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Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger
What are you even talking about? Who cares about incoherence on the topic of Louis Riel? That has nothing to do with neo nazis in virginia.
Do you seriously not understand what is going on in this thread? Seriously?
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Yeah, someone brought up the question of whether other countries had statues commemorating traitors, someone posted Louis Riel, and we started talking about whether that was a reasonable analogy. With me so far?
Then you made that post, which was both a cheap shot and baffling given that his post was pretty clear.
Now you're raving about how this has nothing to do with the thread topic. Did you really think that the thread would have zero de-rails in it whatsoever? Are you new to CP, or what? This is barely a tangent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
I can't tell what Corsi and Cliff are arguing, but it seems like they're saying "confederates TOO require more nuance! (just like Riel)" which seems about as strong of a condemnation of that ideology as Trump attempted.
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Well, I definitely think that the civil war is a more nuanced event than just a struggle of good vs evil, slavers vs emancipators, but that should be obvious to anyone who isn't a complete moron. That's not really my point though; it's more that statues can be put up for other reasons than to honour someone. I don't think whoever put up the statue of Guy Fawkes in Somerset was trying to encourage attempts to blow up government buildings. There's also just a historical commemoration aspect to these things. I appreciate that in the case of statues of confederate generals, that may not have been the intent of the people who put up the statues in the pre-civil rights era, so maybe this is an exceptional case, but even here, those statues can be re-appropriated to something more positive. For me, rather than tearing down statues of controversial figures, the best option is to just replace the plaque, or add a new one, that provides whatever context or additional information is thought to be needed in the particular case. Then the thing at least continues to serve an educational and commemorative purpose.
That said, I'm not really much fussed if you want to tear down a statue of Robert E. Lee because it was put up by racists who wanted to commemorate the confederacy. I'm just mildly concerned about the precedent of destroying historical artifacts and public art because it can be seen as a representation of something we don't like, in general terms.