Isn't Hunter Avellone just a teenage Steven Crowder?

He's a leftist now, at least I'm pretty sure.

Inkshooter's James Cook post is a classic example of the far left tendency to drift off the main point and get lost in increasingly esoteric side plots. What we take away from George Floyd's murder shouldn't be which statues have enough of a connection to something racist to vandalise, that's a concern we can get into when we run out of real world problems to worry about. In the here and now I'd rather recommend to focus and keep the sight on current and pressing issues and their solution.

This is the opposite of what's actually happening in this thread. The statue removals are an incredibly minor part of the overall scope of the protests, but for whatever reason they're what folks from all over the world have been clutching their pearls over for pages and pages, and I'm simply trying to set the record straight about why they're happening and why it's not a bad thing.

Also, people are being kinda uhhh really fucking stupid about the whole statue matter.

I saw a Twitter post with an image of a vandalized bust of Miguel de Cervantes, author of "Don Quixote". He had absolutely nothing to do with colonialism. The outrage around it is massive and people are immediately linking this action to the entire idea of taking down statues, using the event as an excuse to dismiss it! Like, how do people not understand there will ALWAYS be someone who will take advantage of social upheaval to engage in vandalism? Vandals like that are such a minority considering the scale of the protests it's ridiculous. Protesters aren't this giant monolith that carefully carry out plans to destroy Western civilization or whatever you guys' paranoid brains cook up.

Facts. It's sad to see people profit off a tragedy.

The main reason for the protest seems to be the human tendency to judge others for attributes of the group/category they reside in (racism) regardless of whether these attributes are expressed or not. At the same time, protestors will point out particular groups most responsible for oppression of THEIR group (i.e. white men) regardless of whether this oppression is instantiated by all members of that group or not. Surrounding this is a bunch of assumptions about protestors, as if they are united in their aims regardless of whether that unity is expressed or not. The monolithic categorisation we do is a heuristic for rapid decision making in an uncertain environment like the one we evolved in and only now partially reside in. Hard to change the multi-million year software though.

My point is that it shouldn't shock anyone that a group protesting another group is being considered a group of their own, given the categorical tendencies of the human mind. That's the problem with entering a mob. We tend not to see individuals but just an aggregate of some apparent collective because how can the brain really parse individuals in that number? Doesn't matter if that collective is white, black, male, female, trans/cis, whatever.

We just desperately need to move away from this tendency to group individuals together, average out their behaviour, and apportion consequences to the group as a bloc. I'm actually predicting we will see the protest atomise into competing intersectional categories, all seeking differing but overlapping pieces of the pie. As you say, its already happening in terms of tactics being used. Its a shame, because with some unity, change may happen. We all have our disadvanatages and the aim of civilised society should be to reduce the disparity thereof insofar as we are able to.

In short, its unwise to assume that all protestors support vandalism just because SOME do, just like its unwise to assume all white people are racist because some of them are, and that all POC are oppressed because some are.

Burnley FC fans fuck off.

Cook is absolutely celebrated as paving the way for colonisation, at least that's how it was taught to me growing up. I got a particularly strong dose as the suburb I grew up in is named after the port where he first became a sailor, the schools and streets are named after his ships and parts of ships and other people who were on his voyages and so on. They certainly present it as if all us English-speaking white people are in New Zealand now thanks to him being the first of our lot to set foot here.

That is absolutely terrible - predictable - but terrible.

Not sure where the usually dirt-poor football hooligan lot got the money for a plane from, though.

The statues of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great are the next in line. Then, the famous Roman aqueducts. Colosseum also. And finally, the Great Pyramids of Giza. All made by slaves and all must be gone.

If we pass a law preventing people from buying automatics today, tomorrow you won't be able to buy BB guns and steak knives or even cars: all can kill you so all must go.

Interestingly, they've started on the statues of Gandhi and Lincoln in the UK. Eventually they'll be trying to oppose all public furniture that doesn't fit their strict political orthodoxy. Whether anyone takes any notice by that point of course, is rather up to the rest of us. Personally I'm rather enjoying the image of 'anti fascists' attacking Gandhi. Truly that kind of left will always eat itself.


On topic, and Meanwhile in the US - the police have resorted to a perverse kind of childishness -

https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/comments/hduu3h/nypd_drives_around_harlem_with_their_sirens_on_at/

Fun fact: Egyptians pyramids were built by contractors, not slaves.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are the attacks against statues of Gandhi of "anti fascist" context? I thought it was because he was a pretty well documented anti-black when he was living in South Africa, calling African people "savages", "dirty" etc.

I'm a bit ambivalent about removing statues, other than Confederates or people who led genocides.

Confederates, though, I can't think of any good reason to let them stay. They were literal traitors to their country. And they chose to became traitors specifically for the right to own slaves. That's a level of callousness that is rarely matched. For others, I guess it's a case by case basis.

However, I'd totally support erecting statues of other, lesser known people who weren't as shitty: people who freed slaves, who contributed to culture or who saved lives, maybe lesser known scholars, etc., especially if it highlights women and people of different origins; as well as providing more context on plaques about people who made important contributions but also did shitty things.

Correct. He also spearheaded the belief that if a girl is raped she is "ruined for life" (a concept still held by many Indians to this day) and unsurprisingly he also slept with prepubescent girls in order "resist impure sexual arousal," which sounds a bit like that Republican politician who was watching porn at work under the pretense that he was checking the website for viruses.

To sum it up, Gandhi was no angel.

I immediately bought the complete series of 30 Rock on Blu Ray after hearing they were going to delete episodes from history.

I'm pretty sure I read it was Tina Fay that made the decision. I understand the pressure she must be feeling right now and am not mad at her for doing it.

But, no one is going to tell me what I can and can't watch in regards to this show.

I assume the Lethal Weapons of It's Always Sunny are on life support right now.

Now THAT i didn't knew up until now.

Jesus Christ.

"Ruined for life"???

No one was, is or will be an angel, just because archetypical goodness doesn't belong to humanity. So, if this is your parameter to judge if someone deserves a statue, is better to destroy all the statues worldwide and not to build one anymore.

What if we just collectively do the total opposite of what statues were meant to be. How bout instead of erecting monuments for flawed people that made great contributions to the world, we just put up statues of flawed people that were total ass holes. That way people couldn't tear them down for their flaws- their flaws are the fucking reason we prop em up in the first place.

UK gets Jack the Ripper, we get Ted Bundy

Great idea, we really need a Pacciani statue in Italy right now! The fact is that with the political class we have lately, that misogynist sickfuck could seem virtuous!

The aliens who built the pyramids were paid in gold, but that gold was mined by human slaves.

On topic though, unless a statue commemorates an irredeemable monster, I’m against tearing it down. Leaving monuments up encourages debate and further research. Destroying them stifles learning for future generations.

Here's an idea: put statues of great historical and aesthetic value in museums, and don't have them in the common shared space to remind actual people that today live the consequences of the actions and people they commemorate every time they walk past them.

You see: in most cases, it's not about the destruction of statues or history (as many seem to want it to be). It's about removing them from the shaed space. Not one sane protester I know or have heard of would object to having a bust of Hitler in a museum in the relevant section. Having the same bust on the effin town square is a whole other burrito.

Noticing people on twitter trying to rebrand Europe- "its all west Asia to me, bro". Please don't do this nonsense.



Totally agree with this part. History is something that continues to unfold around us, learning from mistakes of the past is made more difficult if its being erased. Provide clarity by explaining that Churchill galavanised a nation to defeat Nazism but made some terrible decisions regarding the Indian sub-continent. He was probably a racist AND many other things. His racial views are likely NOT the worst thing about him, too.

I've actually read somewhere that said that just because you changed something in the past doesn't mean the events won't happen. A good example of this would be if you're given the choice to kill baby Hitler or not. Sure, killing the baby means Hitler won't start WW2. But, then there's the possibility that someone else will take Hitler's place in starting WW2. In short, all of this stuff is inevitable, and trying to get rid of it will just be a delay.

Are we seriously still saying that taking down statues of bad people will erase the history of their bad deeds? Do books still not exist?

Shut the fuck up about statues jesus christ.

It's more comfortable for people to talk about statues and "preserving history" than it is to face facts. Like people of color being lynched all over America and the police in every single instance writing it off as a suicide.

This thread is a neat little microcosm for how this stuff works. How the discourse ALWAYS gets redirected away from the most important topics, the human rights violations, the blatant covering up of lynchings, voter suppression, privatized prisons, you know...systemic fucking racism.

The hijacking of perfectly valid civil rights protests / issues / movements by global political types is a related discussion - though it might want it's own thread ? "Why are European students and university professors hijacking a US civil rights problem to attack statues of Gandhi, and do they realise that they're contributing to perpetuating the real problem ?"

More relevantly then - there's a subreddit providing a regular dose of north American police awfulness - https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliceBrutality2020/ - I'm actually still surprised, one of the luxuries of not living there, that they can stop a random person on a busy street and start beating them up, four or five bastards on one poor victim. There's a video of some kid on a beach getting smacked in the face that's a standout, too - one of those places that should be unquestionably happy on a sunny day, and some policeman films himself (bodycam) smacking a girl in the face for no reason.

Ugh. No way am I clicking on any link to Reddit that involves politics.

Checked it out for you. It's just about what you expect from a sub-reddit devoted to covering police brutality. I saw a video where cops put someone on a choke-hold, and stopped after they saw someone filming the incident. This happened after the choke-hold ban was passed. https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliceBrutalit ... n_a_black/

My point was that we should be honest about history and clarify what these individuals did. Its actually pretty clear that the bad deeds of some of the people enshrined as statues has in fact been forgotten. People are acting surprised that George Washington wasn't entirely moral. That should NOT be a surprise. Is it obvious by looking at any monument to him? I don't know but apparently not. I was agreeing that perhaps plaques affixed to statues could have more accurate information on them.

Remove them if society wants to, but do it in a democratic way. Lawlessness is not a firm basis for starting a new type of culture.



Is this actually happening though? You're saying that black people continue to be lynched across America- as in, murdered by an angry mob of (white?) people? How are we not getting pictures of this or video or any of the other documentation we've come to expect? We have postcards from the 20's of young murdered black men surrounding by grinning mobs, yet nothing of people of colour being "lynched all over America". I'm happy to face facts but I find it confusing that you present speculation as "fact". Of course, I am totally open to being further educated here, my ignorance is something I'm always seeking to address.

No doubt, the US has a terrible history of racial violence. A passive assessment of data would indicate that this has massively albeit imperfectly improved. Its broadly illegal across most of the western world to discriminate on the basis on most immutable qualities a human may manifest. That's a fantastic improvement that we would be unwise to discount. Having solidified these liberal principles with legislation makes it harder but not impossible for us to slip back into dark, old days, the magnetic lure thereof being only slightly beneath the surface of civilisation at all times. But we have had some success that is unwise to discount.



It does happen to a frustrating degree. However, I think BLM diluted its aims signfiicantly when antifa and other far-left groups got involved. I'm not sure if BLM and Antifa share affinity or if one group sort of took over the other. Protesting for the sake of racial equality- I'm not someone who puts much stock in modern protest movements personally- but that seems like a noble and valuable cause to take to the streets. But ideas like abolishing the police seem insanely misguided. And of course, the destroying of historical monuments has parallels with revolutionary movements of the 20th century that have already cost more than enough in blood and tears. Its okay to see a potential dark side to that. Doesn't mean the overarching aims are not loosely agreed with but the redirection seems to have emerged via unrelated people leveraging a very diffuse, leaderless movement to claim their part of the oppression pie. Its become difficult to see what exactly the important topics are in this environment. To whit, I proffer the #shutdownSTEM/#shutdown academia movement- largely white, liberal academics appropriating this topic to improve their own status. Or so it seems.

Systemic racism, or structural racism is at the heart of the complaints we hear. Yet, some aspects of the movement- cancel culture/no-platform stuff- target individuals. There is a punitive aspect to this that seems to drag attention away from important topics such as those you have mentioned. At the very least, you don't change a system rapidly by demonising individual constituents. That said, I question the systemic racism narrative if only because the Critical Race Theory that spawned it is highly dubious and applies pseudoscientific principles for its codification. Systemic racism might very well be THE dominant fact of modern life but critical theory is an intellectual dead end in terms of addressing and remedying it. It generates a high number of false positives that are taken as incontrovertible fact.

Anyway, its a tough topic to discuss. I've been called racist a number of times recently simply for questioning some aspects of this movement. Which is particuarly galling as someone with indigenous Australian heritage. Its as if people just assume a lack of agency and a tendency for people to goosestep in the direction of whatever collective identity has been assigned to you by birth. What is very strange is that its not the far-right making these racial assumptions of interior values and beliefs based on exterior/superficial attributes. The left appears totally captured by collecticism. As someone on the left, that strikes me as a horrid regression.

Stay safe people, and remember that most of us want a fair and just world. A beautiful part about our diverse world is surely also diversity of opinion, too.

@Acidgoblin
Contrary to what right-wing pundits may claim, "the left" is not a Borg hive mind but is in fact host to a plethora of different opinions, many of which are complete and utter shite. But that shouldn't discourage anyone, same way one shouldn't be discouraged from being a metalhead just because Sabaton or nu-In Flames or Wintersun exist. Because there's always Bathory and Slayer and Immolation and all, and on the left there's always the stuff that counts. Basically, never measure your own beliefs by the absolute worst people to utter similar ones because for every good idea there's some dumbass turning it to trash, and that really shouldn't count for anything.

That's another one for the Foe list.

I've recently been finding myself comparing this social movement to Occupy Wall Street, and it comes out favorably next to that trash fire.

The Occupy movement was characteristically dominated by navel-gazing theorizing, a pathological avoidance of anything resembling structure or leadership, and a lack of any specific goals or demands besides "we don't like income inequality". That's not even mentioning the huge numbers of people that viewed it as a big party or vacation.

In contrast, the new Black Lives Matter movement has developed characteristic demands that are being pushed for basically everywhere in the US, even if the scope of protesters ultimate goals are much broader: defunding/demilitarization of police departments, abolition of special legal protections for cops, and conviction of cops that are known to have murdered people. Longtime Black and Indigenous activists are organizing and leading marches and protests, and people are listening to them.

Even though it isn't on literally everyone's social media timelines now, the momentum is still there, and I still think there's a lot more good that can potentially happen.

True, but the left in general have become increasingly censorious and regressive. There are certain things that are considered infallible truth that if questioned renders one a a 'bad guy'. Tactically, one major aspect of modern leftism is silencing opposition with terms like foe or racist or 'straight white male' so its much harder for me to agree that the left is in fact "host to a plethora of different opinions". Let's just say 'it was'. And, fundamentally, it should be- the left have always been champions of unheard voices and alternate perspectives- but something has been lost, and the movement is now one largely defined by conformity, de-individualisation, and silencing minority views. Words cannot express how disappointing I find that. Though there is much of value that we can salvage if we can steer away from the authoratarianism we've angled towards.

I'm going to politely avoid excoriating you about the Sabaton comment



I've assumed that was in response to me questioning the conspiracy theory you mentioned. Totally up to you if you want to create lists and assign value to people based largely on whether they agree with you or not, but that isn't a place where I think society should go. FWIW, as I said, I am likely ignorant of something you know. Rather than dismiss my post, why not share your knowledge? I would sincerely appreciate it.

It seems . . . odd that as I soon as I mentioned my background, I'm labelled a foe. However, my apologies if I have misinterpreted your posting. This is a strange time with much misnterpretation floating around. I'm trying to do better.

I was subbed to that subreddit. I left it, seeing all the vids in my feed just made me either sad or angry. I hate bullies, and I hate bullies hiding behind any authority even more. I still check it once in a while, get depressed, and go see r/eyebleach to balance.

In somewhat related news, tracts have been delivred in southern Ontario, attacking mixed race relationships and the intelligence of black people. At least here we have some laws against hate speech, so I hope they catch the fuckers who spread those.

Fragile white person spotted.

Grow up, it's clear what they meant.


Yeeeeep

Thank you for your posts btw


lmao, no it doesn't fucking "stifle learning". No one actually learns anything from statues. Statues are not meant to be educational, they're meant to glorify people. To quote Trevor Noah, "you wanna learn history? Read a book, motherfucker!"

If you're a black person and you see a monument glorifying someone who was responsible for the murder, oppression and subjugation of people like you, it's no wonder you want to tear it the fuck down.

The concern trolling over statues and education is nothing short of pathetic and disingenuous. If anything, statues, and just general glorification of shitty people, have the opposite effect of education; it's propaganda. Just see how many people think Gandhi and Mother Teresa are synonymous with peace, justice, or virtue, when both were completely abhorrent, loathsome people who are responsible for untold harm to thousands or even millions of people.

Propaganda != education


Case in point. Gandhi sucks, statues of him should absolutely be torn down, and people who tear down statues of Gandhi are "not contributing to the problem [of systemic racism]", that's a gross and dishonest thing to say. Those are perpetuating the problem of police brutality and systemic oppression are, you know, the actual oppressors. Claiming those students are "perpetuating" the problem is some disingenuous horseshit.

Sadly in the United States hate speech is completely legal. Where most "democracies" in the world it is illegal. In the United States its completely legal to be a racist piece of shit. Hurting someone that is a homosexual, black, Jewish, different story. I live next town over to one of the largest Hasidic communities in the US outside of Brooklyn. Its constantly in the news the hate crimes against them. Interesting though, African American do not get the same respect. The "bad" part of their neighborhood is mostly black people and Spanish people. These people get shit on by this state including the "Hasidics" who live right next to them. Its a strange and sad paradox.