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Take 2.
I posted and deleted this because I don't want to get banned, but if I can't talk about the things I want to talk about then I don't see much point in caring about the account, anyway. Still, I'll try to be subdued.
The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.
I'm posting the reactions on twitter, because there are dozens of two-sentence sentiments that I share. I'll quote a couple, for posterity, and you can get the gist of the other side from the WP article.
Columbia Bugle
Jack Posobiec
Jack again
Maarblek
BlueandGray1864
Spencer Klavan
That last one is really quite striking, given this line from the WP article:
Really, you should read the article, too. In it, I saw the genocide of my race, and it scares the hell out of me. I suppose this must be how the Jews feel.
So, is it justice? Is it vengeance? Should it be celebrated? Should it be destroyed?
And does the symbolism of liquidating the statue of a white man apply to the declining white population in America? Is the deliberate melting down of this statue a parallel to the deliberate replacement of the American race?
ETA: One more tweet from this morning, just a few hours ago:
GigaThaad
Elon Musk
Musk, as a white man born in South Africa, should know what it looks like when your native country changes and now wants you and yours dead and gone.
I'm just reminded of how the Finnish Civil War is treated in Finland. The Finnish Civil War was an acrimonious conflict with consequences that reverbate to this day; I've met people still in the present day who basically define their political alignment through what side their great-granddad fought in.
Still, the society's grand narrative since WW2 has been reconciliation, with Winter War holding a particular mythological position as the war were the "sons of the Reds and the Whites fought side by side", and the welfare state has also been seen as the fulfillment of Red goals of social equality for the working class. The reconciliation also meant that, for instance, while there had only been markers and statues commemorating the White victory everywhere, it was also now OK to commemorate Red soldiers with graves and markers; during May Days left-wing orgs still ritualistically hold events at those graves.
However, I don't think anyone has ever proposed that reconciliation meant commemorating Red generals! Granted, they were, to put it mildly, not particularly militarily impressive figures, but I don't think there are any memorials for them anywhere. If someone even proposd to put one up, well - I'd guess they'd be seen as the deepest, dankest Stalinist in existence, the sort of a guy who goes through his daily life wearing a Soviet uniform and an ushanka.
OTOH, there are memorials to CGE Mannerheim, who led the white forces, in all of the major cities. During some statues fracas in the US a left-wing youth organization propsoed moving them to museum, this proposal was widely condemned by basically all of the other major political forces, and was then immediately shelved. Then again, Mannerheim also led the Finnish forces in WW2.
One thing I've never quite caught on is how may memorials to Northern generals there even are in the US, since all the culture war about Confederate statues gives the impression that the entire South (and some other states besides) is downright peppered with them, that there are memorials to Northern generals only comes up when someone poses a "They'll come after Grant next!" hypothetical, and I haven't seen basically any mentions of notable Black Civil War era figures getting memorialized, apart from maybe Harriet Tubman?
In the end, putting up a statue to some guy is basically equivalent to putting up a sign saying "This guy is a great guy! Everyone should emulate him and be like him!" and if the society has decided that he's actually not a great guy, it would seem as natural to put the statue away as it would be to put such a sign away, though it would indeed be more prudent to put it in a museum than destroy it entirely.
There are fewer actual statues of Confederate generals than the media would have you believe, and fewer statues of union generals than that. However confederate/union cemeteries marked with the appropriate symbols are commonplace and while these gravesites are not usually well maintained, it is frequently obvious that they were intended to be burial grounds for war heroes. A major confound is that I live in Texas, which was the main recruiting ground for the confederate shock troops, and thus had a high percentage of confederate war dead. It seems like there is no appetite for destroying these cemeteries- in at least some cases due to superstitious terror of the ghosts(the general pattern in Texas is for older areas of the city- those which have confederate graves because of when they were built- to be full of poor and often superstitious people because the houses are smaller), but more often due to apathy.
There are additionally lots of elementary schools which were at one point named after confederate generals or politicians, but which are now named after "literally who?" figures(and usually these aren't particularly woke figures, they're a school district administrator who contributed a notably large amount of well-credentialed stupidity to the district which is responsible for the school). Street names, particularly Jackson st, exist fairly commonly but it's actually a lot of work to change a street name so it's easier for everyone to just ignore it was named after Stonewall Jackson. Hood county(named after the general who took over command of the confederate shock corps when Stonewall Jackson was killed) is a regular source of controversy but will not be changed any time soon and anyways the proposed name changes are to be named after random and not very notable blacks.
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