What to commemorate
Now what about this whole history question, eh? Is Trump right that removing statues is an attack on history? No, of course not. It’s just as much “history” that a statue is removed as it is “history” that a statue is standing there or put up in the first place. We’re allowed to second-guess our ancestors about what we want to commemorate and glorify with a statue and what we don’t. Statues of Confederate generals send a message that we glorify people who left the United States in order to keep millions of people enslaved. Why the hell would we want to commemorate and glorify that now? Why shouldn’t we say oh hey Lee was defending the ability of white people to keep black people enslaved, not as individuals but as a people, so that their children and grandchildren and so on forever would also be enslaved. That’s a gruesome and shameful aspect of our history, something to remember keenly but not to commemorate and glorify. There’s nothing more to it than that. Those people in Charlottesville that Trump has so much sympathy for were there to defend the right of white people to enslave black people. Get out of here with that shit.
Jennifer Schuessler at the Times looks at the ongoing discussion:
Mr. Trump’s comments drew strongly negative reactions on Twitter from many historians, who condemned his “false equivalence” between the white nationalists and the counterprotesters.
But “where does it stop?” — and just what counts as erasing history — is a question that scholars and others have found themselves asking, in much more nuanced ways, as calls have come to remove monuments not just to the Confederacy, but to erstwhile liberal heroes and pillars of the Democratic Party like Andrew Jackson (a slave owner who, as president, signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which led to the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Native Americans) and Woodrow Wilson (who as president oversaw the segregation of the federal bureaucracy).
…
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard who is credited with breaking down the wall of resistance among historians to the idea that Jefferson had a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, said that the answer to Mr. Trump’s hypothetical question about whether getting rid of Lee and Jackson also meant junking Washington and Jefferson was a simple “no.”
There is a crucial difference between leaders like Washington and Jefferson, imperfect men who helped create the United States, Ms. Gordon-Reed said, and Confederate generals like Jackson and Lee, whose main historical significance is that they took up arms against it. The comparison, she added, also “misapprehends the moral problem with the Confederacy.”
“This is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,” she said. “This is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.”
They’re not heroes.
As for the idea of erasing history, it’s a possibility that most scholars do not take lightly. But James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, said that Mr. Trump’s comments failed to recognize the difference between history and memory, which is always shifting.
When you alter monuments, “you’re not changing history,” he said. “You’re changing how we remember history.”
Some critics of Confederate monuments have called for them to be moved to museums, rather than destroyed, or even left in place and reinterpreted, to explain the context in which they were created. Mr. Grossman noted that most Confederate monuments were constructed in two periods: the 1890s, as Jim Crow was being established, and in the 1950s, during a period of mass Southern resistance to the civil rights movement.
Almost as if they were put up to send a message, eh?
Jackson, though quite terrible, wasn’t a traitor… traitors don’t get statues or memorials, they get a place of dishonor in our history books in the section marked “never again”.
But that’s not the whole of the issue. There’s a larger moral issue in play.
Best comment I’ve seen on false equivalence (on FB): If you ignore a Nazi, they’ll kill you. If you ignore Antifa, they’ll play Pokemon Go and eat Nutella.
I’ve vaguely heard of the counter-demonstrators engaging in tactics that should be considered beyond the pale, which I haven’t verified because I’m too lazy to look for it. So for the sake of argument, lets accept that its true. So: the (more extreme) counter-demonstrators wanted to impose fear and violence on the fascists, while the fascists wanted to impose fear and violence on innocent people who just happened to be black, or to think it’s a lousy idea to memorialize people who tried to destroy the country to preserve an immoral institution. Even on an ethic of strict pacifism, the equivalence doesn’t work.
Not everyone who fought to save the union did so for moral reasons of eradicating slavery and freeing people.
The same can probably be said about the other side too. They might have joined the fight just in solidarity with their neighbors responding to the rhetoric of defending states’ rights, etc.
Here is an excerpt from Lincoln’s letter to Greeley
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
@Ophelia #2:
Most assuredly, just setting a bare minimum standard for the false equivalency.
@Steve Watson #3:
I’d bet dollars to donuts that there were some in that antifa crowd that were open to the same sort of violence, but as you say, there’s a moral difference between violence against Nazis vs. violence against persecuted groups and actual peaceful protesters. By and large people that give a shit about other people aren’t down with violence and scare tactics (which is unbelievably frustrating at times).
I keep suggesting that the statue of General Lee standing straight and tall be replaced with a statue of General Lee slumped in defeat at Gettysburg, while jubilant former slaves look down on him as they throw off their broken chains.
The suggestion never seems to go over well. But don’t you want to remember your history??
There are places to remember Jackson and Lee – museums devoted to military history, for instance, where their military careers are the focus. It’s possible to admire the military actions of a General or soldier separately from their social legacy. The Nazi army had some great generals. In fact, in the early days of WWII, the Nazi army was full of innovative, intelligent, skilled men, whose qualities led to the German army overrunning Europe in six weeks.
But the place to remember their triumphs isn’t in the town square, surrounded by a population of whom many would have been directly affected by their actions. It’s like sticking a statue of Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein up in Paris. (That would last about two minutes maximum…) Keep these guys in museums where their triumphs can be put into context for those who are interested.
@A Masked Avenger: Or a statue of him surrendering to Grant.
The ‘black bloc’ crowd are parasites who subvert ‘progressive’ events to promote their own brand of chaos. The Confederate revisionists, gun-toting ‘militia,’ Neo-Nazis, and Klan Klones in Charlottesville WERE the event.