Too late?

[Frelga]

Complicated how?

[Cerin]

Complicated in that one cannot assume that everyone who fought for the South was evil.

[Primula Baggins]

But these monuments have become a rallying point for people whose goals and beliefs are definitely evil. They're harming our country. At this point, with this president, they're putting the entire nation at risk of taking a turn toward evil. I know you'll say I'm exaggerating, but this kind of turn has happened before, and the means of guarding against it are now in the hands of people who may well want to see it happen.

[Frelga]

Complicated in that one cannot assume that everyone who fought for the South was evil.

What does that really mean? They fought to keep human beings enslaved and deprived of the most basic rights. If you don't consider that evil, then we don't have a common moral ground on which to have a conversation.

When I asked senior WH official why Trump didn't condemn Cville Nazis, he said: "What about the leftist mob. Just as violent if not more so"
https://twitter.com/gabrielsherman/stat ... 8490355714

[Sunsilver]

I was at work yesterday, so wasn't able to see much of this... But from what I DID see, the Alt-right and Neo Nazis came prepared for violence. They were wearing body armour and helmets and carrying clubs. Some even had shields.

The left-wing protesters were mostly unarmed, and had no armour. There was a large group of university students who formed a wall, linking arms, around the Robert E. Lee monument, and stood their ground against the right-wing protesters, to keep them from getting to the monument. This was on Friday night. By Saturday, things escalated. But my impression was it was mostly the right wing marchers that started it off.

[Griffon64]

South Africa has had to deal with its past since it became a democracy. For years the monuments and statues of the Apartheid era dotted the cities and towns of South Africa. And for the most part, they still do, even 23 years later. ( a mere 23 years later, compared with the Civil War ). Examples: Voortrekker Monument, Kerkplein, Bloedrivier ... etc etc.

What did South Africa do with these monuments where a majority of the citizens wanted them and what they stood for, gone?

Well, at the Voortrekker Monument, the hill to the north west of the monument is dedicated to freedom fighters, as you can see on satellite view here:Voortrekker Monument

At Bloedrivier the original monument now has a companion across the river representing the other side. Look on satellite view here: Bloedrivier

And in Orania, an enclave for die-hard racist white suprematists where they live among themselves, have their own currency, and can play at governing themselves, they collect the statues of the architects of Apartheid to weather away in the elements: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p027mzj4

It is notable that the statues of the architect of Apartheid ( Hendrik Verwoerd ) are all gone. The monuments that focus more on the culture of Afrikaners usually remain, uneasily, since that culture is interwoven with conquest and forcible land acquisition and labor theft. It is also shot through with independence, self-determination, hard work, and pioneering spirit, things that the heirs of that culture feel they can be proud of, for better or for worse. Those moments will be harder to remove. Most white South Africans acknowledge that racism is bad. Verwoerd was easy to cut out. Trying to tell them to not be proud of the things their ancestors did that was universally admirable quantities of the human spirit ( hard work, all that stuff ) will be harder: they cherry-pick these things out of the complicated, sullied history of the past and tie them to these monuments. After all, the monuments to the British, who scorched the earth and starved women and children in concentration camps, remain here and there, like Victoria in Cape Town. Cecil Rhodes was toppled in 2015.

.
.
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I have mixed thoughts, some harsh, about this whole situation, but mostly I have overwhelming sadness. I thought the American nation was further past hate based on skin color than the racists of my little backwater home was. So to have Donald Trump rise up like an orange dick with swaths of Americans kissing his feet was a huge shock for me.

Barack Obama tweeted some words from Nelson Mandela. I hope that those words are true of humanity and that one day the world will be set right. But way more than that, I hope that my generation and the ones that follow it will finally be the generations that make those words true. We can't hope for "one day". We are here, we are now. We can not rest until we've made those words true.

[Primula Baggins]

[Nin]

I don't think it's a good idea to remove Civil War memorials; it seems wrong, somehow, and I can understand it being a lightning rod for protest. I think the Civil War, at the individual level, was more complicated than good vs. bad, and it is part of our national identity. I think it should be memorialized.

Cerin I did not read everything that followed, but: even many men who fought in WWII were not bad men, German soldiers did not have the choice, they had to fight for their country, if they were nazis or not. This war and this genocide is part of our national identity and it has to be - but there are ways to remember which are not glorifying. You can have monuments, even for a war lost, which respects the suffering of everybody, those who lost and those who won. Fixing that someone was on the wrong side and fought for the wrong reasons does not mean to annihilate that he might fought bravely or that his family has suffered in the war. It is all a question of how it is done. And putting up memorials for southern generals is not the way to do it.

[River]

If removing memorials brings out people bearing Nazi symbols to defend the memorials that says something very unsavory about what those memorials stand for today.

[Túrin Turambar]

I don't think it's a good idea to remove Civil War memorials; it seems wrong, somehow, and I can understand it being a lightning rod for protest. I think the Civil War, at the individual level, was more complicated than good vs. bad, and it is part of our national identity. I think it should be memorialized.

Cerin I did not read everything that followed, but: even many men who fought in WWII were not bad men, German soldiers did not have the choice, they had to fight for their country, if they were nazis or not. This war and this genocide is part of our national identity and it has to be - but there are ways to remember which are not glorifying. You can have monuments, even for a war lost, which respects the suffering of everybody, those who lost and those who won. Fixing that someone was on the wrong side and fought for the wrong reasons does not mean to annihilate that he might fought bravely or that his family has suffered in the war. It is all a question of how it is done. And putting up memorials for southern generals is not the way to do it.

I agree with this, and I was going to post the same example. Many good people have fought bravely for terrible causes. Robert E. Lee was a fine general and I don’t doubt that he was a good man, but the consequences for the United States and the world had he won would have been disastrous.

That said, I think these things need to be judged on a case-by-case basis. I personally wouldn’t go around tearing down every statue of Lee. I think there must be a point where someone can be recognised as an important historical figure without endorsing the regime they served. I feel the same way about someone like Erwin Rommel. I’m not sure where that line is, though.

[River]

It's probably something the locals need to decide. In the case of Civil War memorials, municipalities in the South are deciding for one reason or another it's time to take them down. I can't and won't speak for what the driving force is. What happened in Charlottesville is outside groups decided to protest the locals' decision so they flocked to the city with their tiki torches and swatiskas and other crap and one of them decided it would be a fine idea to drive his car into a crowd and kill someone.

[Sunsilver]

The Stormer Neo-Nazi website has been hacked by Anonymous, and Go Daddy has given them 24 hours to find another server. They are the ones that said Trump's mealy-mouthed condemnation of the violence 'on both sides' showed he supported them:

Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.

He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate … on both sides!

So he implied the antifa are haters.

There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.

He said he loves us all.

Anyway, here's what's happened to their website...gotta love it!
https://www.dailystormer.com/hacked-ano ... y-stormer/

Not sure how I feel about this statement by the hackers: WE HAVE ALSO GATHERED LOCATIONAL DATA ON ANGLIN HIMSELF AND ARE SENDING OUR ALLIES IN LAGOS TO PAY HIM A VISIT IN PERSON

but that's what this thread is about...

Apparently the last straw was The Stormer posting critical comments about the young lady who was killed, Heather Heyer.

[Griffon64]

Looks like someone finally made Donald Trump read something off of a teleprompter:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/14/politics/ ... index.html

“Racism is evil – and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including KKK, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our Creator. We are equal under the law. And we are equal under the Constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.”

[Sunsilver]

Little late in the day, eh?

[yovargas]

Something is better than nothing, I suppose.

[Angbasdil]

I wrote this a while back on Facebook regarding the Confederate flag, but it pertains to Civil War monuments participation trophies as well.

*snip*

Heritage, Pride and Treason

Symbols are funny things. There's a lot of talk right now about the meaning of a certain symbol but in truth, symbols have no inherent objective meaning. The only meaning they is what we give them. And each of us gives them our own subjective meaning. What a symbol, any symbol, means to you is not necessarily what it means to somebody else.

So I find it kinda silly that so many people are trying to tell us all what the Confederate flag "really" means. You can't tell somebody what they're supposed to feel about a symbol or what it has to mean to them. You can only tell us what it means to you personally. I understand how some people see it as a symbol of pride in their Southern heritage. I also see how some people see it as a symbol of racism and slavery. And I think there's a productive discussion to be had there if people would stop telling each other how wrong they are and maybe try listening to each other.

Not that I think that's gonna happen anytime soon. But it's a nice idea.

So what I'm gonna do here is tell you what the Confederate flag means to me personally. What it means to me as a Southerner, as an American, and as a veteran. It's not a point of view I've seen presented much, but it makes sense to me. I'm sure some people will be offended by it, and some of them will tell me wrong I am; how that's not what the flag "really" means. To which I say, go back and read the first paragraph above.

Growing up as a white person in East Tennessee, the Confederate flag was presented to me as a symbol of the South, of pride for the region where I was born and raised. I liked the flag. I was a Southerner, and proud of it. Besides, it looks kinda cool. Then I grew up, joined the Army and met people from all over the US, and all over the world. My perspective on things changed and expanded. And my understanding of the flag changed.

That flag is the symbol of a nation, the Confederate States of America. I know some people are jumping out of their chairs right now shouting at their computer screens that the flag was never officially adopted by the Confederate government and that I need to learn the "real" history of the flag. But let's get real. That flag's origins are in the CSA, and in most people's minds, that flag is all about the CSA. It is in my mind, too. And remember, that's what I'm writing about here - what the flag means to me. And to me, and to most people, it means the Confederacy.

But what does the Confederacy mean? What was the CSA all about? Well, there's a lot of discussion about that going around right now, too. A lot of truths and half-truths and untruths being tossed around conerning the supposed cause of the secession. It was slavery. No, it was states' rights. No, it was racism. No, it was economics. No, it was vampires. Well, I for one really don't care why. I'm sure that different people had different reasons for supporting secession, and some didn't support it but accepted it when their state seceded. But whatever the reason, be it slavery or states' rights or vampires, the reason for secession is much less important than the fact of secession. Regardless of why, the CSA was founded on the act of secession.

Secession.

That's a nice value-neutral word. But let's talk about what that word really means. It means that they didn't want to be Americans anymore. They decided that states' rights or slavery or vampires or whatever was more important to them than being Americans. But they didn't stop there. For almost all of the brief history of the CSA, they were actively at war with the USA. They didn't just leave, they actively took up arms against America. They fought and killed and died not to be Americans anymore. There's a word for that, and it's not a value neutral one.

Treason.

Think that's a little strong? Well here's the thing. I spent almost eight years in the US Army. I took an oath, not once but twice, to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I didn't take an oath to the constitution of Tennessee. I didn't enlist in the Southern Army. I enlisted in the US Army, and I took an oath to the US Constitution, a constitution I believe in over and above any state or region. And those Confederate soldiers that so many Southerners insist on honoring, those Generals we erect statues of and name streets after, they fought against my constitution and killed thousands of soldiers of the US Army, my Army. So yeah, I call it treason.

That is what the Confederate flag means to me. The flag, the statues, the street names and every other damn thing that honors or glorifies the Confederacy. To me, it all represents treason, plain and simple. A nation of traitors. So you can fly that flag or put it on a T-shirt or a bumper sticker while you talk about heritage and history. Or you can fly the American flag and call yourself a patriot and put a yellow "Support Our Troops" sticker on your car. But I don't see how anyone can do both and not feel like a total hypocrite. The two seem completely incompatible to me.

Yeah, the Confederate flag is a part of our history. It's a part of our heritage. But pride? I take no pride in that part of our history or heritage. Nor do I take pride in the flag that has its roots in it.

We should leave it and the nation it represents where they belong - in the past.

It's time to take it down.

[Beutlin]

To me, it all represents treason, plain and simple. A nation of traitors.

To take the position of the devil's advocate here: In the 1770s, were not the United States of America a nation of traitors, founded on the principles of defying their king and homeland? What was the fundamental difference between these two acts of treason?

[Primula Baggins]

"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

[yovargas]

To me, it all represents treason, plain and simple. A nation of traitors.

To take the position of the devil's advocate here: In the 1770s, were not the United States of America a nation of traitors, founded on the principles of defying their king and homeland? What was the fundamental difference between these two acts of treason?

I feel like that discussion, while very interesting, would Osgilliate this thread from where it should be.

[River]

To me, it all represents treason, plain and simple. A nation of traitors.

To take the position of the devil's advocate here: In the 1770s, were not the United States of America a nation of traitors, founded on the principles of defying their king and homeland? What was the fundamental difference between these two acts of treason?

Who won the engagement in the 1770's and who won the engagement in the 1860's?