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When People Got Statues for a Good Reason

Image credit: The Australian

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People who’ve achieved little of note are often resentful of those who have. The same goes for cultures. It’s often embarrassingly obvious when one visits contemporary museums and galleries, where “indigenous” exhibits are given pride of place. The National Gallery of Victoria, for instance, has a world-class collection of truly great art, ranging from Rennaissance masterpieces to Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Picasso and many more modern masters. A few blocks away, the new Melbourne Museum gives pride of place to… a canoe, some boomerangs and a collection of woven baskets.

When the great conservatories “decolonise” themselves, they dethrone the sublime masterworks of Beethoven, Mozart and Bach, in favour of some deservedly unheard-of taradiddle by racially-preferred nobodies lurking on the fringes of the classical music obscura.

Even in science, hand-me-down Polynesian nature myths are touted as “equal to” the epochal achievements of Newton, Einstein, or Ernest Rutherford.

It’s all a bit embarrassing by comparison, I suppose. No wonder the wokeists are so determined to destroy, smash and erase everything achieved by dead white men. Can’t have them showing everyone else up.

The Welsh government says that statues of “old white men” such as Admiral Nelson should be removed or even destroyed because they may be “offensive” to Britain’s increasingly multicultural population, with de facto shrines to diversity set to replace them.

The guidance, which is set to be finalized by the end of the month, argues that the memorials fuel the “perception that the achievements that society considers noteworthy are those of powerful, older, able-bodied white men.”

Well, yes — because they are. It’s notable that the Welsh government isn’t putting up statues of anyone of note to rival those it’s tearing down. All it has is vague fluff about “diversity”.

The government asserts that such statues “can be offensive to people today who see them in a different light,” including as “aggressors who conquered peoples to expand the British Empire.”

A great many conquered peoples might say the same about a mosque.

Any statue of any historical individual that far-left activists have accused of being embroiled in slavery or colonialism is now at risk of being toppled, including General Arthur Wellesley and admiral Horatio Nelson, who are both celebrated by most for their victories against Napoleon […]

Street names and buildings that cause offense will also be subject to change, with officials recommending that those responsible for the statues “discretely box monuments or enclose them creatively in new artworks.”

The document complains that diversity is “hardly visible at all in public commemorations”.

Well, funny about that.

It’s almost as if the history of Britain, its great achievements, were built by the indigenous British: the English, Irish, Welsh and Scots.

“Labour are intent on rewriting our history here in Wales,” said Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Conservative Party in Wales, adding they “have been captured by a hard-Left, anti-British mob who want nothing more than to topple our statues, tear up the works of classic authors and cancel our great orators, all in the name of virtue signalling.”

“Statues may well offend some people, but that does not make them any less a part of Wales’ rich history. What happened to remembering the mistakes of the past and learning the lessons?” he added, a weak response that some critics will only see as accepting the logical premise of manic iconoclasts who wish to ethnically cleanse British history.

As we previously highlighted, even statues of white men who were involved in abolishing slavery, such as former Prime Minister Charles, 2nd Earl Grey, have been identified for elimination.

A statue of Winston Churchill in London, who routinely tops polls as the most revered and respected British historical figure, has also repeatedly been targeted by vandals and has been previously covered up by authorities.

EU Times

Of course, no-one would seriously argue that the great achievements of the past belong solely to white Europeans. But in Britain, up until the middle of the 20th century, it almost entirely did. But, for all the woke left’s infatuation with “indigeneity”, the indigenes of Britain no longer apparently have any claim on their own history.

It’s perhaps a great irony of history that one of the great men of British culture warned us explicitly about this sort of cultural revolution:

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.

1984

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