2y ago

Foundry Workers Melt Down Charlottesville’s Divisive Robert E. Lee Statue

www.smithsonianmag.com

Foundry Workers Melt Down Charlottesville's Divisive Robert E. Lee Statue

Eventually, an artist will be chosen to transform the bronze bars into a public art installation

15 comments

We tore down several confederate statues in New Orleans and it was very satisfying. It was “controversial” in the sense that not one actual resident of the city was upset but people in the suburbs were deeply offended. That made it even more fun.
- There shouldn't be any statues of American traitors.
  
  Fun fact: for the traitors in question many of them explicitly wrote that they should never be immortalized with statues. Then Woodrow "Southern Revisionist" Wilson needed something to support his "historical research." He not only commissioned many of these statues, he fostered the second founding of the KKK, and segregated the federal government, among many other despicable things to help support Southern Revisionism, which he wrote. IIRC he was also involved in the film "Birth of a Nation." I highly recommend reading a synopsis of that film, unlike Schindler's List, no one should watch Birth of a Nation.
And the first person to salute their efforts would be Lee. Dude loathed the idea of there being statues of the confederacy.
- I think it's important to remember that Robert E Lee himself wasn't too keen on civil war monuments:
  “I think it wiser,” [Robert E Lee] wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869, “…not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered.”
  (Source)
- The thing was made 60 years after the war ended. The guy fought against the United States. Never should have been made in the first place. It's a shame that it took so long to correct this mistake.
- Anonymous Lemmy user butthurt that other people don't want to honor symbols of racism
- historical artifact
  From 1924. Also it's just a fucking statue. Grow up.
- I mean, it wasn't put up during the war itself or anything, but quite awhile later as a symbolic gesture. Doing this is just a symbolic gesture with the reverse message.
  I could see your point if they were like, tearing down a preserved civil war era fort or something like that which might actually hold some sort of insight into the war itself or how people at the time lived, but this statue doesn't have that value.
- A statue less than a hundred years old built to commemorate a traitor who fought against this country for an unrecognized rebel movement formed out of the desire to own people as property. You're not gonna see Germans erect statues celebrating Hitler, Russians Ukrainians celebrating Stalin, or Cambodians praising Pol Pot. Why should Americans celebrate an enemy of the state?
- Well, they are transforming it. The new art will probably recognize the old art and pictures exist.
- Christ, cry about it more
- Agree with them or not there are people who are upset about these statues of traitors coming down.
- Well the history is still in the history books. The civil war and Robert e Lee will be covered in high school history classes. It's just that statues of him are taken down. Rightfully so in my opinion. He's a traitor to the United States of America. He ordered people to kill Americans. He shouldn't have a statue dedicated to him in our country.

15 comments