Random History Thread

Frenetic Heretic said:
Politically, it’s likely that the bas relief will be voted removed within the next few years. Stone Mountain has an ugly history and wasn’t created with any sense of social unity in mind. Logistically, it’ll be time consuming and expensive for the state of Georgia to do.
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Or they could just blow it up.
 
LooseCannon said:
Or they could just blow it up.
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Not safely. There has to be a degree of pragmatism involved. Most likely, they’d sandblast the relief off of the side of the mountain.

edit: You’re belaboring a throwaway comment I made about a monument built from a mountain not being easy to get rid of. I agree that confederate monuments need to go. They’re nothing like the more ambiguous monuments to people like Churchill who accomplished a pervasive “good” but had other views deemed problematic by our standards today.
 
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Frenetic Heretic said:
I find Bismarck to be a bit problematic. For example, his views on the Poles were questionable at best. He also oversaw Germany’s foray into African colonialism, resulting in the deaths of 90,000 indigenous people in Namibia.
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The former is correct, the latter isn't. He strictly opposed German colonialism, quite polemically even, and only gave up his resistance when German entrepreneurs had already made it a fact. He didn't do that for any racially benevolent motives, obviously, but it's hard to blame him for the genocide on the Herero and Nama when it happened after he died and he never wanted Germany to be there in the first place.

To be clear, I don't hold the views I expressed earlier in this thread anymore, I'm certainly not a Bismarck fan, and I'm not saying he wasn't a racist, but we can't over simplify things this way. Colonial agitation and racist motivation came from far deeper within German society and was much more complex.
 
Perun said:
The former is correct, the latter isn't. He strictly opposed German colonialism, quite polemically even, and only gave up his resistance when German entrepreneurs had already made it a fact. He didn't do that for any racially benevolent motives, obviously, but it's hard to blame him for the genocide on the Herero and Nama when it happened after he died and he never wanted Germany to be there in the first place.

To be clear, I don't hold the views I expressed earlier in this thread anymore, I'm certainly not a Bismarck fan, and I'm not saying he wasn't a racist, but we can't over simplify things this way. Colonial agitation and racist motivation came from far deeper within German society and was much more complex.
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Read carefully what I wrote and see what I managed to do without being factually incorrect. Reluctant to or not, Bismarck didn’t stop German colonialism from happening and, posthumously to Bismarck or not, a German massacre of Africans resulted from that colonialism.

My point, however, was that for Losecannon to remind the forum in multiple posts on multiple threads recently that Churchill was racist due to his legacy bearing some existential guilt for a tragedy that happened during a world war compared to LC’s posts chiding another user for doing basically the same thing to Bismarck’s legacy a scant eight years ago seems a bit ironic.

I get that it’s the current year and all but I think the following classic remains a great position on the topic of history.

LooseCannon said:
Talking about history means you have to divest the accomplishments from the person from time to time. You don't ignore it - that's wrong. That's whitewashing history. But you analyze what they did right, and you analyze what they did wrong, so those who follow us can emulate the admirable and remember the despicable, and hopefully do more of the latter and less of the former. It'd be nice for some benefit of the doubt that we know how to do history right, from time to time.
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I’m a bit preoccupied reading about Operation Market Garden at the moment, but I’m also keen to learn more about Mao’s cultural revolution.

From what I gather, it was a form of totalitarian conformity disguised as radical dissent.

Mainly served as a radical purge within the Chinese communist party designed to consolidate power to Maoism by encouraging radicals to dissent against the moderate wing of the party.

Involved state sanctioned mass demonstrations and individual denouncements, particularly against communist party members not fully on board with Mao.

Sought to recondition society by rewriting or eradicating history, including destroying relics.

Heavily employed propaganda artwork (proto-memes in a way).

Promoted Mao Zedong thought, a process which included public self-criticism and apology for deviating from the party line.

Anyone dug into this subject and have recommended reading?
 
londongeorge said:
This seems quite a leap from me talking about Maiden set list considerations the other day.
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The question over whether Maiden should woke-wash their set-lists sufficiently raised my hackles to lurch into the fray — even though I’m pretty sure that line of convo was meant jokingly.

People should study up more on the Maoist cultural revolution before subscribing book, bell, and candle to the western Political Correctness revolution PT III (this time it’s serious, we mean it, we”re enlightened now, we swear, it’s not as though this cycle doesn’t recur for about seven years every 25-30 years since WW2 ended or anything).
 
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So a question from my dissertation has led me to read up on the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, and I can't help but think that he looks exactly like the douchebag he was:

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"Oh, the equestrians want to approach the dais. Do they, Metellus? Well, you tell those lousy equestrians that only patricians are allowed to approach. No, I won't do it myself. That's why I have you."
 
It was actually the fourth imperial biography I read lately, after Traian, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.
 
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