This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A lot, as otherwise they wouldn't have their city.
Hundreds of towns and cities were founded all over former USSR during Stalin's time.
Should statues of the big moustache man be built in each of them?
Were such statues erected there? If yes, are there still there, or were they removed on grounds that they are affront to the national heritage of the locals?
Statues of Stalin were built all over USSR and "brotherly countries" (without consulting the people), and were removed after 1956 (also without consulting the people).
Should they be brought back? If so, everywhere or only in cities founded by Stalin?
Is there even a city where Stalin was specifically commemorated as its founder?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Do you think the city will vanish once the statue is gone? Are statues like vampires, in that if you destroy one, the cities they spawned also die/revert?
I asked this because that's the vibe I've gotten from this position, that The Statue Must Stand Lest The Odessans Suffer Rootlessness or something. It was perhaps too jocular of me to phrase it the way I did, but I feel like Botond has blown his own concerns out of proportion. If that is indeed not what he's getting at, then I fail to see what the concern is. What will happen once the statue is gone? They jettison a part of their founding myth that they want nothing to do with because of its ties to a people who are interfering with their ability to have a city in the first place?
More options
Context Copy link
That's not what I said, and you know that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
According to Wikipedia, there had been a settlement in the area already during Crimean/Turkish rule. Catherine was who renamed it Odessa.
Yes, a settlement that wasn't Ukrainian in any sense of the word but (maybe) geographical, which was a fishing village transformed into a port city and naval base.
Ok so you would be totally happy if Ukrainians demolished the whole city and port alongside the statue?
Not particularly, but that'd surely be consistent though.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is such a goofy argument that's pretty clearly a result of motivated reasoning. Does ordering a city be founded at a particular location give a person some unassailable claim to have their statue there for all eternity? If you honestly think it does, you need to do a lot more work to back up that assertion. Statues aren't just some note in a history book. They're meant to glorify a particular historical figure. Given Cathy's association with Russia, and Russia's current actions against Ukraine, it ought to be pretty understandable why the people of Odessa don't want to glorify the leader of a nation that's currently terror bombing them and engaging in war crimes left and right.
Yes. Absolutely. And of course.
Frankly I find the opposite opinion very strange. Honoring creators and founders is probably one of the most ancient and universal traditions of humanity.
War propaganda is extremely petty in comparison.
Founders of cities are honored with a statue if they're seen as honorable, not just because they happened to found a city.
If Hitler happened to found a city somewhere in occupied Russia during WW2, do you think Hitler is entitled to have a statue of himself in that city forever?
And if Mao Zedong happened to create shelters for dispossessed landlords...
...no, wait, he has done exactly the opposite.
What? How is this a response to my hypothetical?
Well, it isn't. I was just completely surprised that you'd come up with that hypothetical among all possible ones, considering that, as far as we know, Hitler planned to erase cities in occupied Russia, not found them.
But I'll say this: had the Nazis ever actually founded new settlements in present-day Ukraine, and at least one of these still existed, there's only one political group that would ever conceivably honor its founding, and that is Azov symphatisers.
The goal of Generalplan Ost was to replace Slavs in the east with Germans, not to just leave the land barren post-cleansing. Certainly there would have to be some cities founded afterwards if the plan were put into action. In any case, the use of Hitler is mostly arbitrary as a stand-in for a generic {bad man} for the purpose of the hypothetical. You could replace him with anyone you think is horrendously vile that was also capable of founding cities.
The question isn't "is it bad to honor Hitler?", it's "do you have to honor vile people just because they founded a city?". You haven't said it explicitly yet, but it seems you have a double standard on this issue where if it's a historical figure you like (e.g. Cathy) then you think people shouldn't ever take down the statue, but if the situation is precisely inverted to a historical figure you don't like (e.g. Hitler) then suddenly the situation isn't so clear-cut.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Unironically, I do.
Hell I think he already deserves to be honored for his few but important good deeds or generally as an important historical figure even though he did great evil. And that's coming from someone who despises all forms of totalitarianism. I see no more reason to destroy his statues as I do Lenin's. Who is as great and terrible a man in many ways. Nazi iconoclasm seems more a feature of boomer mythical truth than any reasoned view of history if you ask me.
Kayne might have said it extremely poorly but I think he was right on that. It is good (and most importantly Christian) to be able to use forgiveness to separate good and evil in the legacy of all men.
But this is all besides the point, Catherine the Great wasn't Hitler.
For a more relevant example, was it not silly to rename Tsaritsyn to Stalingrad?
Well, I applaud you for being ideologically consistent in your views at least. That's not a terrible lens to have when looking at historical figures, although popular perception of history isn't going to be nearly as nuanced, obviously. Most people interpret "statue" as "noble individual", and I mostly agree. I think the nuanced view can be reserved for the history textbooks for the people who really care.
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's fair that if someone is primarily famous for his bad deeds, or if his statue there is primarily to commemorate his bad deeds, then yes, tear his statue down. (And this means immediate and direct bad deeds.) I am also more inclined to agree with tearing down a statue down if it was put up by the person on the statue for his personal aggrandizement, rather than put up by someone else as a historical monument, or if it was otherwise put up in such a way that the people who lived there had no say in it going up.
Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin statues would fall under the first point, and at least Hitler and Stalin under the second, and probably most Lenin statues too (since ex-Communist states removed them quickly when they got a chance to). If some place (perhaps Stalin's birthplace) put up a statue of Stalin years after the fact because such an important historical figure was born there, and it was not mainly meant to commemorate his bad deeds, sure, leave that one up.
The Catherine the Great statue had been there for a while after the fall of the Soviet Union and I'd say that for the last point, it no longer counts as being there without the people's say. I don't know enough about the statue or Ukrainian history to say whether it mainly commemmorates bad deeds.
What would even count as one, though? The closest examples I can think of are the Stalin statues that used to stand near the Moscow-Volga and Volga-Don canals, both of which were mainly constructed by GULAG prisoners, but even that is a bit of a stretch.
It's being famous for his bad deeds OR if the statue commemorates his bad deeds. Stalin falls under the former.
(So yes, my example of someone putting up a Stalin statue years after the fact isn't enough, unless it's hundreds of years after the fact and Stalin isn't well known any more).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, any city dedicating a statue to its founder and leaving it to stand is a completely self-evident course of events. There's no need to back that up.
People disliking people murdering them is very natural. Disliking things associated with murderers is also generally obvious.
As demonstrated by Odessa residents it is not, where it was removed with broad local support.
That's just great. So the founding of Odessa was an irrelevant sidenote to Catherine's rule, and what's actually important is that she is "associated with murderers" (huh?). This is basically comedy level. Was the Russian government supposed to condemn the dissolution of the Zaporozhian Sich (which is supposedly Catherine's main great crime committed against Ukraine) in order to undo that association, or what?
By "associated with murderers" I meant "associated with Putin and modern Russia as she was also a leader of Russia"
For quite clear reasons Ukrainians are disliking anything Russia-adjacent more and more as Russia continues to bomb them and murder their friends/family members.
Former leader of Russia is clearly Russian-adjacent.
Russian government is supposed to stop their invasion of Ukraine, give back invaded areas and stop murdering people and vandalising Ukraine and kidnapping people. For start.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Saying something is "self-evident" is not an argument. There's a difference between noting who the founder was in something like a history book, and glorifying the founder as a statue. Many cities have uncontroversial statues of their founders if their founders were seen as noble individuals.
If Hitler happened to found a city somewhere in occupied Russia during WW2, do you think Hitler is entitled to have a statue of himself in that city forever?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
So I reckon they'd prefer to live in village shacks as barbarians (also in the original sense of the word) - i.e. not in a city - than to suffer that statue to stand?
As they have option to keep city while not honouring Russian ruler, why this would be relevant at all?
Also, it is not like city would not be founded there or nearby sooner or later.
More options
Context Copy link
You're proposing a nonexistent dichotomy in the first place.
There is no law that forbids toppling statues of founders once they are no longer aligned with the current ideology/national myth/what have you. You're not owed your legacy forever and ever, deal with it.
Vandalism is morally reprehensible. I think that's a universal enough maxim to be natural law even.
I mean the fifth commandment is right there. Destroying the legacy of the dead for temporal power might be popular but I think it's ridiculous to argue that there is no principle proscribing such behavior.
I don't think "destroying artistic representations of people in public is always wrong in any circumstance" is a moral standard in any culture, let alone all. And if we are to use them Commandments as a guide, the only one that specifically addresses sculptures and artwork says
, and that was followed by quite a lot of divinely-approved "vandalism".
More options
Context Copy link
For the sake of fairness, I'll point out that what has happened here is, strictly speaking, not vandalism (or at least not yet), although it really isn't much better.
(If news reports are to be believed, the monument will be moved to the park of a new local museum dedicated to the memory of the Moskal yoke, purportedly as an object of scorn and ridicule.)
That does change my opinion of this actually.
From evil to just mildly embarrassing.
Do you see any removal of statue as "evil", do you think that any statue anyone put anywhere must stay there undisturbed for perpetuity?
Was this an act of evil?
Was this also evil?
To clarify I see art destruction specifically as evil.
Symbolic combat is stupid but if you have the humility to not destroy that which has been made on ideological grounds I can at least shrug it off. Like that tacky statue of a girl in front of the WS bull.
And yes the fall of the Soviet union did destroy some things it shouldn't have in my opinion.
One might object that tacky giant statues of dictators don't deserve to exist. But I find that I would mourn the loss of Mount Rushmore if communist revolutionaries blew it up as they do in some alt history scenarios.
This poses the question of what qualifies for this protection, through the definition of art.
I genuinely believe that we should preserve some if not all propaganda.
For as Orwell points out, all art is propaganda but not all propaganda is art
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well, Ukrainians are irritated about (among other things) that Russia is vandalising Ukraine, including Odessa specifically.
More options
Context Copy link
"Vandalism" of a recently erected statue? If they were destroying old art then I'd also denounce the vandalism. But pulling down some post-Soviet statue is not that.
What's the inverse statute of limitations on desecrating art in your opinion? Ten years? A century? Five minutes?
I don't think time enters into it really so much as intent. This is just the same symbolic warfare people always engage in which is inherently ruinous to our common legacy.
I opposed even communist statues being destroyed on principle. If you hate Catherine the Great or Robert E. Lee or Buddha so much make a museum out of it, otherwise stop destroying art for petty squabbles.
There is very real warfare going on in Ukraine, I'll remind you.
There was real warfare going on in Rome in 455, or in Athens in 1941. But I see no change in the moral calculus.
These are all petty squabbles in the grand scheme of things, from the idiotic riots of modern America to the great world war two.
You were entrusted with a world and with it the duty to preserve it for those that shall come after you. Whatever events are current always seem totally important. But they are not compared to this duty and to history.
Surely this is not as grave as other examples. But it is still vandalism and morally reprehensible as such.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
When I had learned this, it was in the context of "a bunch of antisocials destroying things the larger society likes and makes use of". It does not translate well to "destroying a symbol of an empire whose inheritor is kind of literally invading you and destroying things you like, with part of their justification being exactly that some chick of theirs founded the city you live in".
Then you don't know the ethymology.
The Vandals are an ancient Germanic people that sacked Rome in 455, and as part of it intentionally destroyed statues, much to the dismay of Enlightenment thinkers much later who loved Rome very much.
The term Vandalisme was originally coined in French by Bishop Henri Grégoire to describe the destruction of artwork following the French Revolution and comparing it to the sack of Rome in an attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of his time against the "rude northern race" and for Romans.
The word's literal meaning is the destruction of art and legacy in service of the political ideology of the day.
It's second meaning as the destruction or defacing of private property only came later, by analogy.
That's cool but it doesn't win you a war.
One could say the same about slavery, or censorship, or plenty of other and more beneficial crimes the Ukrainians are currently engaging in.
Winning wars has never been an excuse for evil acts.
Besides, if we must be ruthless consequentialists, symbolic gestures sound more like a waste of time and ressources than anything.
If you made weapons out of the statue I'd at least respect the gesture as art or competent propaganda in itself, but petty destruction is evil. Always is.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I wouldn't have been born without Lord Trevelyan, that doesn't mean my options are to either hang myself or a portrait of him.
Does he have a statue anywhere? If yes, it's a valid argument to start.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link