Winston Churchill

[SteveJ]

Ooh Steve, Schama, you sexy bastard.

His work's far too clever for the likes of me, chief. At least his books have pictures though.

 

[Sweet Square]

You kind of proved your agenda yesterday when it was pointed out to you that in later life Churchill reflected on his racist views and accepted they were never acceptable, but apparently that still isn't good enough and his whole life should be expunged from history.

Fyi having a statue from the 1970's removed isn't the same thing as someone life getting expunged from history.

As many others have pointed out that if you go far enough back into a nation's history you will inevitably find horrible things, I am yet to see anyone condone colonialism. It was abhorrent, but to ignore that it happened or rewrite history because of previously held beliefs is both insincere and IMO disrespectful for any person that had to be subjugated and treated as a lesser person because of the colour of their skin.

Page 26 of this thread.

 

[sammsky1]

But your blanket, all British are inherently racist is simply not true and the onus is on you to prove it. Not liken anyone who doesn't agree with you with Tommy Robinson or other racist dickheads.

You kind of proved your agenda yesterday when it was pointed out to you that in later life Churchill reflected on his racist views and accepted they were never acceptable, but apparently that still isn't good enough and his whole life should be expunged from history.

As many others have pointed out that if you go far enough back into a nation's history you will inevitably find horrible things, I am yet to see anyone condone colonialism. It was abhorrent, but to ignore that it happened or rewrite history because of previously held beliefs is both insincere and IMO disrespectful for any person that had to be subjugated and treated as a lesser person because of the colour of their skin.

The onus isn't on me to prove anything. This is a forum and I'll state my point of view. Uncomfortable for you as you know most British people would fail a test if they had to prove every thought or action of theirs wasn't racist.

Statements without evidence don't cut it for me. And even if Churchill spoke a few words (I've not seen any) it makes no difference whatsoever. Likewise, my view on Churchill in this thread has never been that he be expunged from history or even that his statue is removed, rather his story should be truthfully told (as opposed to the 72 years of bull that has been served up) so get your accusations right. A few words here and there that Colonialism wasn't good means nothing. Years and years of truthful education, plus some meaningful contributions to countries damaged by colonialism might begin to redress that balance.

And I know if that happened, British people would expunge him, because there is nothing to be proud about whatsoever. Hope I'm clear on my position on that.

So, really your post is all projection on what you wish I'd said to help your conscious feel better, and not much else.

 

[Raoul]

I agree but the people doing the vandalising of war memorials are sub human scum.

You can’t re-educate that level of ‘human.’ It’s untrainable, feral.

There’s a debate to be had on Churchill and individual statues of a singular person but memorials for people who were forced into war to protect their country and made the ultimate sacrifice are sacred. It’s a basic mark of humanity to respect such a thing, regardless of your views on the war itself, the dead it represents didn’t have the first world luxury of deciding if they agree with a war, they were thrown in as kids.

The act of forced enrolment and subsequent mass death of that generation is ironically far worse than anything these people are protesting for today. I’m sure the majority of the protesters would be disgusted at this, all it does is allow the news coverage to focus on the negative.

@RUCK4444 Tone it down a notch please

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

His work's far too clever for the likes of me, chief. At least his books have pictures though.

I have a BA in History, so you can't downplay this. One of my professors was a specialist in the French Revolution and he talked about Citizens all the time, even read to us from it.

 

[Shamwow]

Would we have a statue of him if he were found out to be a pedo?

 

[NinjaFletch]

Yeah this was basically what I was thinking, you’ve just fleshed it out a lot better than me. The idea that as historians we’re somehow uniquely immune to the passions of the moment, that we have frozen the interpretation of certain symbols, events, individuals etc., in time so that any challenge to them represents an attempt to “undo” history is, well, bollox.

Oh don't worry, I knew you agreed and just wanted to use it as a launchpad to elaborate further.

I've been reading Simon Schama on the French Revolution recently. He states that many historians often have themes or implicit biases (in their books), and frequently avoid 'negative' incidents that might upset the validity of those themes or biases. Could it be the case that some historians aren't so much guilty of dismissing/downplaying Churchill's various errors and personal faults but rather that they're afraid the alternative would spoil their 'bigger picture'?

Of course, and it happens on a conscious and unconscious level, too. History is a subjective discipline, and historians fit their evidence to their arguments, no matter how much they try to avoid doing so. For a figure like Churchill, about whom so much is known, even the process of distilling his life down into a manageable narrative requires judgement calls about what to include and what not to include. Those judgement calls are as much reflections of our society as the way what is included is written about.

On the wider issue of statues more generally, we can see how much what we think we know about the past and the values of it is a construct of our present shaped by our own research agendas and lines of enquiry with the rather spurious argument that slave owning was ok judged 'by the values of their time'.

What is implicit in that argument is that we must ignore the voices of those we know were not happy with being enslaved, and privilege the voices of slave owners over the top of them. To make that argument one must , consciously or consciously, make the argument that the voice of slavers is move important than the voice of the slaves themselves. The fault for that lies at no ones feet in particular, but it's a reflection of the fact that the academe has privileged those white, rich voices of slave owners over the voices of the slaves themselves and has been far too slow to address that imbalance. It is only in the past few decades as debates in our society play out, that research into those voices and aspects of race has begun.

The 'values' that we supposedly 'know' were held and against which we 'must' judge is entirely a modern construct based upon who and what we decide the taste makers and opinion setters were, and it's one which decided that the opinions of slavers and slave traffickers was more important than slaves. It's one steeped in structural racism and white supremacy and one that we will change over the next few decades not because we're 'whitewashing the past' but because our own society's judgements on whose voices we should hear from, and how we should treat those voices will shift.

I know it's bloody high concept, but, really, history is all constructed and always re-written.

 

[Gehrman]

So basically it's like all white caucasians are racist until proven innocent? That's kind of the vibes I'm getting from samssky1.

 

[Rams]

Do you really believe those things to be equivalent to wanting to remove a statue of a racist from the near past, or are you on a complete wind up?

To be fair most of the buildings were built off the profits from the slave trade and colonies. But what about Arc de Triumph then? Should the French knock that down?

 

[RUCK4444]

So basically it's like all white caucasians are racist until proven innocent? That's kind of the vibes I'm getting from samssky1.

Yeah but the thing is it’s kind of true up until a certain point in history where education, opinions improved.

It’s why I got hammered for defending people of Churchill’s era.

You are what you know. Your parents and peers hardwire your thought process as you develop and without doubt that is why so many back then we’re inherently racist, at least to some extent.

I mean I’m 35 and consider racism absolutely abhorrent. But I only have to look back a couple of generations and the thought process is very different, I’m sure many of us white British are familiar with older generations that say something and you think wow that’s terrible and try to reprogram their thinking at that stage is impossible, they don’t intentionally think that way it’s just what they were brought up with.

It’s a million times better now but it’s a fact imo that the vast majority of white British from a few generations back have a racist outlook in some form, however it is on the whole a naive almost hereditary racism.

This is the sort of thing we need to take ownership of and accept, hopefully the BLM will help to point this out as I feel it’s still a lingering issue but one I hope will die out.

 

[Rams]

This is a stupid argument. Mainly because history as a subject, has long moved past this type of thinking. If anything, identifying as a historian doesn’t actually mean much if you don’t specify which lens you’re viewing the subject from. Thanks to the work of people like Dubois, Stuart Hall, Fanon, Edward Said, etc(list is endless) we not only have a better understanding of the subject but also can view these events from a different lens. This is also the reason why, over the last few decades we have seen more calls to decolonize our education system and rectify it on a fundamental level.
This notion that history is something that exists in vacuum and should remain untouched is just a lazy argument that aims to reinforce hierarchies.
Which is again, stupid and impossible to sustain, because history, if anything, is a record of evolving racial cognizance.

No it’s not a stupid argument. My home town Amsterdam is built on the slave and has literally 1000’s of monuments and statues of some pretty nasty slave traders in particular. Would it really be constructive to get rid of them all or would it be more beneficial to reform the way educate our kids about our past and use said landmarks as tools to teach future generations about our past?

 

[Rams]

Hi Rams, I'm currently finishing writing up my PhD in history focussing on, hey get this, the memorialisation and commemoration of the past.

So when I tell you that if you'd done your reading you'd realise how facile those arguments are you can trust me, I've done the reading so you don't have to. I can also tell you with absolutely certainty that the vast majority of historians that I know are massively in favour of removing statues. I doubt many would argue for their outright destruction, (although frankly, I suspect most would cream their pants about how historically interesting such destruction would be) but they would tell you that the removal of the Colston statue, for example, is history and is significantly more informative about out attitudes and relationship to the past than a contextless (ironically) whitewashed commemoration of the man as a an unproblematic hero of Bristol ever was. If our aim is to preserve these monuments as historical sources, then they serve a far better job of that in museums.



It depends what you mean by 'particular insight'. For me, I think the historian's voice in this debate is to counter the lazy invocation of 'history' as an opposition for the statues removal. You and I both know that writing history is rewriting history, and that these debates are hardly novel in the historical record. What does strike me as novel, however, is our society's failure (I think, actually a failure driven by historians of recent generations past) to realise that we do not sit aloof and unaffected by history and we are, in fact, a part of it. Our actions, our decisions to preserve, and to conserve monuments, commemorations and celebrations to slavers, racists, and mass murderers or not do so (if we so decide to) are not neutral or somehow reflective of a noble pursuit in historical objectiveness, but are actually themselves active decisions which reflect our values as a society and our attitude to the past just as much as destroying or removing them would be.

By all means debate whether a statue of Churchill is a suitable memorial in the 21st century (I'd be surprised if even given everything the majority decision would be in favour of removing his right now anyway) but let's not pretend that it's a battle ground fought out between ahistorical hooligans hellbent on wrecking the past and virtuous paragons of said past, because such a battleground is utterly impossible.

You start of saying I’m wrong then end up admitting that historians are against destroying historical landmarks. Not sure what to think about that. Personally I would keep them as they are but the main point I’m making is that we should not destroy the past, and rather learn from it. So I guess we agree then.
Having said that, there are examples where I do believe it’s right to get rid, for example the monuments built 100 years after in confederate states just to piss the black population off.

 

[JPRouve]

No it’s not a stupid argument. My home town Amsterdam is built on the slave and has literally 1000’s of monuments and statues of some pretty nasty slave traders in particular. Would it really be constructive to get rid of them all or would it be more beneficial to reform the way educate our kids about our past and use said landmarks as tools to teach future generations about our past?

I would suggest to do both, get rid of statues that effectively glorify "some pretty nasty slave traders" and reform the way we educate our kids.

 

[Gehrman]

Yeah but the thing is it’s kind of true up until a certain point in history where education, opinions improved.

It’s why I got hammered for defending people of Churchill’s era.

You are what you know. Your parents and peers hardwire your thought process as you develop and without doubt that is why so many back then we’re inherently racist, at least to some extent.

I mean I’m 35 and consider racism absolutely abhorrent. But I only have to look back a couple of generations and the thought process is very different, I’m sure many of us white British are familiar with older generations that say something and you think wow that’s terrible and try to reprogram their thinking at that stage is impossible, they don’t intentionally think that way it’s just what they were brought up with.

It’s a million times better now but it’s a fact imo that the vast majority of white British from a few generations back have a racist outlook in some form, however it is on the whole a naive almost hereditary racism.

This is the sort of thing we need to take ownership of and accept, hopefully the BLM will help to point this out as I feel it’s still a lingering issue but one I hope will die out.

Well since Samssky1 mainly talked about the British it's good that I am only half-british so I only have to half-prove that I am not a racist. Obviously the notion that white caucasians are inherently racist until proven otherwise is obviously not in anyway what so ever a racist belief in itself.

 

[Rams]

I’m a historian. I’m not against tearing down statues as a matter a principal. Majority of the historians I know wouldn’t be either, although there is of course no one historian’s view on the matter.

We can look back across history and recognize that statues have risen and fallen again and again, and it’s actually these events which are of more value for us than the worth of the statue in informing us on the life of the figure being commemorated (which is zero), as they bring into sharp relief the significance and mood of that particular moment in time.

In any case, I don’t think being a historian right now gives us any particular insight on the subject of this thread, since it’s more related to current issues in society rather than actual history.

But this is the whole point though, that these landmarks represent a period of our past. If we start getting rid of then we take away the opportunity for future generations to learn about those periods of our past.

Btw, what’s your opinion of Churchill? Evil racist bastard or national hero? I’d guess it’s probably somewhere in between..

 

[Carolina Red]

The onus isn't on me to prove anything. This is a forum and I'll state my point of view.

...

Statements without evidence don't cut it for me.

What?

 

[Rams]

I would suggest to do both, get rid of statues that effectively glorify "some pretty nasty slave traders" and reform the way we educate our kids.

Glorify? Is not as if they are used by certain groups to commemorate racism, it fact hardly any Dutch realize they’re there due to the the complete failure of the Dutch educational system to address the issues of it’s slave trading and colonialist past.

 

[fergieisold]

But this is the whole point though, that these landmarks represent a period of our past. If we start getting rid of then we take away the opportunity for future generations to learn about those periods of our past.

Btw, what’s your opinion of Churchill? Evil racist bastard or national hero? I’d guess it’s probably somewhere in between..

I’m still trying to work out why I’m so uncomfortable with statues being removed. I suppose I just prefer to reflect on things...I went to the reichstag in Berlin and it was amazing, bullet holes everywhere from the Russians I think. should those be repaired? I find it fascinating really.

 

[NinjaFletch]

You start of saying I’m wrong then end up admitting that historians are against destroying historical landmarks. Not sure what to think about that. Personally I would keep them as they are but the main point I’m making is that we should not destroy the past, and rather learn from it. So I guess we agree then.
Having said that, there are examples where I do believe it’s right to get rid, for example the monuments built 100 years after in confederate states just to piss the black population off.

That's what you took from that post and my reply to 2cents?

I'm saying you fundamentally don't understand what history is, and your reply below seems to indicate that I'm right. I'm not sure how else I can put it other than how I did there.

But this is the whole point though, that these landmarks represent a period of our past. If we start getting rid of then we take away the opportunity for future generations to learn about those periods of our past.

Btw, what’s your opinion of Churchill? Evil racist bastard or national hero? I’d guess it’s probably somewhere in between..

 

[JPRouve]

Glorify? Is not as if they are used by certain groups to commemorate racism, it fact hardly any Dutch realize they’re there due to the the complete failure of the Dutch educational system to address the issues of it’s slave trading and colonialist past.

The initial purpose of these statues is glorification which is exactly why there is a case for getting rid of them, if you disagree with their original purpose. It sends a signal that what these people stood for isn't accepted anymore by the City and its community. And the second part of your post support my point get rid of them and educate, the former is a strong gesture and signal while the second is the long term remedy.

Doing nothing is one of the reason people don't realize that they are there and what they represent.

 

[Silva]

I agree but the people doing the vandalising of war memorials are sub human scum.

You can’t re-educate that level of ‘human.’ It’s untrainable, feral.

how does this only get a "tone is down' @Raoul, "sub human" human in inverted quotes, untrainable, feral. this is pretty rough

you'd think he's talking about a pedophile not vandalism

 

[Rams]

That's what you took from that post and my reply to 2cents?

I'm saying you fundamentally don't understand what history is, and your reply below seems to indicate that I'm right. I'm not sure how else I can put it other than how I did there.

You know nothing about me so how can you judge what I know about history??? In any case I’m entitled to my opinion as you are yours. And trust me, I’m well aware of just how fluid and abstract history is, hence why I’m emphasizing to be careful not to judge history or historical figures from our current values and perceptions. Keep it neutral.

 

[RUCK4444]

how does this only get a "tone is down' @Raoul, "sub human" human in inverted quotes, untrainable, feral. this is pretty rough

you'd think he's talking about a pedophile not vandalism

I’m talking about people vandalising a monument for totally innocent, brave, hero’s that were forced into war. They should in no way be brought into these protests.

You talk about them like a couple of naughty school kids writing on a wall or something.

They are indefensible in my opinion, if you think what I said is harsh and you don’t think what they did is absolutely reprehensible then that is your problem, and a problem it is.

 

[NinjaFletch]

You know nothing about me so how can you judge what I know about history??? In any case I’m entitled to my opinion as you are yours. And trust me, I’m well aware of just how fluid and abstract history is, hence why I’m emphasizing to be careful not to judge history or historical figures from our current values and perceptions. Keep it neutral.

It's not what you know 'about history' which I take it you've taken to mean 'facts' but what your multiple posts in this thread show you clearly don't understand about what history actually is or why the second part of your post is impossible.

 

[Silva]

I’m talking about people vandalising a monument for totally innocent, brave, hero’s that were forced into war. They should in no way be brought into these protests.

You talk about them like a couple of naughty school kids writing on a wall or something.

They are indefensible in my opinion, if you think what I said is harsh and you don’t think what they did is absolutely reprehensible then that is your problem, and a problem it is.

@Niall and @Raoul, we're meant to be civil with people like this? we're meant to read these posts and be constructive? we're meant just make nice civil arguments of "actually no, they're not subhuman" as if that's a good and normal thing to have to do?

 

[nimic]

I’m talking about people vandalising a monument for totally innocent, brave, hero’s that were forced into war. They should in no way be brought into these protests.

You talk about them like a couple of naughty school kids writing on a wall or something.

They are indefensible in my opinion, if you think what I said is harsh and you don’t think what they did is absolutely reprehensible then that is your problem, and a problem it is.

You called human beings "sub human scum", it's self-evidently harsh. And that in a thread which has had rather rough tone to begin with, which surely doesn't help.

 

[Rams]

It's not what you know 'about history' which I take it you've taken to mean 'facts' but what your multiple posts in this thread show you clearly don't understand about what history actually is or why the second part of your post is impossible.

Please specify exactly what sentences from my posts proves I know feck all about what history is (and I do not mean just the facts) . The argument “based on your posts” does not hold up as somebody with a PhD should well know. And you just keep making it personal whilst you’re at it, cos I’m not falling for that trap.

 

[RUCK4444]

@Niall and @Raoul, we're meant to be civil with people like this? we're meant to read these posts and be constructive? we're meant just make nice civil arguments of "actually no, they're not subhuman" as if that's a good and normal thing to have to do?

Yeah in fairness if you want to have a civil discussion with me about how it’s ok to deface a monument to disrespect people who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country your going to struggle pal.

Don’t worry I’ll leave this thread alone again for a while so you can discuss without having to tell the teacher on me. Ffs it’s like being in school.

 

[Dr. Dwayne]

Yeah in fairness if you want to have a civil discussion with me about how it’s ok to deface a monument to disrespect people who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country your going to struggle pal.

Don’t worry I’ll leave this thread alone again for a while so you can discuss without having to tell the teacher on me. Ffs it’s like being in school.

Your usage is ironic because the people that some of those who made such sacrifice fought against used the same language to create the impression that certain others were, indeed, sub-human so as to make the act of exterminating them more palpable. You wouldn't think that their grandchildren and great grandchildren would adopt the same language as their great enemy.

 

[sammsky1]

...

What?

There is plenty of evidence that deep rooted culturally pervasive institutional racism exists in UK since a long time ago and still today.

I’ve not seen any evidence that Churchill is not a racist or even regretted these views that directly influenced his decision making.

Hope that is clear.

 

[sammsky1]

Yeah in fairness if you want to have a civil discussion with me about how it’s ok to deface a monument to disrespect people who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country your going to struggle pal.

Don’t worry I’ll leave this thread alone again for a while so you can discuss without having to tell the teacher on me. Ffs it’s like being in school.

Bye then.

 

[RUCK4444]

[/QUOTE]
No I mean it... I’m really going this time

 

[Sweet Square]

No I mean it... I’m really going this time
[/QUOTE]
You should just tone down the reactionary comments. Like I can get how someone could be angry about vandalism of war memorials but also it is just a building and well it can also be repaired.

sub human stuff is silly.

 

[RUCK4444]

[/QUOTE]
You should just tone down the reactionary comments. Like I can get how someone could be angry about vandalism of war memorials but also it is just a building and well it can also be repaired.

sub human stuff is silly.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah but is it though. I mean if a person can’t feel offended by something like this then do we resign ourselves to only be offended by rape and murder? Anything else goes no matter how disrespectful an act is?

Who am I to tell you what offends you? I shouldn’t be able to tell you not to be offended by something... ya know what I mean.

Shall we all just calmly mutter to ourselves our opinions and not speak them? That’s not what the people on the street are doing.

 

[iluvoursolskjær]

You should just tone down the reactionary comments. Like I can get how someone could be angry about vandalism of war memorials but also it is just a building and well it can also be repaired.

sub human stuff is silly.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah but is it though. I mean if a person can’t feel offended by something like this then do we resign ourselves to only be offended by rape and murder? Anything else goes no matter how disrespectful an act is?

Who am I to tell you what offends you? I shouldn’t be able to tell you not to be offended by something... ya know what I mean.

Shall we all just calmly mutter to ourselves our opinions and not speak them? That’s not what the people on the street are doing.
[/QUOTE]

The irony of this

Thought you were leaving, like foreal and that.

Edit: oops i half started writing a post last night and then never bothered

 

[NinjaFletch]

Please specify exactly what sentences from my posts proves I know feck all about what history is (and I do not mean just the facts) . The argument “based on your posts” does not hold up as somebody with a PhD should well know. And you just keep making it personal whilst you’re at it, cos I’m not falling for that trap.

I'm not sure what you feel is personal here, Rams. But fine, I'll repeat the points I've already made. I said this half of your post recent post is impossible:

"And trust me, I’m well aware of just how fluid and abstract history is, hence why I’m emphasizing to be careful not to judge history or historical figures from our current values and perceptions.'

Why is it impossible? Well for two reasons, firstly, we're products of our time and fundamentally incapable of putting aside our biases – biases which we should not put aside either. And secondly, because the 'values of their time' that you would judge historical figures by instead did not exist either and are, instead, a construct of previous generations of society's own biases. As well meaning as your statement sounds, all you're doing is reifying a constructed version of the past which didn't exist as equally as much as the version of the past that you're railing against.

What do I mean? Well let me give you an example. I think you're a good person, so I'm going to assume you are in this example, but it somewhat falls down if you aren't.

It is often said by the defenders of these monuments that it was ok that they owned slaves because it was deemed acceptable 'by the standards of their time'. But what do we really mean by that? Certainly, for those trafficked and sold in to slavery, slavery was not acceptable or ok, so what we really mean is that pre-dominantly white, western men thought it was ok (pre-dominantly used here so some clever clogs doesn't feel the need to point out that it wasn't exclusively white folk). Why did they think it was ok? Because they thought so little of black men and women that they willing to sell their lives in order to make a quick buck. The word sub-human's been used a lot on this page, but it's literally relevant here. When we say that it was acceptable 'by the standards of their time' what we mean, then, is that we're ignoring the voices of those slaves themselves, who we deem not worthy of having a voice and we're accepting the arguments of those that enslaved them, who knew – but didn't care – that they were holding human beings against their will.

And why do we know it's ok? Because the generations before us studied the slavers, they wrote histories and biographies of them, and they sought to absolve (often literally) their ancestors of their involvement with a trade that was, eventually abolished. They, too, did not care for the black voices trafficked in the trade, however, who were similarly treated as if their own opinions on whether or not it was 'acceptable' for them to be sold into slavery were irrelevant because white taste makers had deemed that it was. The past you're holding sacrosanct is a past that takes the opinion of 5 white people and 5 black people and believes the white people. Now I don't think you would do that in real life, and I strongly believe you'd reckon it very racist if someone did, but that's what the argument implicitly boils down to. If you were to do that you would not beholding on to an objective truth, but one version of a constructed past which is rooted in white supremacy and centres white voices over black.

Alternatively, we could approach the problem with what is clearly a modern bias and argue that black voices should be heard, we can even argue that the experience of slaves should loom larger in the history than the opinions of slavers, and we can construct a version of the past where we see the practice as throughly unacceptable and the people involved in it as reprehensible because we listen to the voices of the slaves as much as we can. That new construct's not a fiction, it's not mendacious or duplicitous, nor is it an erasure of the construct that had come before it, but it's a reflection of the values of our society just as assuredly as the previous constructs it challenges are a reflection of the values of that society.

I know 'let's not judge people by modern standards' sounds sensible, and I can see why it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking it, but it fails to realise that history has always been judged by modern standards and that it is literally impossible to do anything but that; every decision we both do and don't make is applying modern standards to it. It doesn't mean you're seeking to alter the past, but that our interpretations of the events and the actors within it, even the ideals and ideas we think that society's of the past held, simply change according to what we're looking for.

None of this is to dig you out personally and as I said to 2cents in his post previous generations of historians failed to realise this point too, the whole formal academic discipline of history is built on the shoulders of victorian empiricists who failed to realise they were constructing their 'objective' versions of the past with the cultural values and assumptions of their time, but it is nonetheless true and makes appeals to 'protecting history' somewhat silly in this entire debate.

 

[Silva]

Yeah but is it though. I mean if a person can’t feel offended by something like this then do we resign ourselves to only be offended by rape and murder? Anything else goes no matter how disrespectful an act is?

Who am I to tell you what offends you? I shouldn’t be able to tell you not to be offended by something... ya know what I mean.

Shall we all just calmly mutter to ourselves our opinions and not speak them? That’s not what the people on the street are doing.

we all know what you mean, we just don't know what the admins insist we treat you nicely

 

[RUCK4444]

we all know what you mean, we just don't know what the admins insist we treat you nicely

Oh please don’t go out of your way to be nice to me Silva. I’ve got my big boy pants on

I promise I won’t use that abhorrent language ‘scum’ again, I was only channelling my inner Partridge to be fair.

 

[MoskvaRed]

This is just willfully ignorant. Because immigrants have known this for most of their lives. Arguments such as these are just insensitive towards BAME. I thought the rise of Trump, Boris would help usher a new understanding when it comes to issues like this. But clearly, we are stuck in repeating old worn out rhetorics that only aim to scare minorities instead of listening to them.

I have nothing more to say on this issue. I don’t disagree with your ultimate aims but I fear you are falling into the trap of dealing with the country as you want it to be rather than how it actually is. Kind of like last December when some excitable Momentum types on here were saying “ignore the polls showing Corbyn is less popular than cancer because there’s an earthquake on my social media feed”.

 

[Sweet Square]

Yeah but is it though. I mean if a person can’t feel offended by something like this then do we resign ourselves to only be offended by rape and murder? Anything else goes no matter how disrespectful an act is?

Who am I to tell you what offends you? I shouldn’t be able to tell you not to be offended by something... ya know what I mean.

Shall we all just calmly mutter to ourselves our opinions and not speak them? That’s not what the people on the street are doing.

You can feel offended by all means but someone doing an offence act doesn't result in them being sub human imo.

Sub human whatever that really means should be carefully used. Nazism, colonialism, Judd Apatow movies, Stalinism, all of these things are what I would call sub human and really even then I would be concerned because once you label something sub human you basically cut off any reason to understand how someone could believe or act in this way. It's an easy get out clause(Plus there's a very long and awful history of the state labeling certain groups of people sub human)

As for anything goes, why can't someone vandalize a memorial like the cenotaph ? Or why does it make them sub human ? No one is actually getting hurt, no one has been attacked, what has actual happened a part from paint going onto some government owned rock ?

Ok both of us might find it offensive but who are we to tell anyone what to be offended by, right ?