[late]

And what has that got to do with your statement about "disenfranchised blacks"?

Look up the meaning of disenfranchised.

[Deutschmania]

Listen, I don't know anything about my country's history and have literally zero cultural context through which I view statues of literal traitors of a failed nation founded on the idea that whites are the master race. I just think they're pretty statues to look at and I also don't like it when people break things. Someone has to clean up the things you break, Antifa! Maybe while you're busy smashing the state you can have a little consideration for our nation's hard working janitors and street sweepers?

Please leave the statues alone, they make my commute to the racism factory more interesting.

What of the smashing of the Berlin Wall then ? https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-east-german-punks-helped-destroy-the-berlin-wall-722926/ And also of the tearing down of statues in the former Soviet Bloc , after the downfall of Communist rule there , would you take issue with that as well ? https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/removing-public-monuments3.htm None of such destruction of property is unprecedented , or necessarily disreputable . https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/06/statues-removal-antiracism-columbus

[Julian658]

WHAT disenfranchised blacks ? There ARE no disenfranchised blacks ?

You are likely correct. I should have said blacks that embrace the role of the noble victim.

[Drlee]

Oh good. We have another right wing racist motherfucker joining the forum. Time to go back on hiatus until this pestilence passes.

Late is right. Biden will be the last democrat president in the next 30 years. Congress? Maybe the dems might get one house from time to time. The racists are too strong for our pseudo democracy. The only hope for our nation is that the oligarchy decides that social unrest is bad for business.

[Pants-of-dog]

If people want to argue that there are absolutely no black US citizens who have been stripped of the right to vote, they are free to do so.

They should explain how all those black US citizens who have been convicted of a felony and have therefore been disenfranchised do not count, to begin.

[Fasces]

The West has lost dynamism. It has become a museum culture.

"Protect this 200 year old statue"

"Save that 100 year old townhouse."

"No, we can't build high density urban housing, we need to preserve these 19th century tenements."

Good on Mr. Biden. Tear down old statues and build news ones. Why do I have to bear the baggage of my ancestors?

[Gardener]

You are likely correct. I should have said blacks that embrace the role of the noble victim.

I would suggest that few blacks embrace this concept; it is mostly white liberals that perceive them as being in this role ?

[Julian658]

I would suggest that few blacks embrace this concept; it is mostly white liberals that perceive them as being in this role ?

It is a combination of both.
Embracing the role of the noble victim is seen as empowering and hence it happens over and over again.
The movement has also become a religion and hence there is no reasoning.

[Wellsy]

When it comes to statues, I think of them as significant and enduring cultural symbols which are the basis of ideological struggle and hence the significant tension that arises over their displacement. Who we wish to retain in the the collective memory and who we wish to forget is of great significance as history is framed in service to the present.
https://radicalimagination.institute/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/sit_2018_artinian-final-1.pdf

Antithetically one can sense the "wide", long, temporal sense of the bourgeoisie: their monuments to themselves and to their class via statues, philanthropic efforts, the naming of buildings. A recent example of this is the Steven A. Schwartzman Building of the New York City Public Library, or (a century or so prior) Carnegie Mellon University, or the constant presence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation across media, social or otherwise. In this sense, Lenin's call to build monuments to revolutions past (1917 and the Paris Commune, etc.) and their participants, should be seen as part of this operational18 struggle to widen the time horizon of the proletariat specifi cally, and revolutionary forces in general, as an attempt to redefi ne the social perception (to shape ideological space) of daily life on the level of time and space. It is about meaning transferred via generations, and about space, of daily routines, that are controlled (symbolically and physically) by the proletariat (and the revolutionary power bloc in general).

And also, in this sense, the destruction of Lenin statues in the Ukraine today is a crucial and necessary act of operational planning on part of the capitalist power bloc, aiming to once again narrow the time and space horizons of the proletariat. Today in the Ukraine of fast-purged Soviet imagery, as before 1917, most time-space inhabited by the proletariat is either fi lled by bourgeois abstractions (ads, street names, statues and monuments glorifying capitalists and their corporations), or will be replaced by a short-time focus on primary survival, minimization of abstract thought, of ghettos devoid of any symbolic presence, just post-Soviet ruins existing in a state of slow collapse and disappearance.

An important series of questions arises from destructions of monuments and what they signify. How is “Leninopad” in the Ukraine of today akin to the ongoing struggles in the southern United States centered on calls for removal of Confederate monuments? What is the difference between keeping the monuments of the victors, versus that of the defeated? One suggestive answer is that history belongs to the victors, and it is their prerogative to maintain hegemony over historical (political) memory, over what is visible (and invisible) in the everyday. But here again, Lenin’s ghost unveils deep contradictions. In the Ukraine, the removal of Soviet memory is (at least) partially fi lled with Nazi symbology. There are night-time torch marches down the central boulevard in Kiev. A number of volunteer battalions active in the civil war in the Donbass Region openly proclaim their allegiance to memory of the Third Reich and its various state formations. This rings odd in the Europe of 2017; there are no Nazi regalia publicly and offi cially displayed in the center of Berlin. The Nazi are (so far) a part of the vanquished past, its politics subject to state suppression. Yet, when it comes to confronting Lenin and the state he helped create, the Nazi past is allowed to be re-activated precisely in the political spaces of Nazism’s greatest crimes (and possibly its most decisive defeat).

And the existence of the confederate statues are themselves thought to be based in the effort to valorize ideas around what the south fought for, slavery and its implicative ideology during times of great strife of civil rights in the early 1900's and 1950-60's. Basically when there was a reaction against struggles of black Americans did these monuments emerge and so to we see such a struggle today because it's not neutral and indifferent who and what we aim to represent in public life.
If there is the counter about some sort of valorization of history and the past, one needs to dig deeper to see what sort of historical aspect one is valorizing.
There is clearly a struggle of power in who gets to determine the public space.

[Pants-of-dog]

I would suggest that few blacks embrace this concept; it is mostly white liberals that perceive them as being in this role ?

What is your argument?

Please clarify what you are claiming and what it has to do with the topic. Thanks.

[Gardener]

What is your argument?

Please clarify what you are claiming and what it has to do with the topic. Thanks.

Hmm.. I guess it is 'off topic'. I was just reacting to a previous posters rhetoric suggesting that Black people are routinely disenfranchised in the USA; a proposition that I believe to be entirely untrue.

[Pants-of-dog]

Hmm.. I guess it is 'off topic'. I was just reacting to a previous posters rhetoric suggesting that Black people are routinely disenfranchised in the USA; a proposition that I believe to be entirely untrue.

Why do you think it is untrue?

Are you aware that there laws that disenfranchise people in the USA and they are regularly used against black people?

[Julian658]

Why do you think it is untrue?

Are you aware that there laws that disenfranchise people in the USA and they are regularly used against black people?

Please name all the laws. Do not go to the past, name the present laws that are designed to disenfranchised black people.

Thank you

[Pants-of-dog]

I guess @Julian658 does not the laws.

@Gardener, are you also unaware of these laws?

[Julian658]

When it comes to statues, I think of them as significant and enduring cultural symbols which are the basis of ideological struggle and hence the significant tension that arises over their displacement. Who we wish to retain in the the collective memory and who we wish to forget is of great significance as history is framed in service to the present.
https://radicalimagination.institute/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/sit_2018_artinian-final-1.pdf


And the existence of the confederate statues are themselves thought to be based in the effort to valorize ideas around what the south fought for, slavery and its implicative ideology during times of great strife of civil rights in the early 1900's and 1950-60's. Basically when there was a reaction against struggles of black Americans did these monuments emerge and so to we see such a struggle today because it's not neutral and indifferent who and what we aim to represent in public life.
If there is the counter about some sort of valorization of history and the past, one needs to dig deeper to see what sort of historical aspect one is valorizing.
There is clearly a struggle of power in who gets to determine the public space.

For the sake of argument:

Imagine the Catholic Popes in medieval times destroying all remnants of pagan Roman culture and religion. Particularly since the Romans persecuted Christians and fed them to the lions.

Imagine the destruction of the old town Spanish colonial cities in Latin America because the Spaniards were the Conquistadores.

Imagine the Spaniards destroying the Alhambra in Granada because it represents the Muslim invasion of Spain.

[Julian658]

I guess @Julian658 does not the laws.

@Gardener, are you also unaware of these laws?

Please list all the laws.

[Pants-of-dog]

Google “felony disenfranchisement”.

You are welcome.

[Wellsy]

For the sake of argument:

Imagine that the Catholic Popes in medieval times destroying all remnants of pagan Roman culture and religion. Particularly since the Romans persecuted Christians and fed them to the lions.

Imagine the destruction of the old town Spanish colonial cities in Latin America because the Spaniards were the Conquistadores.

Imagine the Spaniards destroying the Alhambra in Granada because it represents the Muslim invasion of Spain.

But in what sense are the statues of the 20th century synonymous to these? I think one has to drill in on the specifics or one is relying on an intuition of similarities of them simply being old. Not much is lost by changing some names of buildings and removing relatively recent statues and isn’t comparable than trying to destroy all semblance of the past. If anything it seems these statues are part of a forgetting of the civil war where we see distortions of the confederacy and the civil war being heavily based in political struggles between free and slave states. The institution of slavery weighs heavily upon the US. The past is never dead as it is ever present and we see the struggles continue in different form even in the symbolism of statues. It of course is an ambivalence in even the valorized founding fathers who themselves profited from the institution of slavery. So maybe one might try to argue in individual cases the ambivalent character of some figures. But not all are necessarily redeemable and we should ask why we one to valorize certain figures and this points to the tension of them representing the past ideals of white supremacy. We always look to the past to clothe our ideals and aspirations. Though of course we take a new form even in using old imagery for our own.

I think the issue around the statues speaks to the prominence of the ideas of the confederacy and its hold in the south as they were able to be erected in spite of being the traitorous losers of the civil war considering the notion that history is written by the victors.

[Julian658]

Google “felony disenfranchisement”.

You are welcome.

That law affects ALL people.
Just give me a law designed to disenfranchise black people.
Nice try!

[Julian658]

But in what sense are the statues of the 20th century synonymous to these? I think one has to drill in on the specifics or one is relying on an intuition of similarities of them simply being old. Not much is lost by changing some names of buildings and removing relatively recent statues and isn’t comparable than trying to destroy all semblance of the past. If anything it seems these statues are part of a forgetting of the civil war where we see distortions of the confederacy and the civil war being heavily based in political struggles between free and slave states. The institution of slavery weighs heavily upon the US. The past is never dead as it is ever present and we see the struggles continue in different form even in the symbolism of statues. It of course is an ambivalence in even the valorized founding fathers who themselves profited from the institution of slavery. So maybe one might try to argue in individual cases the ambivalent character of some figures. But not all are necessarily redeemable and we should ask why we one to valorize certain figures and this points to the tension of them representing the past ideals of white supremacy. We always look to the past to clothe our ideals and aspirations. Though of course we take a new form even in using old imagery for our own.

I think the issue around the statues speaks to the prominence of the ideas of the confederacy and its hold in the south as they were able to be erected in spite of being the traitorous losers of the civil war considering the notion that history is written by the victors.

The history of the USA is horrible with respect to slavery and what followed. The approach of black leaders has been to keep the history fresh and alive at all times. It has become a pseudo-religion to remember slavery in a manner similar as to how Christians celebrate and remember the crucifixion of Jesus. The destruction of all monuments is a bit contradictory in this context.

I understand that people are offended by the statues. However, in a strange sense this is good. In the old days things were so terrible for black people that they did not have time to worry about statues. Now that things are better the statues have become intolerable.

OK, lets destroyed all statues and monuments including those to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. What happens next? Does that solve the problems of disenfranchised black Americans?

I always see massive contradictions in the new non-racist movement. And the contradictions can only be explained in the context of religion.