this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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I’m open to being wrong, but I still think old shitty statues and stuff should be put in a museum or something. I think it’s important to preserve history, especially when it represents something bad. The Holocaust museum is a solid example, and imo is incredibly important.
I’d even say the same for the One Ring if there wasn’t the chance for someone to reclaim it and become all powerful. I mean is it even possible to contain it?
I don't think anyone has a problem with that. But, that's usually not what the regressive types are complaining about.
To use the US example, the overwhelming number of "Confederate Monuments" were erected many decades after the Civil War, and typically funded by white supremacist groups or their close allies in city and state government. They were installed in public parks, on public easements, in front of public buildings, etc. Notably, they are typically not on graves, old battlefields, etc.
Folks quite reasonably think we should remove monuments that were put up as a big "F U" to remind black folks who is really in charge. These statues are certainly shitty, but they also are not "old". They're much younger than the people/conflicts they memorialize, and have no historical significance (except to the white supremacists who put them there).
Of course it's not just the US. I remember in the wake of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, communist sympathizers complained at the removal of Soviet monuments. I remember college professors complaining at the renaming of Leningrad back to St. Petersburg, calling it a "dangerous right-wing move" and an erasure of Lenin's history and legacy.
In Russia those Soviet monuments are like dirt, you still can see some Lenin statues here and there.
There are quite a few "statue parks" in Russia where they dumped all the old communist statues. Row after row of lenins, the odd khrushchev or brezhnev, a rare stalin tucked down the back. Lots of actually pretty good art of the common people looking super swole as they march into a glorious future.
All sitting in a muddy field in the outer suburbs of Moscow or Petersburg. It's a tourist trap but I found it to be a pretty poetic experience when I visited.
First of all there's Museon near the Gorky Park, where one of such places is combined with a memorial to Stalinism's victims.
The thing is that most of the statues in question were not created prior to the civil war, or even directly after. They were funded and installed by people mad about reconstruction and later about desegregation. Many of the statues being discussed today were put in place in the 50s. They have no historical relevance except as a monument to the racists who wanted a large, visible reminder that they had power at one point, as a threat that they'd continue trying to gain it back.
And largely the ones which are older than that and do have some sort of historical or general memorial purpose are being treated differently. A few years ago Orlando relocated a Johnny Reb statue from 1911 to the Confederate part of a local cemetery and I think that's the most appropriate thing to do with that specific statue.
No. Somebody even wrote three whole books to say it can't be contained. They're pretty good too.
I think I'm fine with that as long as it's properly contextualized. In the cases of statues the history to tell isn't actually about the person the statue is about but rather the context and circumstances of the propaganda campaign that lead to it being built. When you see statues and posters in a Holocaust museum it's in the context of how they were propagandized.
Either way, no way in hell should it be put in a place of honor like a park.
Those statues were not created with the intent of creating art. They are not historical in the sense of their subject. If we're talking about Confederate statues then they were largely created during the Jim Crow era, many in the 1950s-60s. They were created with the intent to harass and ostracize black people in America and promote white nationalism.
They are not art and have no historical value. If we want to preserve them, they should be in an exhibit about Jim Crow-era hate speech. And in that case, we don't need all of them; just prominent examples. We can take a chunk of Stone Mountain, for instance, to show next to pictures of it before it is dynamited.
They consider throwing it in the ocean as a serious possibility
Exactly! I agree with you and think that we should expose our past as it was and how it impacted the world. Learning from our mistakes prevents us from committing them again.
There's a huge difference between an American Civil War museum and having symbols/statues celebrating the traitors to the existing nation everywhere.
I agree with you that problematic statues/symbols should be displayed in museums with the goal of teaching people about mistakes of the past. I mostly take an issue with the public display of stuff like that
On the One Ring: The issue is that it itself has a nature which cannot be change, cannot be harvested without the wielder being corrupted. And any value it might have had is greatly outweighed by the danger it poses