Ok I guess. It's not a phrase I hear a lot tbh. So you don't think people who vandalize memorials are actually sub human.
Cheers what a great conversation we've just had.
You're so close yet so far away
Kl but that's not an answer.
Winston Churchill
- Thread starter Cascarino
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Cheers what a great conversation we've just had.
Mate, do you not realise how close to parody that sounds? I'm very sorry that Vera has passed on, btw, and I mean no offence to her memory. While we recognise the courage and efforts of troops (and civilians) during World War II, many of us have been brought up with relentless 'Britain is best' propaganda - from Vera's famous song to Churchill's speeches to the expediency of our current Union-flag-clad leaders - and we're tired of it. Why? Not because of disrespect but because for many of us Britain remains a nation deeply and deliberately divided when it comes to matters as varied as health and finance...so the flag-waving, the 'all soldiers are heroes' and the casual assumption that Britain has always been on the right side of history wears thin and often appears merely a bromide for the masses. I could go on, but I'll spare us all.
Now, if I were to describe all those who deface monuments as 'pure, brave freedom fighters who kick back against a corrupt system' then I'd surely, at least, be generalising to a ridiculous extent. Similarly, if you describe them as 'scum' and their monumental targets as 'heroes' you'd be equally as careless as me in my hypothetical description above. Perhaps, then, you can understand why the language of important issues matters so much.
I would have thought “you don’t know what history is” is pretty personal, NinjaFletch.
Personally I think the reason why history & fluid is because it’s impossible for us humans to be unbiased. The historians of Roman times had a completely different view of the World then historians today. Yet historians today (with help of science and archeology) base their views on what we know from the historians of Roman times. So you get interpretation upon interpretation. This is why I think archeology & science is important. Hence I’m not in favour of the taking down of statues and other historical landmarks.
As for slavery is concerned, I’m not well read on the subject from British perspective but certainly the evidence from Dutch perspective is that the general feeling was people were uncomfortable with it at the time (without even knowing of the atrocities in far away lands). It certainly didn’t sit with well with the God fearing virtues of the day. Apart from accounting & logging books, there is actually relatively little archeological evidence of the slave trade in the 7 Provences. This would suggest that the slave traders & owners were keen to show off their wealth, but not so keen to show off how they achieved it.
Anyway, I haven’t seen anybody in here say a good word about the slave trade and Churchill certainly wasn’t in favour of it...
There’s so much Bull shit on the internet about Churchill. Facts distorted and quotes taken out of context. The thing is we know exactly what he thought & did because he continuously wrote about it. I dare you to pick up one of his memoirs because they give a fascinating insight in to the man and the times he lived in.
Churchill was undoubtedly a racist & fanatical imperialist. He thought the white race superior to the ‘savages’. He was also already a celebrity even before the boar war and had an adventurous early manhood to say the least. However, he was a humanist and believed all should be free no matter your ethnicity. In other words a complex paradoxical character who very much embodies the British establishment at the time. They all perceived the World in the same way, from the royals to the MP’s. All were convinced of their racial superiority.
There has been claims in this thread that Churchill was never against fascism and was just trying to protect the Empire during WWII. We know this is factually incorrect because he spent most of the 1930’s warning of the dangers of fascism and pleading to World leaders to take action against Hitler and chums. Memoirs, radio speeches & interviews, newspaper articles, the proof is all there. Churchill was ideologically against fascism and promoted war against it. End of!
So if we are going to judge Churchill then at least do so based upon the truth and not a load of cock & bull!!!!!
You have not read Churchill’s own writings. If you have and concluded he was a firm ideological opponent of Fascism I’d question your literacy.
After visiting Italy in 1927 he wrote to his wife: ‘This country gives the impression of discipline, order, goodwill, smiling faces. A happy strict school... The Fascists have been saluting in their impressive manner all over the place’.
He met Mussolini and praised him enthusiastically, stating ‘If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to the finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism’
This is only a fragment of evidence to the contrary. I could post much, much more.
And how on earth do you reconcile your acceptance that he was a ‘racist and fanatical imperialist’ with the notion
‘he was a humanist who believed all people should be free regardless of ethnicity’. Staggering. Even as a concept that defies comprehension, let alone before we look at the actions of this ‘humanist’ who believed everyone should be free - free in what sense? Free to be tortured, raped and murdered in concentration camps in Kenya?
I have no doubts he was an abhorrent human being with awful personal views, and to me that trumps his efforts during the war.
[This is the Winston Churchill thread, not the Cambridge admissions is racist thread]
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Also thank you for getting personal. I could call you a cnut for questioning my intellect and showing me disrespect, but the truth is I couldn’t care less of what you think of me.
I thought I was very clear that Churchill was a paradoxical & complex character. He also liked a drink and controversy. His memoirs are full of statements to stir up controversy. He was seen as a loose cannon and unfit to be Prime Minister (until WWII). Nobody would have dreamed he would become PM, certainly not in the 1930’s. I guess he was a kind of populist as well.
Churchill was a political chameleon. He continuously changed his views throughout his life. By the time Hitler came to power his views of fascism had changed. Which one of his many anti-fascism speeches during the 1930’s would you like me to quote? This is getting ridiculous. Maybe it’s just me and ignorance is a virtue after all.
As for Kenya, I’m afraid that’s just one of the many dark sides of the British colonial rule. Most PM’s were complicit to such atrocities during the British Empire. At the time the Empire still had a vast army covering most parts of the World. It would be naive to think any PM had control of the behavior of the forces present at such far away destinations. What Churchill’s government certainly was guilty of is purging and a cover up of the atrocities committed by the commonwealth army, but sadly nothing out of the ordinary by British Empire standards. That’s one of the reasons why I personally am ashamed of our Imperial history and am against any form of nationalism.
Rather than knocking down statues, these are the real issues we should be debating and fighting.
You said
You posted this with an air of authority, suggesting you are well acquainted with Churchill’s history, his actions and his words. What you said is simply at odds with reality. It’s complete and utter ahistorical drivel, and you can’t post rubbish like this and not expect to get pulled up on it.
As far as I’m aware even Churchill’s most sycophantic biographers (including our very own PM) do not even pretend that Churchill was a consistent and principled anti-Fascist, as you have. Quite frankly, it’s just an utterly ludicrous statement. It would be an argument as easy to dismantle as a claim that Hitler was not truly anti-Bolshevik because he signed a pact with Stalin.
If I'm honest, no I don't mate, and I'm trying to answer your post respectively as I respect your opinion on the country being divided. However I don't understand the train of thought that Vera Lynn and the memory of those who died in WW11 (and other wars) are in any way some type parody.
Was winning the battle of Britain supposed to bring the people of 2020 a utopian, perfectly balanced nation of equality and prosperity that doesn't exist anywhere else in the history of mankind? Now that sounds like Parody to me. The division you describe is prevalent in every country, it's hardly unique in Britain and in reality it's likely to be far less prevalent here than in many countries.
After all only in this country can a person have a baby, be given a house, be given money to sit at home and on top of that be given free healthcare. A system that pays you more to turn work down and stay home whilst the hardest working are taxed the most to pay for the rest. That I'm sure would have sounded like utopia to the generation who fought in WW11 but in reality it's a dystopia that is crippling the country. But that's a different debate entirely.
I don't understand how anybody, let alone the numbers here in this thread, think a monument for the dead can be defaced so one person can voice their opinion. It's also pretty ironic that a person such as myself (and others) have been shot down by the same people for voicing their own opinions in an infinitely less offensive manner.
If I deface somebody's grave to make a point that I'm not a racist - will that be ok as well? I doubt it. To deface a monument of remembrance is the same gesture in my eyes and I'm sure to millions of others outside of this thread.
We have to apply common sense and decency.
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From what I can tell, the lesson learned from such establishment figures is that non-white people - except 'the high-level ones that we can work with' - are only so much rubbish, a rabble to be either shovelled up or shifted off somewhere, or fit only to be made profitable to 'us'. They frustratingly, stubbornly won't do as they're told. They are, apparently, problems and not people.
Mr Kubrick disagrees.
Honestly you should just take a very long break from this thread.
Yes I must, but it's like a strange alternate universe that keeps drawing me back in. It's torture, I have work tomorrow.
Edit; Plus my OCD makes it impossible to not reply.
...
Can you start by revising that first part of your post then cause it’s a masterclass in not applying common sense and decency.
Sorry, I should've made myself clear: I meant that the way you wrote in that sentence about Vera Lynn sounded very melodramatic; which is why I compared it to my silly made-up example of writing about the vandals as being 'pure, brave freedom fighters'.
Funny you should compliment me on my literary skills, because I never wrote Churchill was a consistent & principled anti-fascist, I said he was ideology against fascism and that he continuously was changing his views for what ever reason.
Anyway, make your own minds up...
https://winstonchurchill.org/public...en-the-two-totalitarianisms-1917-1945-2-of-3/
Please refrain from inventing things I never said because I will fight you on the beaches and never let you get away with it.
I'd say they are failures of predominately right-wing governments who hate foreigners rather than multiculturalism.
I was merely pointing out, in response to Steve, of what this country is able to provide it's population and how, when you write it down and read it back is incredible really. For clarity, and sake of argument, what part of it was as offensive as spray painting a war monument? Because that's accepted now as a way for people to express themselves.
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No problem, I can see that. I just wish we could focus on the good these movements can achieve rather than having to focus on the negative, the press prefer to show somebody defacing a monument than the thousands who are peacefully protesting.
Rather than wasting our time talking about statues or Winston bloody Churchill, these are the real issues that need to be addressed.
Was Nelson a racist?
Well this thread is about Churchill and his statue so what do you expect?
Many posters have made the same point in their own way: that the glorification of Churchill and his ilk cultivated a culture amongst some, that makes progress on ‘real issues’ very slow or non existant at all.
This reality is compounded further as falsely educated Brits were duped with rhetoric about ‘Rule Brittania’ and ‘surrender bill’ etc to vote in BrExit and a bafoon for Prime Minister, who has led the worlds no 1 worst response to covid19.
Yes this country has ‘real issues’ and they originate in a false superiority complex, whose most recent founding father was the late Winston Churchill.
PS: In a thread where critics loudly and consistently complain about the whitewashing of Churchill's story, using https://winstonchurchill.org as a source takes a special kind of #DontGiveaFcuk
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A lifetime's interest in history has not blessed me with expertise, but merely with strongly-held opinions. My reading has essentially told me the same old story, which I'll try to briefly summarise:RUCK4444 said:
*Famous speeches and soundbites - from glorious fictional rallies uttered by Henry V to Elizabeth the First's Armada speech to Churchill's wartime rhetoric - are frequently mere empty promises and lies. Elizabeth's speech, for example, was followed by English troops dying of thirst and hunger after the battle as they were left to literally crawl homewards along England's roads; Churchill's similar appeals to British class-solidarity and class-free unity implied 'homes fit for heroes' would be made ready for the returning troops and their loved ones...and yet many of us today live in a town called Malice, graced with the same WWII-era, Coronation Street drab and featureless housing. The palaces are still here too, of course. Same as it ever was...
*Even on the rare occasions when the public wakes up to actual reality and revolts, the same old mistake is made: they feel obliged to appeal to the ruling class for alliance, leadership and weaponry. Inevitably, more lies and false promises result; the revolt is quashed, the (lower-class) rebels are murdered as an example to others, and it's back to business as usual for the lofty liars and leaders.
No, you're right - Britain isn't alone in its problems, and it is naive to wish for utopias. But, frankly, it's not the ordinary people who deceitfully hold out the promise of solutions and dreams, and it's not those folks who are responsible for the brutal crushing of such dreams.
It's only a personal opinion again but I feel you're not aiming at the correct targets of your anger. You are aiming your criticism at the easiest, most easily available targets.RUCK4444 said:
It's curious, isn't it, how many protests are bought into disrepute by acts like those you mention? Isn't that convenient for the authorities and those with associated, vested financial interests? Who knows - perhaps these recent incidents are rather similar to the laughably obvious 'interference' seen in other demonstrations...remember those banners from recent gatherings, ones that seem designed to make a mockery of the protesters and their cause: 'Behead those who say Islam is violent'?RUCK4444 said:
It always depends on what particular monuments represent to people, and the very personal nature of their views. For example, a person might deface a war memorial simply because they are anti-war. So there could be any number of reasons for the acts.RUCK4444 said:
There is something weirdly fetishistic about those who feel the need to drag Mandela or Gandhi into this discussion.
Well this thread is about Churchill and his statue so what do you expect?
Many posters have made the same point in their own way: that the glorification of Churchill and his ilk cultivated a culture amongst some, that makes progress on ‘real issues’ very slow or non existant at all.
This reality is compounded further as falsely educated Brits were duped with rhetoric about ‘Rule Brittania’ and ‘surrender bill’ etc to vote in BrExit and a bafoon for Prime Minister, who has led the worlds no 1 worst response to covid19.
Yes this country has ‘real issues’ and they originate in a false superiority complex, whose most recent founding father was the late Winston Churchill.
PS: In a thread where critics loudly and consistently complain about the whitewashing of Churchill's story, using https://winstonchurchill.org as a source takes a special kind of #DontGiveafeck
I guess what really bugs me is all this goody 2 shoes bull shit. Black lives matter so let’s blame Winston Churchill and feel good about our selves. We all know Churchill was a cnut of the highest order, but taking down his statue is not got to make a sodding difference and distracts from the real issues in hand. The irony is that it’s thanks to people like him that we live in multicultural society. So if you really want to make a difference then vote for a political party that embraces multiculturalism and own up to your own prejudices.
What a load of bullshit. Britain isn't unique in not allowing refugees to starve to death in the street. And your sentence about lazy dole bludgers vs hardworking tax payers is peak BoJo bullshit. We have nowhere near full employment with vacancies far below the number unemployed. So until that isn't the case you are simply victim blaming.
Perhaps if we had ever had a mature adult conversation about these issues we would now be seeing statues being thrown in rivers? Just a thought.
And in the end it is just a statue.
Don't be silly. A statue isn't a grave.
Whose common sense and decency? Yours? Mine? Bojos? Trumps? Mother Teresa's? Bob from down the pub?
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Reminds me...I must get that old projector out of the attic.
He was vehemently opposed to the abolition of slavery.
Oooooeffff... it’s gotta go...
Vehemently he opposed Wilberforce. I might have mentioned it before.
FFS, I was referring to an earlier post in the thread that mentioned Mandela when I was replying to you.
And that's totally understandable for the late 18th century. He was also a very fine admiral but the main thing is that we teach people the whole package and not just the sweet bits.
I agree. And statues only get torn down when we don't do this or indeed have any sort of adult conversation as a country about the discordance between the idealised historical figures and the reality of their lives, especially when looked at through a current day lens.
How many times do you want to go in this circle before you listen?
Actually NO, the vast majority didn't know that, because of his whitewashed history since 1945.
Once we get rid of last remnants of 'imperialist jingoism' within UK culture, which is a majority cause for existing racism, we will get onto real issues.
My only prejudice is against Winston Churchill and I own it with pride
Really. This is your style to double down. It's a simple mistake to make if you believe that a person would refer to Mandela by his first name when the biggest effing statue in Britain is of Horatio Nelson.
Never mind, mustn't derail the thread.
Do you feel better now? I hate to disappoint you but I still stand by what I just said. I thought it would be petty to bring up that you still mentioned Gandhi multiple times. But clearly you got something else going on in your head.
What a way to derail a movement by talking about statues. It should be about there here and now. It shouldn't be about lets dig into the past and see what we can knock down next.
You'll be very hard pressed to find someone who didn't believe in white supremacy 100 plus years ago. What are you going to do knock everything down?
Another thing I've noticed in this thread and a few others by certain posters, is blanket statements like the Uk is racist. White people are racist and they don't even know.
I have never been racist in my entire life. Like many many other people haven't, subconsciously or otherwise.
I've not been in this thread for a few days now and we are still going round in circles.
You'll be very hard pressed to find someone who didn't believe in white supremacy 100 plus years ago. What are you going to do knock everything down?
Another thing I've noticed in this thread and a few others by certain posters, is blanket statements like the Uk is racist. White people are racist and they don't even know.
I have never been racist in my entire life. Like many many other people haven't, subconsciously or otherwise.
I've not been in this thread for a few days now and we are still going round in circles.