JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT : TEARING DOWN STATUES – THERE INDEED ARE MANY THAT DESERVE TEARING DOWN – THEY HONOR MEN AND MATTERS WHICH SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN HONORED, RATHER THAN HONESTLY TELLING A NATION’S HISTORY – MONUMENTS IN WASHINGTON TO GREAT AND DEDICATED SLAVEHOLDERS – THE LACK OF ANY GENUINE MEMORIAL TO AMERICAN SLAVERY – THE BRUTALITY OF EMPIRE – HOW IS AMERICA’S TREATMENT OF VENEZUELA OR CUBA ANY DIFFERENT THAN THE WORK OF PLANTATION OVERSEERS? – SOME VIEWS ON BRITAIN’S WINSTON CHURCHILL

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JONATHAN COOK IN CONSORTIUM NEWS


“When Tearing Down Statues Isn’t Vandalism

“It should have been obvious to Bristol’s authorities that it was offensive to revere a slave trader in a public square”


"Colston [a British slave trader] and his statue represent everything ugly and debased about our past and our present. If British leaders are still in thrall to the poison of our imperial history, then ordinary people must show the way through protest, defiance and disobedience – as they have done down through the ages. As they did once again at the weekend."


Quite powerful, and I think entirely right.

Statues of this nature do need pulling down.

You could almost view the act as a public baptism towards entering a better future.

And I say that as someone with considerable reverence towards history and its commemoration.

Yes, slavery is part of history, but the kind of monuments that should be erected are the kind we see nowhere.

Along the lines of Rodin's “Burghers of Calais.”

Washington has no great monument to slavery. I don’t think the Lincoln Memorial qualifies at all. Lincoln did not fight the Civil War over slavery. He hated the institution but was willing to see it remain if it meant peace. He said so himself.

A bas relief of that slave ship deck illustration in the article would be mighty suitable.

Yet Washington has many monuments to great slaveholders: Washington (his will freed his slaves but only following his own and his wife’s death), Jackson (right in that Lafayette Square location Trump immortalized - Jackson of course is infamous too for the brutal Trail of Tears), Madison, George Mason (more than a hundred slaves including children), and the greatest rogue of all, Thomas Jefferson (more than two hundred slaves, never earned his own living, and died a bankrupt owing friends money he borrowed – he also openly wrote in “Notes from Virginia” of black inferiority and supported Napoleon in trying to end the slave rebellion in Haiti).

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Response to a comment saying, “Colston and his statue represent everything ugly and debased about our past and our present. ”

So does the imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange.


Indeed. The clearest public evidence of the brutality of the American empire.

You simply cannot have an empire without brutality. The very nature of empire parallels closely in many respects the institution of slavery.

Of course, the millions of bodies abroad from America's imperial wars since WWII are even more powerful evidence, but Americans don't see the Pentagon's handiwork for the most part. The establishment works pretty diligently to keep its horrors away from public view.

The estimates run from about eight to twenty million killed in America's series of wars and coups and incursions, and the country is still busily at it in at least half a dozen places.

How is America’s treatment of Venezuela or Bolivia or Cuba any different than the work of plantation overseers?

Over in Britain, Boris Johnson is playing cheap word games, talking about “lying about our history”

The kind of statues being attacked glorify things which should never have been glorified.

They do not tell us about genuine history.

They are props used to cover over genuine history, hiding all the sordid bits from viewers.

A statue to a slave trader has no business being anywhere.

And even Churchill himself - except during the "hero of democracy" period of WWII which represented about five percent of his more than ninety years - was not an admirable political figure, not at all. Charismatic and very talented as a speaker and writer, but not admirable. He did not stand for great principles, even though he used great words.

His talents were dedicated to serving domination and control.

He absolutely relished empire and imperialism.

And empire is the polar opposite of democracy. Closely akin to slavery and dictatorship.

Churchill was willing to be quite brutal in protecting or expanding the empire. He never flinched from killing.

He expressed contempt for many other peoples and their ways, and on many occasions. Being quite sarcastic at times.

The heroic parliamentary statue basically uses a tiny fraction of his life to make him seem to be what he was not. He was not at all an admirer of democracy, offering some very sneering words about it during his career.

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Churchill was ruthless against the Germans.

He is the one who started the bombing of civilians in cities.

Only after his efforts did Germany begin bombing London.

Churchill typically called the Germans "the Hun," a totally derogatory term.

What Churchill fought for was not minorities threatened by the Nazis, it was an old British imperial policy of not letting any European power dominate the continent.

Hence, the Napoleonic Wars and that grand folly, WWI, which only set the stage for WWII.