this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023

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Robert E. Lee statue being melted down; bronze to be re-used for new more inclusive art (www.npr.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Not just any Lee statue, the one from Charlottesville famous for the Unite the Right Nazi rally that culminated in Heather Heyer getting murdered.

I ended up in Charlottesville for a wedding a few years back and unintentionally parked right across the street from the statue. It was covered up with plastic; sent a shiver down my spine when I realized what it was. I’m glad they’re melting that shit down to turn a hate symbol into something beautiful. RIP Heather, you stood up for real American values.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Charlottesville was the wake up call for many. Never I expected nazis openly marching on US soil, chanting slogans straight from WW2... nearly a century after WW2.

It also must suck for the locals to have their town's name being forever associated to those scums.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Are you even tangentially familiar with US history? US citizens have historically been right up there with Nazi level hate. Racism didn't just go away. It just became illegal to own slaves.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Nazis admired a lot of things from the US: eugenics, the genocide of the Native Americans, anti-semitic oligarchs like Ford.

The way WWII went made the US pump out anti-nazi propaganda to support its fight against the horrible regime. Let's not forget that before, and after WWII the US Government supported many fascist groups as long as they were anti-communist. It was just convenient to foster anti-nazi sentiment during the war, especially with strange bedfellows like the USSR after they were betrayed by Hitler.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

You think I don't?

I wasn't pretending racism just 'went away', but I had met so many bystanders (pretending racism wasn't that big of a problem because they didn't get to experience first hand) arguing it would eventually go away with the dinosaurs, until Charlottesville happened right in front of their eyes. That made even bystanders realize how serious it was.

"Tangentially familiar"? What is this? Reddit?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, generally, I prefer stuff like this to get preserved for historical value, just out of public view.

But many of these things are rallying points for hate right now, and the value of actually destroying that in the present outweighs the value to any historian or student of history in the future.

This one in particular. History won't miss it. Burn the fucker.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

The vast majority of these statutes, including this one, were erected decades after the Civil War and have no historical value beyond being physical representations of Jim Crow. The guy that commissioned it purchased land and oversaw the creation of a whites only park on the site where it was erected. They were rallying points of hate when they went up and they still are.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

It would be nice it it was just now, but those things were built as symbols of hate from the start.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

As much as I am all for inclusive art, I would have not melted that statue and instead put it in a museum as a memorial to who the south once thought of as a hero. Maybe add some context like how he shouldn't be celebrated, but still provide historical context as to his person and insight into how people back then thought of him.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Don't worry, it's the south. They have about a thousand more statues of that traitor at least.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Plus everyone and their cousin-sister has the middle name Lee.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago

Why? They're a dime a dozen and were put up in the 1900s largely due to the Daughters of the Confederacy and to reinforce Jim Crow laws.

They aren't really worth preserving. A picture can be taken to explain how awful these things are.

[+] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Propoganda + Time = history.

The statue doesn't say much about the civil war. But it does say alot about the Jim Crow era in which it was built. Personally I think this is even more important because the Jim Crow era is far less well understood by most Americans, and far more relevant to the race issues we see today.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Exactly this. Plus, unfortunately, there are plenty of Confederate monuments and statues erected way after the Civil War whose sole purpose was "scare those black people into knowing their place." Some of those can find new homes in museums displaying the history of racism (with added context), but we can't preserve all of them. So melt the rest down and reuse them in ways that uplift people instead of oppressing them.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It's absolutely history but just not Civil War history. This is the Charlottesville statue and it's iconic of our contemporary far right nationalist problem. Imagine things like this being a part of an exhibit laying out the turmoil our country is going through.

Edit: A lot of key pieces of history are missing because people didn't look to the future. I think some of it should have been carefully stored in a basement somewhere. Out of sight for at least 20 years.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That would be one huge museum of equally bad similarly looking statues. No need to preserve them all, because there are so many of them, a couple will do.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, the caption should be segregation now, segregation forever. And if we are legally forced to stop scratching, we will make their place clear by building statues to the people that fought to keep them slaves when they get their rights from the federal government. The statues were about sending a message to those that believed segregation was done. The stairs being melted is the right move to send a message to those that built them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Unless the statue was erected by George Wallace, that caption is irrelevant. Put a caption of Lee's written words:

There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.

This passage is commonly cut off after the full sentence before you get the full context in which Lee actually cares about how bad slavery is for white people and how slavery was good for the enslaved.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

But mah heritage! Them five years is the most important five years in history!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

If they like the confederacy so much, they should go join them.

Oh wait, they’re all dead losers. Lmao

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[–] NuXCOM_90Percent 30 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Wooo.

Aside from the insanity of glorifying a literal traitor who orchestrated the death of thousands of US Citizens (and that is a massive underestimate of Lee's impact) and it being a lightning rod for bgotry: Why the hell would people celebrate a loser? Like, not just in terms of having supported bigotry and hate but more as someone who got his ass beat.

And holy crap are people gonna be angry at the inclusive art.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because people think the bad guys in history and media are cool

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There was this kid in my 4th grade class obsessed with Hitler and Nazis apparently because he thought they were like James Bond villains or Darth Vader.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hollywood really didn't do a good job of portraying these people as the dysfunctional fuckheads they were.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In the defense of Lucas, Vader was the hero of a tragedy meanwhile Palpatine is basically an amalgamation of three different politicians and if lucas was being completely honest Palpatine would be named Richard W. Hitler.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

It's more then just Star Wars. Hollywood seems to think that cold professionals are the only way to depict nazis and nazi allegories. I wish there were more depictions closer to "are we the baddies" where they hugely miscalculated something because if their arrogance. But it's harder to write a hero character when the villain trips over themself.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

I hope they guard it because it will get vandalized by some racist prick.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Not only that, but Robert E Lee himself thought that there shouldn't be any statues to the Confederacy. After it failed, he was of the opinion that the country should move on - not glorify that time.

So not only were they building statues to a losing traitor, but they weren't even following that losing traitor's wishes on the one thing he was right about!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm glad they broadcasted that completely unnecessary detail just to rub it in lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

It wasn't an unnecessary detail, it is integral to the story because it is deliberate positive symbolism. To counter that the original statue stood for deliberate hateful symbolism.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

TIL swords into plowshares isn't just a MTG card.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I was expecting a photo of him melting into a pool of lava like the Terminator, but I guess this is probably more efficient

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

👍

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

LOL, those protesters can go stick a tiki torch somewhere

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Wonderful article, highly recommend y’all click through to read this one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

cast it into a giant dildo and imaple MAGAts on it.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Reforge it into a statue of Katherine Johnson.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Bronze reclaimed from an unskilled (compared to USG), traitorous general. 👍

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Lee was technically a USG, and was probably one of the best generals in the war. He pretty much kicked the north's ass until the lack of industry in the south became an issue.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, I’m from the south but I love to shit all over the confederacy, and fuck Lee for being a traitor and siding with racists, but he was an extremely competent tactician. He shouldn’t be exalted for it at all but to say otherwise isn’t telling an accurate history of the Civil War.

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