Which monuments need to be removed and why?
I was in Richmond this week and last to visit siblings. We were debating whether to go see Monticello on Friday, which is near Charlottesville, but my sister-in-law warned us off through a text to my brother. Something was happening there that night, a torch lit affair by Neo-Nazis. The mention of a creepy gathering earlier in the year was a surprise to both of them, but my aunt had heard of two earlier events. This spawned a discussion through the weekend and into this week, which only intensified with each passing event, about the city of Richmond and its monuments to civil war participants.
It is good to see the city is discussing removal of some of these monuments. The events this past Saturday I am sure will ensure and accelerate this removal despite notions to the contrary. The events this past Saturday, for reasons I assert below, clarified the monuments on Monument Avenue, not as ‘memorials to the runner-ups,’ as a joke goes but monuments to racism.
Civil war participants is a euphemism of course which illustrates the point that the city’s uncomfortable history as the capital of the confederacy is on display everywhere, Just to name a few. we have the Tredegar Iron Works, The White House of the Confederacy, the Virginia State Capitol itself was where the Confederate Congress met. There is also St. Paul’s Church on East Grace Street (Cathedral of the Confederacy) has plaques on the pews marking the seating positions of the confederacy’s major players, and there is Monument Avenue.
The civil war monuments in Richmond are national parks and are worth seeing but at each location everyone I speak to has a similar uncomfortable experience and is left wondering, confused. What trappings of this bad history are appropriate to preserve and why? If we look to how other countries have dealt with uncomfortable history and monuments to dictators, fascists and racists there is no single solution. While some buildings remain and can be re-purposed and sanitized, mythology and symbols deserve a separate consideration.
I think with the fall of the Nazi regime, Germans realized the only way to again become a valid nation was to eliminate the symbols. Banning them was appropriate,” Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee office in Berlin, told McClatchy. “Americans made a different choice with the symbols of the Confederacy.
From my visit to the civil war museum alongside the Confederate white house I learned there are ‘complications’ surrounding the confederate flags on display. ‘Complicated barely begins to describe the history of the flags of the confederacy.’ As a child-fan of the Duke’s of Hazard, the stars and bars for me fit into that last sentence, ‘a trivial symbol’ for rebellion against authority, detached from its symbolism from the civil war, detached from the segregationist history, devoid of other meaning. I am sure I am not the only one who had this rosy view. I have a better formulation now: The Stars and Bars is a flag of treason. Does this symbol deserve to be on display at all, even in museums? In Germany the Hakenkreuz or Swastika of the National Socialism is illegal. It is hate speech to display it.
This weekend, we all watched the confederate flag alongside the Hakenkreuz of the National Socialists. We all saw in 2015 Dylann Roof display this before his massacre in Charleston. At St. Paul’s Church in the wake of the June 17, 2015 massacre in Charleston SC the stars and bars battle flags were recently removed.
The monuments on Monument Avenue will not remain.* Why keep them? They were placed in the late nineteenth century, not during the war itself, and were code an euphemism about Jim Crow and race. We learned a similar history about the confederate flag in 2015. What Saturday did for us was to clarify that when they march again, and they will soon, and when Trump will has their backs, they can no longer hide behind a veil of preserving heritage. When you hear of the legend of the Confederate leader’s heroism and decency you can say it is based in the fiction of a person who never existed. Those who want to preserve the displays are forgetting his racism and treason. He betrayed the US government and fought on the side devoted to preserving chattel slavery. Lee’s family held slaves, and he himself was at best ambiguous on the subject.
While he was undoubtedly a brilliant general, Robert E. Lee was effectively a traitor to his country, the United States of America, the country that nourished and educated him; the country that provided him with an education at West Point, an education that allowed him to prolong the war between the states while producing nothing more than great loss of life
Even if there is some element of truth to the myth of Lee as a devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together—despite his 1856 letter that slavery is ‘a moral & political evil,’ that part of Lee is overshadowed and tainted by the alt right failure, that is not what these monuments honor. And, if you hear the theory that a small group of marchers parading around the next statue of Robert E Lee should be seen as preserving heritage, you can remind them of the flags and the history.
After Saturday, any mention of Lee and the war is no longer the distraction away from a movement more easily recognized as the threat to American democracy that it is.
*To answer the president’s question. No, the monument to George Washington on the lawn of the Virginia State House, or anywhere, is not next. The statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue will go though. Robert E. Lee fought against the United States and to enslave human beings. He is no George Washington.
Saturday, Aug 19, 2017 · 2:57:48 AM +00:00
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Knute Heimdall
When the swastikas were brought out, the protest stopped being about monuments and heritage.
For my brother and relatives in Richmond, this weekend hit too close to home. In a city full of monuments to an uncomfortable history. It is a city that brought us Mayors like Tim Kaine, Doug Wilder, and Levar Stoney.
At work in New Hampshire today. I am struck by the number of people who feel the initial protests should have been ignored.* Some may see 'both sides' are at fault, or the neo-Nazi's were provoked; leave those clown's alone. Or, we are too politicized now to take any of this seriously. I get it. We are hundreds of miles away. Sure, not all of them saw or heard the malevolent words being chanted on Friday by Trump's 'nice people.' Maybe they did not hear how peaceful demonstrators were attacked by Neo-nazis, and no one seems to have seen New Hampshire's home grown Neo-nazi on VICE news.
For all those burying themselves away, I have news for them, the stakes are higher now. Time to choose sides. We had three big events that make this clear.
First is the sight of swastikas alongside confederate flags, This juxtaposition is new to me and others. I am certain now the battle flag registers better now with the swastika rather then its more folksy, jokesy rebel-yell use. I recognize my Duke’s of Hazzard lunch box is the symbol of hate it always was. Saturday changed that. Just look at that picture here.
The meaning of the statue of Robert E. Lee has changed as well. Once again, see that for yourself.
That picture is an image of the radical right's plan backfiring. That is not our heritage. It looks like a Klan rally around a gothic statue. It looks like an NSDAP party rally from Triumph of the Will. Let’s mention in passing the incongruous Tiki lamps and the master race who relied on Polynesian technology for their light. Its a sick-comical element to this weekend like Kubrick’s/Malcolm McDowell’s rendition of Singing in the Rain.
The second event was the president's response. These events can no longer be ignored after the President invited more of these to happen. Yes, he did green light more of these. Don't believe me, believe the Grand Whatever of such and such. I will say again for anyone who says these alt-right events should be ignored--the first two this summer were ignored. That ship has sailed. We cannot ignore these events when the president invited us to accept armed Nazis in our midst.
The third and most difficult of the events this weekend is the death of Heather Heyer. Her struggle and sacrifice are not getting the recognition it deserves. I am guilty here for not even mentioning her before. She is a casualty of a war with domestic terrorism. I am trying to be more optimistic than two co-workers today who are convinced we are headed into a new civil war. With that sentiment in mind I would not want her to be remembered like Crispus Attucks, as a first martyr of a new American conflict.
For all those burying themselves away, I have news for them. A phrase paraphrased from CNN anchor Kate Bolduan: When the swastikas were brought out, the protest stopped being about monuments and heritage. The stars and bars stopped being about history.
*Another theory I am hearing is that we should focus on the events in Barcelona. That is laughable No, sir--when Nazis are walking on your street with the President's approval, your focus is needed here. Give the Spaniards some credit. They had those suspects within hours and there are no such thing as lawless no go zones.