit to the city, don't ruin someones good for the bad they did... unless it's Hitler, ruin him all you want.

@Fluffkin it’s a bit of a tricky situation, a lot of the statues were put up rather late after the war, in the early 1900s and such, in order to cause fear in the local African-American population. Because the Civil War involved people fighting brother against brother, we don’t want to completely remove them, but the reason for those statues existing by and large is a sign of oppression and hate. I personally am In a more moderate camp, maybe taking the statues out of view and replacing them with placards describing the historical events that happened there.

@Fluffkin most of these "Standing Soldier" statues have nothing to do with any specific soldier. They were mass-produced and ordered from a catalogs with various optional hats and uniform accoutrements to customize them for both Confederate and Union and various regiments. The plaques that go with them are often the purest horseshit, as many of the soldiers they "memorialize" were simply made-up names slapped on popular stories with no actual fact-checking or verification by the town councils that ordered them. At best, these wholly anonymous statues MIGHT occasionally have been erected in honor of an actual soldier who distinguished himself in some manner, but looked nothing like the generalized anonymous white boy in a uniform the bronze casters cranked out by the hundreds.
And I wouldn't hesitate to compare Jefferson Davis to Hitler, nor any of the Southern governors and legislators to Goering or Goebbels.

@Fluffkin #9787154

I have a direct ancestor who fought and survived the war, so I have a dog in this fight. Just to be clear, he fought for the south.

A very large number of the statues in question honor people who had nothing to do with the city they were errected in. They were raised by people making a point. A rather mean point to be honest.

At the beginning, all anyone wanted was to move some of these things to places wehre history could be taught in a more nuanced fashion. Of course there were people who wanted to go overboard, but it's the overeaction to putting some of these things in museums that gave the overboard-going people a green light.

Personally, I think from most to least important:
1. What the community wants. If the community of New Orleans doesn't want a statue, they shouldn't be forced to display it.
2. If the person being depicted had something to do with the community their statue is in ought to be allowed to stay so long as it's in accordance with 1. There's no Lee never set foot in New Orleans or Charlottsville, as far as I can tell.
3. Statues honoring ordanary soldiers ought to be allowed to stay so far as it is in accordance with 2. They didn't cause the war and they didn't cause this mess. But they fought and many were maimed or died for a cause that, quite frankly, wasn't worthy of them. That deserves something.

@FrankHarr I agree with the 3 reasons for a statue to stay. I was more commenting on the, I guess, minority that goes out of their way to get offended by the statues.

But being a Dane I don't know much of the statues, just that some people are wayyyy too easily angered by them.

@Fluffkin I mean -- understand that these statues were often put up for the express purpose of defining "this is white town, you [black people] don't cross this line". They're markers of the literal geography of racism.
The fact that they have used "this is a monument to dead soldiers" as a defense against protest and removal (from the time of installation to the modern day) is both intentional and dishonest.

@Escher I see. I did not know that before I posted the message. All I knew was that the statues were of people from the southern states.

@Fluffkin #9787581

"I was more commenting on the, I guess, minority that goes out of their way to get offended by the statues."

They're not THAT much of a minority. And remember, number one was "What does the community want?" New Orleans wanted to move its stature of Robere E. Lee as did Charlottsville. Some people flipped without understanding what was going to be done or recognizing that these communities didn't want them on display like that any more.

That said, there has been some vandalism and I don't know that it'll get properly recognized as vandalism, let alone punished.

@Fluffkin As an outsider trying to be fair, but this not the case.

The statues were were paid for bigots in bigoted organized groups to legitimize their bigotry under the disguise of "Southern Culture". Pretty much NONE of the towns in question held votes or planning committees that decided to spend the town's funds on this particular form of beautification. It was pretty much always some organized bigotry donating the statue and the cost to install it to the town.

@IronBear The moment you call someone a bigot I throw you're argument far out.

That word has been watered down to: More right leaning than me" on the internet.

@Fluffkin No, sometimes saying "bigot" is just calling a spade a spade. Please read up on the history of the Deep South and how those "Confederate Monuments" tie into it. I posted a few links earlier in the thread.

@ShifterCat Using the word bigot has been washed down so badly. You could have used a number of other words, but chose a feminist/anit-fa buzzword, I don't think either group is wrong in their ideas but they do not live up to them, which are two groups that has really shown had easily corruptable millenials are.

Had you said southern idiots, confederate symphaziters( not sure I wrote that right) or any other summonym I woulnd't have cared.

@Fluffkin The word hasn't been "washed down" -- what's been happening is that white supremacist groups (who are, duh, BIGOTS) have been purposefully encouraging confusion and sowing the popular belief that "bigot doesn't mean anything anymore". They've been so successful in this endeavor that many people parrot this belief without considering how they're carrying water for said white supremacists.

As for using synonyms... as one of my creative writing teachers liked to say, "There are no synonyms". What he meant is that each term you use has a slightly different meaning. I'd rather not mince words -- if someone's a bigot, I'm calling them the plain, honest term. If they don't like the harshness of that term, they can stop being fucking bigoted.

@Fluffkin Dude, bigots exist. Since you can't make a valid argument against me you have decided to launch an ad hominem attack.

Why don't you engage with the arguments being made instead of labeling people and running to your safe space?

Honestly the Confederate Statues should all be torn down. Traitors shouldn't get statues in the country they betrayed.

@PaxRomana Agree 100%.

I think it's due to the historical significance, the Civil War was a major turning point in US History. Besides most of those statues weren't built until the majority of the Confederate Army had died off, so they wouldn't of gotten to enjoy it

153 years since the end of the Civil War, and the losing part of the US still can not get past it and move forward. Sad. Very sad.

@Rolfbart Our Losing part could not do that, Well... Because we executed most of them afterwards, Banned their ideals, And fought the red eastern Devil. So yeah, you really should get over it.

@Rolfbart Who is it that is unable to get past the event, those who just want to leave the memorials or those who actively want to seek out and destroy them? Should we destroy the Coliseum in Rome because so many people were cruelly killed there? Should we tear down any statues we find of Roman emperors?

'@Rolfbart' Considering some of the grudge things Europe manages to hold onto that dates back millenia, I'm not sure I'd open that can of worms. What's that quote? "In America 100 years is a long time, in Europe 100 miles is a long way"?

And let's be honest, it's way, WAY worse. I've got elected officials in (formerly) proud union-state territory flying the confederate flag because they know their bread is buttered on the racist side. We have second-generation immigrants calling these people out and basically being shouted down/intimidated into silence.

Basically, the failure of Reconstruction should stand as a lesson to everyone; you don't let traitors go home and cling to their bitter delusions and lies.

@Rolfbart
That's like telling the armenians or jews they're still not over the holocaust and the armenian genocide. Aren't you being disrespectful here?