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A recent event that I’m sure fully counts as culture war is the official removal in Odessa of the monument to the city’s founders, mainly Catherine the Great. The justification, which is rather easy to predict, is that Catherine was a perpetrator of Moskal imperialism who repressed Ukrainian patriots (supposedly they already existed back then), committed cultural genocide and erased Ukrainian nationhood (which obviously we’re also supposed to believe existed back then). There isn’t much to comment on this, I think (though I’ll again point out that Odessa would never have existed in the first place without Catherine), but an educated redditor was eager to point out* the curious fact that the removed monument is actually a replica erected in 2007, largely as a response to the events of the so-called Orange Revolution, as the original was removed (and supposedly destroyed) by the Soviets in 1920. So yes, it was originally removed as an imperialist relic, by powers that the Ukrainian authorities claim later perpetrated genocide specifically against Ukrainians because they were Ukrainians i.e. it was an incident between opposing factions of Ukraine deniers. This is where we’re at, which actually doesn’t surprise me that much because I believe we’ve been in a clown world for a long time.
*https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/zyccgk/catherine_the_great_statue_taken_down_in_odesa/
Well, yeah. That's how national myths are created. The Romans would tell you of their founding siblings, sons of Mars, being suckled by a wolf. The Mexicans put the Aztec eagle, snake, and cactus on their flag. American civil religion is full of quaint stuff too. It's the Ukrainians' turn now, and they are in fact human - they will be no different from the rest of us.
Let's keep the trivializing within limits.
The Roman myth is from antiquity. I need not say more.
Eagles, snakes and cactuses are mundane creatures that very obviously exist in Mexico.
It specifically refers to the founding myth of Tenochtitlan: that the Mexica people had a divine revelation that they were to build their new home where they were sent a sign of an eagle eating a snake on a cactus. They purportedly saw this on an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco, and so were forced to build their capital (which by the time Cortés landed housed several hundred thousand people) on reclaimed artificial islands
Do you have a guess about the material reason for citing the city there rather than along one of the rivers feeding the lake? Texcoco sounds very swampy and unhealthy, so I always wondered if it was some combination of defense and claiming wasteland nobody wanted.
(apologies to Mexican Shrek for insulting his swamp and forcing him to downvote this post)
It was probably for defensive reasons, compounded by military weaknesses and competition with neighbouring groups; similar to Venice's origin. At the time they settled in the area the Mexica were a comparatively poor and less numerous tribe, and were the last to arrive in the Mexico valley (already one of the most densely populated regions in the world; space was at a premium). If you assume the traditional founding date of 1325 (which like its origin story is mostly symbolic) they were vassals of another city state (Azcapotzalco) for roughly a century, forced to provide men as conscripts for wars and construction projects. In the early 15th century they joined with two other city states to rebel against Azcapotzalco, forming the Triple Alliance (what people call the Aztecs, which is itself a modern invention).
The Mexica, once having established their military hegemony within the Triple Alliance, substantially rewrote their own history to remove from awareness their past episodes of weakness and submission. The founding myth presenting the creation of Tenochtitlan as an instance of divine revelation and favour rather than that of necessity is in line with this.
Interesting, thanks! I wish we had a catalog of all your aztec history posts.
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What limits? George Washington who could not tell a lie, the French people ruled by a queen who would let them eat cake, the Germans laying claim to every tribal people from the Longobards to the Goths, trying to take Europe until it brought them such ruin they pulled a 180?
People's national myths are pretty universally dumb. I guess Ukraine's won't be different.
I think the main difference in Ukrainian case is that pretty much all good tribes/heroes/battles/myths are claimed long ago by other nationalisms and their attempts look a bit silly because of this. Even the whole “Kievan Rus” thing…. isn’t a good look for a nation basing its own identity on definitely not being Rus.
It's actually worse than that. It's supposedly based on them actually being the true Rus, whereas "Russians" claimed the label for themselves without basis, because they're just Asiatic mongrels.
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Within reasonable limits. Because trivializing is, at the end, normally just a cop-out.
Reasonable is what keeps the nation together. I really don't begrudge the Ukrainians their right to kick out a statue dedicated to a monarch from three centuries ago.
In order to preserve a newly found national myth that is "pretty dumb"?
Arguably smarter than most at this point.
What's your true objection?
I object to the notion of it being smart.
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It's dumb if your goal is autistic truth-seeking. If your goal is keeping together the Ukrainian nation and keeping out the Russian invader, it really really isn't.
It's not even "truth-seeking" to preserve the statues. No truth is lost by destroying a statue. Perhaps if they invented other history in its place, then it would count. As it stands, it is merely a refusal to honor some sort of aesthetic consistency. "How come you want to eat your cake when you've had it 300 years ago?"
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