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I've read the discussion on the destruction of General Lee's statue in Charlottesville in last week's thread. I got the impression that many commenters here are prone to come up with explanations why the official removal of the statue was at least unsurprising or objectively justified from a culture war perspective, and I get that. But it seems they aren't focusing on the palpable difference between legally removing a statue and destroying it in a furnace. Because as far as I'm concerned, it's a big step from one to the other.
I'm reminded of the political transitions that happened in Central Europe in 1989-91, because many local monuments to either Soviet politicians/soldiers or local Communists or Marx/Engels were officially removed as a result. Anyone can correct me if they can, but I think all those new political systems were content with just removing the statues and putting them in "museums", which in most cases basically meant that these statues were put in open-air storage in remote and mostly abandoned memorial parks to just wither away, but not destroying them, cutting them up, melting them down etc. This hasn't even happened to Stalin statues in the Baltic states, for example, even though local anti-Soviet sentiment was definitely the strongest in the entire region, not something to understate. You can still find and visit those statues today.
And in this case, even this relatively close parallel doesn't really work, because it's not like there was a fundamental regime change in Virginia since the statue was erected.
And what happened to Lee's statue certainly cannot be explained by financial considerations either, as I'm sure that whatever arrangement that was on the table for putting it away as a museum piece was cheaper than melting it down in a furnace.
The only fitting parallel that comes to mind is Napoleon ordering captured cannons to be melted down to build a gigantic iron monument in Paris dedicated to the victory at Austerlitz. But again, I'm sure I won't have to explain in detail how that political context was completely different from this, even though I'm aware there are many hardline leftists today who would've preferred the evil Confederacy to be publicly humiliated in such ways back in 1865.
In the end, the only sufficient explanation I can come up with is that local authorities were afraid that Lee's statue, no matter where it were to be placed, was likely to become a site of pilgrimage for right-winger heretics opposed to the culture-warring leftist interpretation of race relations in the US, hence the statue's destruction.
Plus, and this is just pure speculation on my part, I think General Lee was such a perfect personification of the Southern patriarchal ideal of gentlemanliness that he invites leftist hostility like no other figure in US history. Plus, he had the cheek to candidly express views on slavery and the innate characteristics of Africans that are, from a leftist perspective, uniquely horrible, just too painful, and cutting too close to the bone, as they say.
As far as I know, the locals got a say. They didn’t want Lee to hang around. I believe the bronze is going to be used for some sculpture or installation. While I’m sure you will find it low-effort or objectionable, it will still be public art. I think that’s a perfectly valid use of the materials. There’s no statute of statue limitations, and if the current residents (owners? Caretakers?) wanted to melt the statue, more power to them.
I do think the authorities were wary of what you describe. The article also cited a risk of “violence” if the statue were to remain on display somewhere. I imagine they were thinking of white supremacists reclaiming Mr. Lee for Stone Mountain, Dukes of Hazzarding their way over innocent museum visitors along the way. If I’m feeling charitable, they were probably also worried about attracting anti-Confederate vandals.
Your speculation, though, is off-base. Lee is just too removed to merit personal hostility. Can you think of any particularly gentlemanly myths about the guy? All I’ve got is that he joined the Confederacy out of some kind of principled stance; partial credit, but not particularly unique. And I expect my knowledge of historical trivia is a lot broader than the average statue-tipper.
No, sometimes people mean what they say. Lee represents the Confederacy more than he personifies it. Hundreds of thousands died because he, and people like him, chose to stand up for a garbage cause. Nothing personal about it.
I'm aware that it was a local decision, a product of a political milieu that, as far as I know, was one of the long-term consequences of a large and recent demographic shift in Northern Virginia, namely that a great number of white liberals have settled in the region after getting jobs in the enormously expanded federal bureaucracy in the capital.
I'm not surprised they don't want Lee around.
Regarding "myths", I'm not aware of any, I've only read that Lee was regarded as a true Southern gentleman his whole life. I don't see that as a myth.
And Rommel was regarded as a true German gentleman. But if a statue of Rommel stood in a place of honour in central Stuttgart as part of the pantheon of military heroes of Baden-Wurttemberg, and it was melted down at the request of the local synagogue, we wouldn't be complaining about "teabagging the outgroup". In fact, part of the "Reconstruction" process in post-WW2 Germany was the removal of Nazi monuments.
I would.
Isn't it weird how Lee statues only became equivocated with Nazi ones over a hundred years after the war, rather than immediately after alike actual Nazi statues?
Well it’s also weird that the statues were erected decades after the war ended. The Confederacy lost too fast to put up monuments to their glory while they existed.
You're underestimating the national divide that existed post-Civil War.
Up until World War 1, there was an honest question among those that considered such on wether or not any of the Southern states would actually fight for America, period. (Instead, they turned out in droves that carried a consistent trend... up until very recently. Funny, that.) Most statues were put up as a meager act of concession, allowing pride to a defeated foe who nevertheless gave a good fight.
It's not as if the South had anything else in the aftermath.
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As I understand it from comments here (might be wrong! I have no idea!), part of the Civil War was that it ended in a sort of "okay, let's both now calm down and work together, you lost but that isn't the end" agreement. And whereas the same thing happened, sort of, with World vs Germany, it certainly did not happen with World vs the Nazi movement - that lost, and was destroyed, and eradicated, and all its flags destroyed, and the Earth salted and so on, already after the second World War ended. There was never anything like a truce with the Nazis; the most that occurred was "alright, if you completely repudiate the Nazi project and also are useful, we're going to keep using you and not look too closely." And that was more a matter of civil necessity.
The equivalent here would not be "US vs the South" but "US vs. the Southern secession movement", with the secession movement indeed having been conclusively defeated and buried by the war.
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Two completely different historical contexts, those two are. To argue that those two are anything but completely different is indeed leftist revisionism in action.
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