I'm not playing any game at all.
But if my comments prickle your soul, I'd suggest you question why that is, but am sure you do.
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Winston Churchill
- Thread starter Cascarino
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
But if my comments prickle your soul, I'd suggest you question why that is, but am sure you do.
Something along the lines of what happened in 1947 ? I think pakistan wouldn't have existed though.
Once the british were out, bose would have ditched the japanese and come back. We could have been a communist country (assuming the ussr didnt go tits up as well).
Great thread with photographs on what's happened so far. This has become a mini movement in its own right.
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Chuckled at this one
A version of @Grinner idea that slave trader and other white supramacist statues should remain but painted to tell the complete story.
I like it as it depicts clearly a wealthy and important person, but whose prominence was gained with values that modern world finds abhorrent.
richmond-protesters-honoring-george-floyd-celebrate-plans-to-remove-robert-e-lee-monument
I like it as it depicts clearly a wealthy and important person, but whose prominence was gained with values that modern world finds abhorrent.
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That's again giving the "All Lives Matter" treatment to Holocaust victims.
@MoskvaRed is of course right with the distinctions he made, and it has nothing to do with "valuing some lives more than others".
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I think the statue thingy takes the focus somewhat away from the political issues that needs to be solved vs. systemic racism.
Like for example the problems depicted in C. Cuomos answer to Kudlows rejection of any systemic racism in the us ( https://edition.cnn.com/videos/poli...systemic-racism-us-economy-kudlow-cpt-vpx.cnn )
I think all that is listed up there is many of the factual real problems that can be adressed. Annoyance with historical figures statues will not solve those, but rather deflect the actual debate that should be ongoing politically and in the press. Maybe I am wrong but thats what I believe this does. Go to the direct cause of a disease to fix it, do not fix the visual symptoms. Wish you all a good night. Bingewatching inc.
Like for example the problems depicted in C. Cuomos answer to Kudlows rejection of any systemic racism in the us ( https://edition.cnn.com/videos/poli...systemic-racism-us-economy-kudlow-cpt-vpx.cnn )
I think all that is listed up there is many of the factual real problems that can be adressed. Annoyance with historical figures statues will not solve those, but rather deflect the actual debate that should be ongoing politically and in the press. Maybe I am wrong but thats what I believe this does. Go to the direct cause of a disease to fix it, do not fix the visual symptoms. Wish you all a good night. Bingewatching inc.
Both are interconnected though. Can’t solve one while ignoring the other. Thinking along these lines is just delusional and repeating the same mistakes.
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Knew we could trust far right Britain to prove they weren't racist anymore
So we are back to calling people who we disagree with racist again are we. Or colonisers in this instance.
Classy.
If we can't celebrate what the Lyle's company have done for this nation then it's Political Correctness gone maaaaaaad....
It's not racist ffs, it's what everyone was doing at the time.
Historical context ffs.
Hopefully Boris comes out and fires off 8 messages in a day about this and we can protect this landmark.
Instead of latching on to one word you dont like for whatever reason, why not actually reply to what he wrote?
That word has little to do with the point being made.
Thats only your opinion. I didn't read it that way, but would appreciate if you'd explain how I've misinterpreted what was written.
It’s laughable how ignorant people are being of historical context.
It’s all becoming a bit of a joke really and I was really behind it at the beginning.
That said for the most part it was the way American police seem to treat black people and others in general.
Why there are now people throwing statues into rivers and damaging landmarks on the streets of the UK is more than a bit mental to be honest.
None of these statues were commissioned to celebrate the racist opinions the person may or may not have had.
Judging a person entirely on one aspect alone is the epitome of racism, so why apply the same logic to people depicted in these statues?
Especially because of the historical context.
Discriminating against people on the basis of their race is the epitome of racism. :Wenger:
Personally I couldn't really give a feck about the statues but surely you can see how celebrating slavers for their philanthropy in this country might piss people off. At the very least these statues ought to have plaques to explain how these unscrupulous feckers made their money. Protecting pointless statues over worrying about human rights is just bizarre. I'm sure Churchill doesn't give a feck about his statue from down there in hell anyway.
I could only repeat was has already been said -
by Moskva Red (Nazism and its extermination machinery were qualitatively different from the cruelties of British colonialism),
by Zlatan 7 (pointing this out does not belittle the victims of British colonialism and their plight, it's rather you bringing this fallacy into the issue),
and by me (your response amounts to applying the All Lives Matter phrase/logic to the Holocaust).
Since you asked me where I see a misinterpretion on your side: I think the core is what Zlatan 7 has described.
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Thing is there is good and bad in all humanity, nobody is free from any form of sin.
Celebrating to the good people have done and key points in history shouldn’t be completely swept aside because a person grew up in an era where racism was a completely normal everyday fact of life.
I hate to say it but if you or I (assuming we are both white) would probably have had some pretty unsavoury and racist opinions had we been brought up at the same time as Churchill with the same experiences/culture.
People are a reflection of their culture.
CNN Opinion.
Yes, Churchill was a racist. It's time to break free of his 'great white men' view of history by Richard Toye
Richard Toye is a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is the co-author, with Steven Fielding and Bill Schwarz, of The Churchill Myths, which will be published by Oxford University Press in August. His other books include Churchill's Empire and Winston Churchill: A Life in the News. The opinions expressed here are his own.
(CNN) — Last weekend, during a Black Lives Matter protest in London, a piece of graffiti was added to the base of the statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square. "Churchill was a racist," the slogan declared.
The activist who wrote this -- or sprayed it -- was factually correct. However, there is much more that can be said, of course, to explain and contextualize the former British prime minister's views.
Presenting an informed historical understanding of those opinions should not be misread as an attempt to justify them. Nor should mentioning the other parts of Churchill's record, notably his resistance to the Nazis and leadership during World War II, be seen as an attempt to argue that his racism pales into insignificance beside it.
But unless we make an effort to understand the origins and particularities of his white supremacism, we shall fail to understand the structure of racialized thinking as it still exists today.
Churchill is often the subject of false or exaggerated allegations. But in truth, he said enough horrifying things that there is no need to invent more. He said that he hated people with "slit eyes and pig tails." To him, people from India were "the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans." He admitted that he "did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people."
In 1943, US Vice President Henry Wallace challenged his notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Churchill, who drank "quite a bit of whiskey" (as Wallace wrote), gave a blunt reply. According to Wallace's diary: "He said why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in England and had been perfected by our constitution."
It is not enough to say that all this is explained by Churchill's background. Of course, as he himself emphasized, he was a child of the Victorian age -- an era when Britons tended to take their own national and moral superiority for granted. Yet other people of similar vintage, including fellow Conservative imperialists, felt that his views were old-fashioned or even downright shocking. Lord Archibald Wavell, the last-Viceroy-of-India-but-one, observed that Churchill "has still at heart his cavalry subaltern's idea of India; just as his military tactics are inclined to date from the Boer War."
We need to recognize, though, that Churchill's worldview was far from static, and his ideas did not simply freeze in time when the 20th Century dawned. He started his parliamentary career as a Conservative but in 1904 crossed the floor of the House of Commons and spent the next two decades as a Liberal. His first taste of office was as a junior minister at the Colonial Office and at first he was seen by some as a (left-wing) radical, as a Little Englander, and as a threat to the Empire. Ramsay MacDonald, later Britain's first Labour Party Prime Minister, criticized Churchill's modest efforts to rein in local colonial governments' mistreatment of their non-white populations. "I do not think I am an over-cautious man," wrote MacDonald. Nor did he consider himself short of sympathy for "oppressed black and yellow men" in South Africa. "But I am bound to say that, unless the Cabinet muzzle Mr. Winston Churchill, they will bring themselves into a disastrous conflict with the Colonies."
Churchill quickly changed tack, which suggests that, although many of his beliefs were deeply held, there was an opportunistic element in the way that he deployed them. In the 1930s, having rejoined the Conservative Party, he chose to ally himself with diehard imperialists against reform in India in part because he believed that it would help further his career. This is why I argue, in my book Churchill's Empire, that it was during the years between the two world wars that Churchill "decided to become a Victorian."
In other words, his expressions of imperialism and racism were partly self-conscious attempts at image making. It seems natural to condemn this, but we should be cautious, when trying to understand societal racism, about putting too much weight on prominent individuals, however famous or notorious.
Portraying Churchill as the root of all wickedness, as some of the more extreme social media comments appear to do, is as problematic as viewing him as the single-handed savior of freedom and democracy. By elevating him to a place of supreme importance -- albeit by presenting him as uniquely wicked rather than splendidly virtuous -- it reinforces Churchill's own theory of history as driven by great white men. That is a vision from which, surely, we urgently need to break free.
Yes, Churchill was a racist. It's time to break free of his 'great white men' view of history by Richard Toye
Richard Toye is a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is the co-author, with Steven Fielding and Bill Schwarz, of The Churchill Myths, which will be published by Oxford University Press in August. His other books include Churchill's Empire and Winston Churchill: A Life in the News. The opinions expressed here are his own.
(CNN) — Last weekend, during a Black Lives Matter protest in London, a piece of graffiti was added to the base of the statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square. "Churchill was a racist," the slogan declared.
The activist who wrote this -- or sprayed it -- was factually correct. However, there is much more that can be said, of course, to explain and contextualize the former British prime minister's views.
Presenting an informed historical understanding of those opinions should not be misread as an attempt to justify them. Nor should mentioning the other parts of Churchill's record, notably his resistance to the Nazis and leadership during World War II, be seen as an attempt to argue that his racism pales into insignificance beside it.
But unless we make an effort to understand the origins and particularities of his white supremacism, we shall fail to understand the structure of racialized thinking as it still exists today.
Churchill is often the subject of false or exaggerated allegations. But in truth, he said enough horrifying things that there is no need to invent more. He said that he hated people with "slit eyes and pig tails." To him, people from India were "the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans." He admitted that he "did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people."
In 1943, US Vice President Henry Wallace challenged his notion of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Churchill, who drank "quite a bit of whiskey" (as Wallace wrote), gave a blunt reply. According to Wallace's diary: "He said why be apologetic about Anglo-Saxon superiority, that we were superior, that we had the common heritage which had been worked out over the centuries in England and had been perfected by our constitution."
It is not enough to say that all this is explained by Churchill's background. Of course, as he himself emphasized, he was a child of the Victorian age -- an era when Britons tended to take their own national and moral superiority for granted. Yet other people of similar vintage, including fellow Conservative imperialists, felt that his views were old-fashioned or even downright shocking. Lord Archibald Wavell, the last-Viceroy-of-India-but-one, observed that Churchill "has still at heart his cavalry subaltern's idea of India; just as his military tactics are inclined to date from the Boer War."
We need to recognize, though, that Churchill's worldview was far from static, and his ideas did not simply freeze in time when the 20th Century dawned. He started his parliamentary career as a Conservative but in 1904 crossed the floor of the House of Commons and spent the next two decades as a Liberal. His first taste of office was as a junior minister at the Colonial Office and at first he was seen by some as a (left-wing) radical, as a Little Englander, and as a threat to the Empire. Ramsay MacDonald, later Britain's first Labour Party Prime Minister, criticized Churchill's modest efforts to rein in local colonial governments' mistreatment of their non-white populations. "I do not think I am an over-cautious man," wrote MacDonald. Nor did he consider himself short of sympathy for "oppressed black and yellow men" in South Africa. "But I am bound to say that, unless the Cabinet muzzle Mr. Winston Churchill, they will bring themselves into a disastrous conflict with the Colonies."
Churchill quickly changed tack, which suggests that, although many of his beliefs were deeply held, there was an opportunistic element in the way that he deployed them. In the 1930s, having rejoined the Conservative Party, he chose to ally himself with diehard imperialists against reform in India in part because he believed that it would help further his career. This is why I argue, in my book Churchill's Empire, that it was during the years between the two world wars that Churchill "decided to become a Victorian."
In other words, his expressions of imperialism and racism were partly self-conscious attempts at image making. It seems natural to condemn this, but we should be cautious, when trying to understand societal racism, about putting too much weight on prominent individuals, however famous or notorious.
Portraying Churchill as the root of all wickedness, as some of the more extreme social media comments appear to do, is as problematic as viewing him as the single-handed savior of freedom and democracy. By elevating him to a place of supreme importance -- albeit by presenting him as uniquely wicked rather than splendidly virtuous -- it reinforces Churchill's own theory of history as driven by great white men. That is a vision from which, surely, we urgently need to break free.
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Thanks for explaining.
Thats not how I see it. I think Churchill allowing 4 million of his own British subjects of the empire to die of starvation, to save non British people in Europe (all white) is a terrible crime. Seem like a decision driven purely by race.
I also don't see any moral difference between 20 years of the Nazi idea vs 300 years of the British white supremacist colonial idea, and think the former is only worse if you are British. The British prism is not the only prism. If you were from a colony country like the Indians who starved to death, they don't agree.
BLM vs ALM wasn't even a concept in 1940-45. The war inside Europe was about saving white European lives (except Allies army members from colony countries across Africa and Asia, fighting in a war that had little to do with their native country).
Am happy to disagree.
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Good for us. I don't expect my stupid views to be whitewashed after I die either. The problem isn't hurting a dead man's feelings, it's about whether it's healthy for society to lionise people who did obviously scummy things.
As I said, the solution is surely to teach a balanced view of history in schools, explaining both sides of someone's personality and achievements, and the solution for these statues is to have proper plaques explaining about their lives, not just leaving it with the implied assumption that this is someone heroic who should be celebrated because they have a statue. Churchill did heroic things but some of these other feckers certainly did precious little to outweigh the harm they caused.
Colston got rich from enslaving and murdering Africans, he also gave away some of that vast immoral wealth to build worthy things. He didn't give away all of it though. He doesn't deserve a statue regardless of his own opinion of himself.
Zero sense in continuing this.
35 million Indians civilians were killed by the british and yet nazis are considered worse 
The issue isn’t lack of historical context though. But mostly the inability of some posters to recognize the racist shit he said and did. And how it is offensive to someone who is a minority.
That's a two way argument though. Protecting a statue doesn't honour the individual anymore than ripping one down defeats racism. They are simply representations/monuments of their time. The statue of Churchill wasn't put there to celebrate racism or the atrocities he oversaw, it was put there to celebrate someone who was Prime Minister when the second world war happened. No one goes and looks at it in order to feel more empowered to be racist.
A statue doesn't represent or decide the values of current day people and it's a purposely dishonest argument to suggest otherwise. What it does do is represent it's time and vandalising what is effectively a monument to the time around the second world war is very obviously going to be seen as disrespectful.
Statues of slave traders who represent nothing other than being statues of themselves are a bit different and yeah, just remove them, but we can't just go around judging every single object purely on whether it can be linked to racism. The only thing that will do is create loads of racism everywhere, because everything will either have to be racist or not racist and can't be anything else. What you end up with there is what's happened on this forum where people start thinking it's ok to just casually call other people racist, or to say all the police are racist, etc. It obviously isn't as simple as that.
There are suddenly a lot of people just on this forum who have an almost militant attitude to others about this issue and this sort of shite is the reason why. If an inanimate object such as a statue can only be good or evil then there is no hope for anyone or anything else.
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Well I massively disagree with you there. Churchill is an icon of many people in this country, the vast majority of whom are also ignorant of his crimes and many of whom are pretty racist (doesn't mean they're not nice people). The statue is a beacon of that imperialist nostalgia born of ignorance of how wank the empire was for the rest of the world. As has been clearly shown in the past week or so in fairness given the outsize reaction to someone scribbling on it that he was a racist. What's vandalism gonna get you, 40h community service if you're very unlucky? People have called for hanging...
@Grinner
Some fun context.
Since we're doing implausible alternate histories (i.e. first Churchill doesnt get power and then whoever does/Chamberlin continues appeasement even as Hitler expands and eventually invades and finally Britain falls), another worthwhile alternate history would be how Nehru (who led Congress in the 1935 elections) would have responded to the fascists. Also another alternative history is if Stalin's demands in the early and mid-30s for an alliance with the western capitalists to beat Hitler, would have been received positively.
Some fun context.
Since we're doing implausible alternate histories (i.e. first Churchill doesnt get power and then whoever does/Chamberlin continues appeasement even as Hitler expands and eventually invades and finally Britain falls), another worthwhile alternate history would be how Nehru (who led Congress in the 1935 elections) would have responded to the fascists. Also another alternative history is if Stalin's demands in the early and mid-30s for an alliance with the western capitalists to beat Hitler, would have been received positively.
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How many times do we need to recognise and admit that Churchill was racist, held and expressed racist views regarding India and its peoples? It has been recognised again and again during this thread by different posters. Perhaps we need to log the nationality of those posters to ensure that British posters are and have stated the same.
Even today 72 years after British rule ended it is estimated that 4 million Indians die avoidably each year. Perhaps just under 300 million in 72 years?
A conversation that only became mainstream 5 days ago, and was carefully hidden for the prior 72 years.
So I reckon 72 years of admitting the truth and presenting that in British culture and education should do it. Reparations would be good too.
Also Indians who die under Indian rule is their problem. (Though a majority of those are linked to the looted impoverished and politically divided country Britain left behind).
Churchill’s views and crimes were not just against Indians. It’s a long long list.
So I reckon 72 years of admitting the truth and presenting that in British culture and education should do it. Reparations would be good too.
Also Indians who die under Indian rule is their problem. (Though a majority of those are linked to the looted impoverished and politically divided country Britain left behind).
Churchill’s views and crimes were not just against Indians. It’s a long long list.
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You can’t say I recognize the racism and turn around to argue against removing his statue. That defeats the entire purpose. Surely, you can see that.
WW2 claimed 70m in 6 years, majority civilian.35 million Indians civilians were killed by the british and yet nazis are considered worse
I think if the East India Company continued what they were up to for longer they could maybe compete. Famines, repression, taxation.
But I don't think the comparison is valid because of the time scale. they they put zero value on indian life while hitler went out of his way to exterminate jews, gypsies, slavs, which makes some moral difference probably.
e - probably not right to attribute chinese deaths to hitler since the japanese invaded 2 years before the world war, that reduces it to 55m.
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I don't necessarily argue against removing Churchill's statue, I argue about the reasons and who should decide that it should be removed and how education about what they represent should be a key point.
Britain has discussed their role in India over decades and had British support for its end at the time. There has been criticism for more than the last 5 days. Maybe not on here as far as I know but racism is a huge problem all over the world, it is even said that India has a huge problem with racism and yet when someone brings up a comparison with statues of Gandhi you begin to mention Islamaphobia for some reason. It seems to be a difficult subject for many to face.
Cool.
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What does Gandhi have to do with any of this?
What does Islamaphobia have to do with a comparison which was what you brought up earlier in a reply?
Hey I'm sorry if I haven't made myself clear or that it is just too simple a concept but my position is to cut the crap and point out where inconsistencies have been brought into this whole soppy debate.
Churchill was a racist but his statue in Parliament Square does not represent him as a racist but rather his role as the wartime leader who along with the Allies defeated Nazi Germany. The references in the statue are clear, what he's wearing, the same as he wore at the Yalta Conference and other events, and that the sculptor used a photograph of his pose from during the war. My position is that we can take the statue down but Churchill's heritage during the war and not his statue is what the people of Britain see. Why should a mob of a few hundred or thousand get to decide that?
The mob and some here are just looking to win a battle and it isn't enough. It has never been enough to take down symbols against a people's will and it isn't winning the war. The issue with the British people isn't that the majority don't realise that we have serious problems with Racism in our Society and institutions but for some who think sooner or later statues of Churchill will become irrelevant then be prepared for a long wait. The public haven't tired of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square which has been in place for 177 years. Lord Wellington's statue in Glasgow has been up since 1844. It's not just the British either that desire their history to be on show and both men had racist credentials.
The mob won a battle when they pushed Colston's statue into the harbour and the council have already retrieved it so if it proves anything that was a short term gain and in the meantime the Government couldn't be happier these activities have distracted from other issues and also woken up the right wingers. It's not winning a war on Racism in Britain as if that is the only country that has issues.
What has it got to do with Gandhi and his many statues that are still being put up today? The same things.
Well said. Everyone likes to paint their important figures in black and white. The truth is rarely that simple given how fecked up people normally are. The current movement should not make this about taking down statues of everyone. There needs to be proper thought and a separate exercise on this. In the meantime, the movement should focus on policy changes. There will be many figures that have grey past - like for instance, Olivier Cromwell. The statues are just a flashpoint and could just end up diverting the issue that is social and policy amendments required to move us into a newer era.
Whenever I come across bits and pieces on Japan's wars and occupations in (South-)East Asia, the scale and level of barbarism is just shocking.
Well done on missing the point. Because judging people on race alone is the epitome of racism. Not judging people by their actions.
It is not that difficult.