Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans made a powerful speech on the removal of Confederate monuments from the city — read the whole thing. What was most notable about it is how strongly he exposes the lie behind the defense of these statues honoring traitors as a part of Southern history. Yeah, the Civil War was real history, but the stories of a genteel Antebellum South and noble Southern aristocrats fighting for their liberty was all propaganda, a lie promoted by regressive monied interests that attempted to romanticize slavery with a set of myths. Tear down the lies, expose the truth.
The historic record is clear, the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard statues were not erected just to honor these men, but as part of the movement which became known as The Cult of the Lost Cause. This ‘cult’ had one goal – through monuments and through other means – to rewrite history to hide the truth, which is that the Confederacy was on the wrong side of humanity. First erected over 166 years after the founding of our city and 19 years after the end of the Civil War, the monuments that we took down were meant to rebrand the history of our city and the ideals of a defeated Confederacy. It is self-evident that these men did not fight for the United States of America, They fought against it. They may have been warriors, but in this cause they were not patriots. These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.
After the Civil War, these statues were a part of that terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone’s lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city. Should you have further doubt about the true goals of the Confederacy, in the very weeks before the war broke out, the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, made it clear that the Confederate cause was about maintaining slavery and white supremacy. He said in his now famous ‘corner-stone speech’ that the Confederacy’s “cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
America is well practiced at lying about our history. The Pilgrims were virtuous people looking for religious freedom, rather than admitting that they were puritanical religious bigots who wanted to impose their freakish religious beliefs without question. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are stuffed full of high-minded language about freedom, but also were awash in hypocrisy, since they avoided the fact that our economy was built on the forced enslavement of black people. The US Cavalry was heroic in fighting off savages and advancing the cause of civilization, when they were actually murdering people of a culture that was reeling from the onslaught of European diseases, and sequestering the survivors in barren reservations to live for generations in poverty. The Civil War was about States’ Rights…yeah, fuck it, that’s all bullshit.
Good nations and good people are not built on a history of lies. It’s about time we started waking up. I’m just afraid our media will not be helping, but will instead be constructing new myths. Witness the newspaper of record, the NY Times, busily papering over the first decade of the 21st century.
Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama flexed their executive muscles. Mr. Bush enhanced the president’s control over national security after the Sept. 11 attacks by opening Guantánamo, trying terrorism suspects before military tribunals, and authorizing warrantless wiretapping. Mr. Obama took unilateral aggressive actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reform immigration.
They left the office stronger than when they arrived. Although their policies were controversial, both presidents were given deference because they made their judgments conscientiously and led the government professionally.
Hey, look, Bush and Obama were just the same: let’s sweep the fact that Bush started an unjustified war that drained the treasury and killed hundreds of thousands of people under the rug, and compare lawlessness and the erosion of privacy to efforts to protect the environment from out-of-control capitalism and to opening the doors to refugees…some of them from the regions Bush devastated. But they’re just the same, don’t you know.
And look at that: Bush must be gratified that now, suddenly, “history” of the sort peddled by propaganda organs, is deciding that he was “conscientious” and “professional”. Dear god. Maybe New Orleans needs to replace a statue of Robert E. Lee with one of George W. Bush, so that some later generation can recover their sanity and tear it down.
“the removal of Confederate monuments from the city”
Those LOSERS should just GET OVER IT, amirite?
While W. was in office, he maintained that history would vindicate him. We need to speak the truth, so that the actual facts of history are remembered, rather than revisionist propaganda.
As I wrote in my post about Karl Oliver, a republican representative, who thinks anyone in favour of removing these monuments from the public square should be LYNCHED:
Snarki @ 1:
In a manner of speaking, yes. There never should have been monuments erected to the practice of slavery; fighting one of the bloodiest wars ever in this country over the right to own other human beings is not something which should be celebrated, or embraced as family and history. It’s a shameful past, made worse by those who refuse to face reality, and still think all that bigotry and hatred is a great legacy.
Putting up monuments to slavery was not only a sop to beaten egos, it was a terroristic act, letting certain people know they had best not get uppity. If you want remembrance, then put up statues of abolitionists, of slaves and former slaves who fought to save lives, not to own or kill lives.
The South — Proud traitors against the United States of America since 1865
Hey, the NYT article was by Posner – we’re lucky he acknowledged that Obama was professional.
And, Snarki, speaking as someone who grew up south of the Mason Dixon line, yeah, they should get over it already and stop hiding behind some vague bullshit idea of ‘heritage.’
Chimpy appeared in the broadcast booth at the PGA tournament last weekend to brag about his foundation for wounded warriors. I shit you not. Jim Nance slobbered all over him. Maybe if you weren’t a war criminal who lied us into a disastrous, illegal war of aggression they wouldn’t need your grotesquely hypocritical foundation. Despicable slime. He was all jolly and smarmy.
If they do a statue of George II then it should be of him bravely looking out of Air Force One’s window as New Orleans drowns.
I think that 150 year old statues erected to present a particular partisan and revisionist view of history have their place – but that place is not as public monuments. Rather, I think it is important that such things be put in a museum. They are material evidence of an important cultural trend in American (indeed, in all) history. They should take their place in the long tradition of using art and sculpture to promote your preferred message about history, with all the statues of Roman emperors and Victorian generals and Middle-Eastern despots erected for the same reason. Simply disposing of such monuments would itself be a kind of historical revisionism, and it is important that we remember our tendency to interpret the past how we would wish it to be.
What is more important, though, is that the teaching of history in schools should make students intimately aware of how we consistently manipulate and reinterpret the past – for our own edification and to demonise others. It is not enough to simply cover key events and work through issues of chronology and causation – history writing has always been political, and we must be aware of how we are conditioned to relate to the past if we stand any hope of avoiding these sorts of mistakes again.
Seems many think taking the statues down is “trying to ERASE history”, including the usual qualification of “it was an awful time then, so those statues should stay to remind us. You are trying to rewrite history into never having slavery”
Useless to reply with the simple “okay, put them in museums.”
I suggest that some of these neo-confederate fucks take a leaf from Germany’s book. There are plenty of monuments in Berlin to the victims of the Nazis, but to the Nazis themselves? Not so much.
@Larry: “The South — Proud traitors against the United States of America since 1865”
And so what? There’s nothing wrong with opposing “your country” when that country violates principles you hold dear. In fact treason is a moral imperative under those conditions.
The moral failing of the Confederacy and its modern fans isn’t that they’re “traitors”, but that their principles are awful. Treason isn’t inherently immoral any more than “patriotism” is in itself moral. “Traitor” is an authoritarian’s insult.
I always thougth that statues of confederate generals in the USA, make the same sense that statues of WWII german generals in Germany.
Maybe these statues, of Lee and others, can be arranged in some permanent exhibition about the story of the CSA.
Also, i bet that some racist/suporter of slavery, will cry and say: “but the Founding Fathers had slaves at their service: puting down the statues of fine, southerners, gentlemen is discriminatory (tears and sad face)”.
Bush and Obama certainly weren’t ‘the same.’ But if you’re going to (justifiably) cite erosion of privacy as one of Bush’s sins, don’t overlook the fact that Obama promised to pursue justice against the telecommunications companies responsible and then instead voted to grant them immunity. Just in general a non-partisan look at his legacy will have to acknowledge that he expanded the powers of the presidency to include, for the first time, assassination of american citizens, away from any battlefield, without trial. His record on the war on drugs is also very mixed, including a huge expansion of Byrne grants/JAG funds (10x relative to the Bush administration, which had been phasing them out!), large increases in the militarization of the police via funding and equipment from DHS and the pentagon, and an aggressive and record-setting approach to asset forfeiture. All of which is to say that there’s plenty of uncomfortable truths those of us on the left need to (but often don’t want to) acknowledge, and no, the NYT won’t be leading the way.
@ 11 Zeppelin
Good point. I’m Canadian.
From my point of view, you could describe George Washington, Ben Franklin and, probably, all the signers of the US Declaration of Independence as traitors. The only difference is they were successful.
We received a huge influx of political refugees after the US revolution.
13 jacobbasson
assassination of american citizens, away from any battlefield, without trial.
I have never understood this. Every time I see such a statement it says to me that US citizens regard everyone else as less than human.
I tend to look at it the other way around. If the US president wants to kill off a few of his citizens, that’s an internal affair; let the Americans deal with it.
Killing non-US citizens is murder shading into war crimes or crimes against humanity in some cases.
Re: jrkrideau (#15):
Yes, but the proper way of killing a US citizen – an internal affair, as you put it – is to imprison them on death row for around a decade until their execution finally goes through. Non-US citizens, on the other hand, are just combatants that haven’t declared as such, yet, so killing them is a fine and noble thing, and quite likely a patriotic duty.
Allergy warning: may contain traces of sarcasm.
I’m puzzled: what has Barack Obama to do with the left?
With reference to the general phenomenon of monuments to repellent people, the house I’m hoping to move to later this year stands on a street named after Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, VD, PC. In addition to colonising most of the alphabet, Wolseley was distinguished by the large number of (mainly African and Asian) people he killed, and the amounts of their property he destroyed in (among other campaigns) the First Opium War, the Great Indian Uprising of 1857 (the “Indian Mutiny”), the Ashanti War, and the seizure of the Suez Canal. He was, linking to the specific topic of the thread, a Confederate sympathiser – he had himself smuggled into the rebel states during a visit to the USA in 1862, defended the massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow and wrote this hagiography of Robert E. Lee (who, you will be relieved to learn, “hated slavery, but as he explained to me, thought it wicked to give freedom suddenly to some millions of people who were incapable of using it with profit to themselves or the state. He assured me he had long intended to gradually give his slaves their liberty” – he just hadn’t quite got round to it, presumably). My wife and I have briefly discussed trying to get the name changed – given Wolseley’s role in India, perhaps Nehru’s name would be a suitable substitute – but I must admit we probably won’t bother; the whole country is littered with such street names, and not one in a hundred people, either in Scotland, in India, or in the USA, would have any idea who Wolseley was.
lol awesome.
me: “assassination of american citizens, away from any battlefield, without trial.”
@ jrkrideau 15 : “I have never understood this. Every time I see such a statement it says to me that US citizens regard everyone else as less than human.”
yeah fair enough. i guess i put it that way because i suspect assassination of american citizens IS more likely to engender outrage and anti-establishment sentiment…but i agree with you, i certainly wouldn’t want to have to make the case that it to be that way.
me: “All of which is to say that there’s plenty of uncomfortable truths those of us on the left need to (but often don’t want to) acknowledge – jacobbasson@13”
@ KG 17: “I’m puzzled: what has Barack Obama to do with the left?”
again, fair enough. but, lots of americans think of themselves as ‘on the left’ and also as obama/clinton supporters without serious reservations (and would find your puzzlement puzzling). i believe pharyngula attracts a fair cross section of that ‘left’ and they were my intended audience.
lol awesome.
me: “assassination of american citizens, away from any battlefield, without trial.”
@ jrkrideau 15 : “I have never understood this. Every time I see such a statement it says to me that US citizens regard everyone else as less than human.”
yeah fair enough. i guess i put it that way because i suspect assassination of american citizens IS more likely to engender outrage and anti-establishment sentiment…but i agree with you, i certainly wouldn’t want to have to make the case that it OUGHT to be that way.
me: “All of which is to say that there’s plenty of uncomfortable truths those of us on the left need to (but often don’t want to) acknowledge – jacobbasson@13”
@ KG 17: “I’m puzzled: what has Barack Obama to do with the left?”
again, fair enough. but, lots of americans think of themselves as ‘on the left’ and also as obama/clinton supporters without serious reservations (and would find your puzzlement puzzling). i believe pharyngula attracts a fair cross section of that ‘left’ and they were my intended audience.
jacobbasson@19,
I was perhaps too snarky, as I’m sure you’re right about Americans in general – but probably not about commenters here – lurkers, of course, it’s hard to know. But anyone who read Pharyngula regularly during Obama’s administration would have seen a lot of critiicsm of him, by friendly critics, outright enemies and everythnig in between – but much less defence of his security, military and civil liberties policies, or his failure to tame the banks and maintain the radical coalition that backed him, when he had the opportunity.
@14:
From the British Crown’s POV, the signers of the DoI were traitors.
They also, by placing their names on the DoI, they pledged their “lives, fortunes and their sacred honor”, knowing that they would be tried for treason and executed if captured.
Or, as Ben Franklin is alleged to have put it, “We must all hang together or we will all hang separately”.