Winston Churchill
- Thread starter Cascarino
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Really agree with her. History should always be critically analysed and in fairness it usually is.
The difference is in what makes it mainstream through school curriculum and broadcast media.
The BBC in recent years have had a massive overhaul to drive diversity both in front of and behind the camera and still have a long way to go with leadership, but over time that will pay off.
The schools need more licence to do critical history.
I want to also say that some of the criticisms of Churchill are also true of modern governments in 'Western nations' have have a non-white indigenous population. There is not enough coverage of the mistreatment of indigenous Australians in particular.
Churchill will be judged when the public is ready, I think its too early and it would be a political loss at the moment.
Although there is an argument that you gain more ground fighting an extreme argument than a reasonable one..
Asking for statues of anybody who ever did anything wrong by the standards of current society is incredibly dangerous. It's basically George Orwell 1984 slowly coming to reality.
You're eradicating history and pretending things didn't happen. Standards were different back then, slave trade was acceptable.
Nobody is all good and very few people are all bad. Was Churchill a great leader? Absolutely! Should we also know about his not so great side? absolutely! Tearing down statues and monuments gives less opportunity to educate on both the good and the bad.
Acceptable to whom? Do you understand why what you're saying is contentious?
You're not eradicating history though. It still exists, you can still learn about it whenever you want and you can still be taught about it in schools. That's why you know about the history of countless things that aren't represented by statues. Statues are actually one of the absolute worst ways to learn about history as they provide next to no information or context. You gain extremely little knowledge from them and many will naturally assume that the person being immortalised must have been an admirable figure.
In fact millions more people now know about the likes of Colston and Baden-Powell as a result of their statues being torn down or removed. So if we're looking at it solely in terms of educating people about history then you should be celebrating those actions, they were a great success. Not least given they've sparked the sort of discussions we've seen in this thread, where people actually read about the history these statues (and others) so spectacularly fail to convey.
Also, absolutely nobody is pretending that things didn't happen. They know things happened. Things happening is why they want the statues removed.
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No you don't, statues aren't a major source of knowledge bringing some of them down won't affect history negatively. The issue with these statues is that history has already been partially eradicated(or altered) and a lot of people don't know who these people were and why many of them were vile individuals, they may know their name and think that they are great people. People are the main source of history, through schools and family.
Which analogy? Talking about the mosques? Muhammed doesn't have statues, but he was a slaver and is the embodiment of the best muslim(according to himself anyway). Should we burn Korans instead? We can't even a draw picture of Muhammed without riots breaking out and people getting killed. So I guess we'll just comdemn and go after the slavers that it's politically correct to do so!
Well if you want to go down that road, then statues of Julius Caesar(and most of the roman emporers), Alexander the great, Genghis Khan, Kubali Khan etc are now all legimate targets.
I'm in favour of preserving historical antiquities and if we no longer want them out there, preserve them in the Museum.
Right know I think the whole statue thing is turning into a impulsive excuse to feck shit up. Historical artifacts are to be preserved not destroyed.
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Off the charts numbers of strawman arguments in such a small amount of words.
Honestly your thinly veiled Islamophobia is tiring. At least make it interesting by having some residual of a legit point somewhere when you randomly insert or just unnecessarily repeat Islam.
As opposed to the argument that statues should be torn down for what? There is actually no benefit to tearing them down.
And to the responses saying that statues serve no purpose as an education tool, that's utter nonsense. For example, 7million people a year visit the Lincoln Memorial and I don't know figures but vast amounts of people visit Parliament square each year and see the Churchill statue. You're honestly saying there is no education about history in these visits?
I was asking the poster which analogy I was using that was wrong since he went on about how it would be dumb to burn down churches because Churchill was a Christian.
Islamophobia is a stupid word. It implies critism of Islam is neurotic and irrational which is mental if you are able to read. If people don't reply to my posts in this context about how Muhammed fares in this debate of historical figures who had grey life stories, then I won't reply them back. Simple as that. You are more than welcome to make some legit points yourself rather than throw another label at me which is what is all the rage atm. The poster is essentially saying it's fair game to after any historical person who was a slaver, but not Muhammed? It's that a not a fair point to raise? Can you answer me that without throwing either the word islamphobia or racist at me?
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That's not what i said. I don't think it helps when it occasionally becomes so pervasive that everywhere you turn you are reminded of differences. There is a balance to be struck.
Mate, you're not allowed to say anything anymore. My comment about George Orwell was well placed. Say any opinion that people don't agree with and you're racist, Islamophobic or some other nonsense. People love to be outraged.
Is racism terrible, yes! Is discrimination stupid, yes ! Do I have to agree and like the teachings in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, Buddhism or anything else? Absolutely not!
This is literally what it's like to be black and live in this country, except it's not occasional it's every day.
As an Indian, I've had many discussions about him with my fellow countrymen and nearly all of them view Churchill as a monster who let people of India starve so that the British troops and people could be fed. I'm perhaps one of the very few Indians who view him in a positive light, certainly not met many other either in person or online. As far as I'm concerned he was a product of his age and his priority was always the welfare of the United Kingdom rather than the welfare of humanity. Did he do terrible things? Yes of course. But there's no great personality which didn't and that doesn't make their achievements any less great and its a foolish exercise to moralize their actions by today's standards.
Well obviously like the pig said in Animal Farm "Some are more equal than others". In this discussion "some slavers are more peacefull, compassionate and tolerant than others" which is a rational statement to make because if you vocally disagree with it you are more likely to get killed in real life.
It's funny how so many people have now come crawling out complaining about history being erased if statues of slavers are being taken down.
Where was this same energy when operation legacy became public knowledge?
It's almost as if they're not arguing in good faith..
Where was this same energy when operation legacy became public knowledge?
It's almost as if they're not arguing in good faith..
If you aren't on a guided tour and you see the statue of Churchill then what education are you receiving? There is no plaque which states what he did so the education you gain from viewing the statue is only seeing the person that you have read about or heard about before and you'll think about the narrative that has been put forward about Churchill, which before these protests the large majority of people will have the narrative of him being a war hero. Even if you decide to go on a tour and see the statue I highly doubt that any of them will talk about his racist views. If they do then I will stand to be corrected but I really doubt that they would and I would think that the narrative of him being a war hero extends. Due to all of this the statue is a symbol of Churchill and glorifying his war heroics without looking at all of the bad things which he did and that's most likely why many people would like it to be removed and shows the benefit of removing it. It's not a simple case of adding a plaque to the existing statue and everything will be fine because the original statue still stands as the image of glorification of one thing and ignorance of his racism. There is no benefit to the statue being there over being taken down and replaced with a plaque stating "This is where the statue stood etc..." with more dialogue which gives a more extensive overview of the man and being more honest about history. This can also be extended by placing the statues in museums and how that is narrated (Or destruction of the statues and creating a material/digital archive instead for a museum). Context is key.
It is not in anyway shape or form erasing history to remove a statue. The history of what Churchill did is remembered in books, people, the internet, pictures etc. The history of the statue being erected and being in place in London and many other places in the UK is remembered in books, people, the internet, pictures etc. It's not about erasing history. It is about being more honest about history and changing the way that we review it, teach it and study it in the present and the future.
In Bhutan they venerate the phallic organ. You are even blessed with statues of it.
Your analogy was shit because it was a ridiculous and sensationalised straw man making a false equivalence between: critiquing the need to deify a controversial figure in the public space and tearing down buildings or burning religious [?] text because slavery existed in civilisations more than a thousand years ago.
I won't even bother entertaining the second paragraph.
Poor Orwell must be spinning in his grave listening to the way people are interpreting and using his books at the moment.
Statues have nothing to do with educating except in that they can educate visitors to them about the heritage they represent. The heritage of a country, a person's influence on that country or a moment in time maybe.
I think it's important that we're honest about the job that statues are really meant to do rather than keep saying that they just educate something.
When we put statues up they are meant to be because we celebrate something about that country. Maybe they shouldn't or maybe we need to explain since these people are largely forgotten or becoming irrelevant and if we feel that they celebrate a past that is no longer about our values, then you educate why that is.
But shouldn't that be a choice for a people and not a mob?
I think it's important that we're honest about the job that statues are really meant to do rather than keep saying that they just educate something.
When we put statues up they are meant to be because we celebrate something about that country. Maybe they shouldn't or maybe we need to explain since these people are largely forgotten or becoming irrelevant and if we feel that they celebrate a past that is no longer about our values, then you educate why that is.
But shouldn't that be a choice for a people and not a mob?
Do you think anybody was ever standing by the Colston statue and going 'yay Slavery!'?
It's probably more apt for Vidared to reply to anyway. Actually slavery wasnt abolished in Saudi Arabia and Yemen until 1962. Which is very recent.
Anyway fair enough, I won't reply more about it unless someone specifically replies to my posts about it.
BTW I am not in favour of impulsively destroying texts, mosques, churches or statues. Slap the statues in a museum if we agree that we don't want them out there.
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I doubt visitors knew what or who he was but as long as I can remember the people of Bristol and Bath have known about their cities' heritage and I know nothing about any denial of their current values relative to that in all honesty.
Well said.
Nettavisen is a shite paper for right wingers, so I’m not surprised!
I mean, they even employed Sylvi Listhaug’s former social media lad as a journalist despite him having zero education.
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Where do his white supremacist views fit into the picture? If he was a product of his time, does that mean everyone in the UK was a white supremacist?
Oh come off it, stop playing the victim. None of the replies to your self-declared "well placed" comment accused you of being racist or Islamophobic. Instead, they challenged your points in a reasoned manner. @sullydnl in particular had a good and fair post engaging you in a discussion, but instead of replying you decided that disagreeing with you was the same as "you're not allowed to say anything anymore".
This is a discussion forum, it's not your own personal Truman Show; people are going to disagree with you. Deal with it.
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I think it was pretty common. My Nan was in India in the 1930s with her husband who was in the military. They had a house full of Indian servants.
The majority probably were. Social stratification based along ethnic or racial lines has been common the world over throughout history, including in Africa and India. If you subscribe to evolutionary psychology then genes that were conducive to tribal behaviour were selected in the ancestral environment more because in those times having a fear of the other or the 'out-group' was conducive to survival. If you look around society today we are still deeply tribal in countless ways. Its only very recently that we seem to be consciously trying to rise above the negative consequences of those instincts.
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Doesn't have to mean that. You and me are also products of our time, but that doesn't mean we hold similiar views to each other or to the rest of the world. His views on race are about as
I think the posters above have already answered your question. I would also like to point out that belief in tribal superiority is a human characteristic that goes as far back as recorded history. Believing in your own religion, race or country to be superior to others have just been a by product of this phenomenon over the centuries.
Having lived a substantial time in Europe, it is clear to see that people are gradually shifting away from this mindset. But it's not the same everywhere. Indians are quick to point out the folly of Churchill's beliefs, but I'm yet to meet an indian who doesn't believe we, as a country, are far superior to Pakistan in every way and vice versa. This is just one example amongst many.
Isn't football rivalry also essentially based on views that our club is superior to our rival?? Don't all Utd fans think we are better than Liverpool? Don't you as an Arsenal fan think you are a superior club to Spurs?
Of course I'm not equating racial superiority views to club rivalries, but the principle in believing my tribe is superior to yours is the same.
Yes, it may well be merely human nature but it doesn't half help to keep established authority in power, doesn't it? How convenient for them.
I don't really like the product of his time argument. This is still that time. Racial opression still exists. If anything these people were responsible for ensuring that that time began or extended it through their racist views. Those systems that they helped to create/instill/continue still remain today. Racism, racial inequality and opression still remains today. Also, not everyone was racist at the time as said above or believed in these types of things. The people with the power did which is why slavery and racism existed to the extent that it did but did that make it okay to be racist? Of course not. Racism has never been okay. By throwing out buzz phrases like product of his time it's almost as if you're putting a wall between now and then and acting like we are far far away from that time of thinking which is far from the truth and is shown in the inequalities that remain.
Of course inequalities remain, always have and always will. As long as their limited resources how do propose that everyone gets the same?
Discrimination comes in many form that so many people aren't aware of. As I said, I'm an Indian who did my PhD in Barcelona. I never faced any racism or discrimination during my my time there but once my PhD finished and I started looking for jobs in Europe, I found I'm not eligible to apply for so many jobs because those companies can't hire a non-EU citizen. I've had 3 interviews in the last couple of months where they told me that although I was among their top rated candidates the administrative procedures for employing a non-EU citizen are too time consuming or the salary requirements for that are beyond their means. Now is this not a form of discrimination?? Had I been a European I would have got those jobs. I'm essentially being punished for where I was born, something I have no control over it.
But I realize that it's not possible for everyone to be able to freely work or live everywhere. There are limited resources and all governments or leaders will naturally look after their own first. This same behaviour trickles down to society, that when a crisis approaches, people naturally fear another tribe taking over their resources and do everything in their power to prevent that.
We live in an age where resources are far plentiful than ever before, so there is less open strife and more scope for harmony. Churchill and his ilk were leaders at a time when resources were limited and their existence was threatened, they did what they believed was right to ensure the survival of their tribe. Was their behaviour terrible for others? Undoubtedly. But their priorities at that time were just their own tribe and not the others.
It seems to me what you're doing is taking a moral norm and applying it retrospectively to all of human history. Surely you must realize there will be nothing left to celebrate or cherish if we're supposed to be consistent in this utopian view of human nature.
Its a bit like saying racist redneck trump voters are just a product of their time and enviroment.
You can celebrate something which someone has done without celebrating and championing that person overall. We can and should change how we celebrate, perceive and understand things or people.
Exactly, and that is what most people are already doing. I've never heard anybody celebrate Churchill because of his great achievements on race thinking. I would imagine the statues are there precicely because of his achievement during the war. Everything else, whether he saw Indians as inferior or did some nice paintings, is just trivia.