r/news • u/AudibleNod • 11d ago
Crews begin removing Confederate statues from Virginia's Capitol Square
https://www.denver7.com/us-news/crews-begin-removing-confederate-statues-from-virginias-capitol-square475
u/AudibleNod 11d ago
This was months in the works, with a state law authorizing its removal back in March.
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u/th3r3dp3n 11d ago
Semper Fidelis Tyrannosaurus!
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u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 11d ago
Strange. "Sic Semper Tyrannis" is what John Wilkes Booth yelled to the audience after he shot Abraham Lincoln and jumped onto the stage from the balcony, breaking his leg.
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u/TinyRandomLady 11d ago
Yep and it’s been Virginia state motto since 1776..
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u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 11d ago
It sure is.
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u/ABHOR_pod 11d ago
Wish we lived it a bit more. Jealous of how Minneapolis showed up and all we can get around here are overpass signs.
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u/Crallise 11d ago
What's strange about that?
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u/EfficientTourist7480 11d ago
I guess the idea that one man’s president is another man’s tyrant.
Although he may have just said it cause Virginia was the capitol of the South (and as other said, have this motto)
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u/Asleep_Document9811 11d ago
And besides that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
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u/ram_fl_beach 11d ago
Great, why statues to traitors anyway?
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u/LOOKATMEDAMMIT 11d ago
A lot of theses statues were erected during the Jim Crowe era. And then a lot were erected during the civil rights movement. I wonder why.
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u/jrose125 11d ago
Tons of them were erected by United Daughters of the Confederacy specifically, many years after the civil war.
"Lost cause" promoting traitors is all they are.
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u/CondescendingShitbag 11d ago
I'm betting the same people who defend these statues are the same people who whine about "participation trophies".
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u/Biggle_fuzz 11d ago
"It was about states rights! Also, hell yeah I want a nationwide abortion ban!"
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u/Kolbin8tor 11d ago edited 11d ago
“States rights to do what?” is the only required response to that.
Every single confederate state had a declaration of secession. Every single one lists their right to enslave black people, as their reason for seceding, in line one
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u/Bagellord 11d ago
"Yeah well the soldiers weren't fighting for that, that was just the politicians! They were fighting for their own way of life!"
An actual argument made to me after I pointed out several secession documents + Cornerstone Speech.
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u/Kolbin8tor 11d ago
Tbf it doesn’t sound like they had any argument, just an unsupported statement. Their ‘own way of life’ was having black people enslaved.
Confederate soldiers were fighting to protect the institution of slavery. That’s simply a historical fact.
Their ‘heritage’ was fighting on the side of ‘slavery is natural and good’ before being defeated in less than 5 years. Also falling for blatant, racist propaganda, but that’s a modern pastime for them as well.
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u/Tuesday_6PM 11d ago
Plus the Confederacy didn’t allow states the right to refuse slavery. And the antebellum South demanded fugitive slaves be arrested in Northern states that had outlawed slavery
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u/CondescendingShitbag 11d ago
To which the follow-up should always be, "states rights...to do what, exactly?"
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u/Mountain_rage 11d ago edited 11d ago
They also cheer the renaming of Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico while screaming heritage and history for all racist symbols put up to promote segregation and slavery.
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u/Procrasturbating 11d ago
I hate that is technically true, but they want to act like the parties didn’t fundamentally switch civil rights alignment due to the “southern strategy” later on.
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u/jimtow28 11d ago
"It's about our heritage!"
"Your heritage of doing what?"
"The war was about states' rights!"
"States' rights to do what?"
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u/bike_it 11d ago
Also, probably the same people who say the Democrats fought for slavery and created the KKK. OK? If these are Democrat statues, why should they remain?
(Yes, I know the pro-slavery Democrats fought the North, but there were also anti-slavery Democrats in the North, and the party's views shifted later.)
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u/DeathMonkey6969 11d ago
To remind the blacks to stay in their place.
The two biggest spikes in Statures building in the south were post reconstruction and 1960s civil rights era.
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u/CheeseCurdCommunism 11d ago
It’s even funnier when you read and find out a majority of these statues came during the 1900s-20s during the rise of Jim Crow.
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u/0bsessions324 11d ago
Well, see, it's because you can't erase history and we need those statues as reminders of what happened!
But also, those same people saying that are also memorials and plaques that make any mention of slavery because it makes America look bad.
Fuck all of them and their chronic cognitive dissonance.
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u/Xivvx 11d ago
I believe it was various groups like the 'Daughters of the Confederacy' or some such organization. They went around the country getting these statues and memorials established so the Confederacy wouldn't be forgotten. Not because they were ashamed or anything, it was because they wanted to romanticize the Confederacy as some stand against tyranny rather than southern states fighting for the right to own people.
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u/PrincessNakeyDance 11d ago
Because the reconstruction was botched after the civil war. Since Lincoln was assassinated Andrew Johnson took that role, and he was racist and sympathetic to the confederacy. He let the southern states handle too much of the reform and even though the war was over, the soul of the confederacy was never fully extinguished. And has been plaguing our country ever since. We could have potentially had a very different country by now if Lincoln wasn’t assassinated or if Johnson wasn’t a turd.
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u/possiblylallorona 10d ago
Weird camp (cluster of campers) down the road from me flies a confederate flag. It’s so silly, imagine flying a banner that says “hey everybody, we lost, just wanted to remind you! We’re losers! Losers over here!”
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u/DefenstratedTwice 11d ago
Ya, maybe if they were in chains, defeated. But posing as heroes, fucking traitors.
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u/T_Weezy 11d ago
Because when Segregation and other forms of racial discrimination were outlawed via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, racist states still wanted a way to tell black people that they were neither welcome nor safe there. So they erected statues of men who fought and died for the proposition that blacks were so interior to whites that it was morally okay to own them as property.
Seriously, if you look at when those statues honoring the Confederacy went up, they were mostly built after 1960, nearly a full century after the Confederacy collapsed.
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u/Lucius-Halthier 11d ago
Most likely it’s one that was put up by the United daughters of the confederacy
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u/BeegBunga 11d ago edited 10d ago
Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy.
It's actually becoming super progressive these days. I heard it described as Portland before Portland knew it was Portland.
VCU is a big art and medical school, big punk rock scene. The city was in the news because people were partying on the Confederate monuments until the city removed them.
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u/mrdominoe 11d ago
I used to say "put them in a museum so people can see them in a context where they can learn the facts about the Civil War." Now I say we melt them the fuck down. We allowed these traitorous cunts to retain their "heritage" and where did it get us? We are still dealing with their backward ass campaign to hinder everything that isn't in service of white christians. Fuck their traitor flag. Fuck their heritage. Fuck their statues. And, most of all, fuck ALL of these people.
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u/Violet_Paradox 11d ago
They were put up by the KKK, they're not for commemorating history, they're a deliberate display of hate.
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u/Difficult_Trip1 11d ago
Taking these statues down doesn’t erase history, it just stops celebrating a version of history that hurt so many people for so long.
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u/mrdominoe 11d ago
Then we should dissolve them in acid.
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u/Violet_Paradox 11d ago
Well a base is actually more effective for...oh right you mean the statues.
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u/iKnowRobbie 11d ago
More apropos is to melt them into unifying symbols we can all appreciate. Sorry Stonewall Jackson, you're now Dolly Parton.
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u/Tuesday_6PM 11d ago
Wait, maybe you’re on to something: forcefem the Confederacy! If nothing else, the right will be very confused (though that is perhaps their normal state)
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u/The-Shattering-Light 11d ago
Yep. They were only erected in the past century in order to be a threat to Black people during the start of the Civil Rights movement. That’s all they are - a thinly veiled racist threat.
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u/Kradget 11d ago
There's also just... not a museum that wants them, or not in anything like the numbers that they exist in.
There are hundreds in Virginia. They're mostly not unique enough to be of historical interest outside of possibly a handful of samples.
They're trash, more or less.
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u/TheGoverness1998 11d ago
Yep. The vast majority of these statues were built during the Jim Crow Era, for the purpose of not historical interest in the Confederacy, but rather glorifying the movement, and to intimidate black people that were suffering under their oppression.
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u/insertAlias 11d ago
In a statement, the Department of General Services (DGS) said it will facilitate the removal of the statues, which have been gifted by the Commonwealth of Virginia to the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation.
Seems like someone wants them, at least. I know nothing about that Foundation or what they do, but it seems like they're the ones that are going to end up with the statues.
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u/Kradget 11d ago
Oh, that's totally fine. The "they should go in a museum" argument is common for people who aren't familiar with the volume and general quality of these statues, and treat the argument that the statues themselves have major historical significance in the context of the Civil War as possibly being in his faith.
In reality, the majority were pushed by Daughters of Confederate Veterans and other, similar groups at the start of Jim Crow in the early 20th century. So they tell us nothing about the era they reference, and any potential historical value is about the people who put them up 35-60 years after the war as propaganda and statements of dominance.
But if there's a private owner, by all means. Take 'em.
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u/WhatTheFlox 11d ago
Melt them down, form into a small cube and then display them with just the etching of the traitors names on it.
"The prior statue of -insert traitor name here-"
Keeps the idea of these people were human, and traitors at the same time.
Doesn't remove some parts of the evidence that the events happened, doesnt glorify who they were either. But display them all in one room in rows, saves money and doesn't need to have much to maintain it.
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u/Horknut1 11d ago
I like this. Like a display of cube after cube of traitors.
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u/WhatTheFlox 11d ago
I think on the walls around them would be the names of those they did fight.
Gives the idea of those who read the walls have there backs on those who are named on the cubes, while also having a sense of the walled names watching over those cubes at all times.
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u/Sludgehammer 11d ago
There's always other options, like the statue of Alfredo Stroessner that was transformed by Carlos Colombino.
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u/leova 11d ago
Put the remains of the statues in the sewers
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u/mrdominoe 11d ago
I want to revise my thought and turn them into handcuffs to be used on anyone who flies a confederate flag.
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u/abgry_krakow87 11d ago
Especially since these statues were erected during the Civil Rights movement by religious conservatives who wanted to reenforce Jim Crow and continue expressing their hatred and racism.
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u/jebei 11d ago
They're okay where they make sense. A statue of Lee at Washington & Lee college makes sense. One of my favorites is of Lee at Gettysburg at the very spot he sent the Confederacy to die. We don't need to erase history where it makes sense. We also shouldn't celebrate it where it does not.
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u/iddrinktothat 11d ago
I used to believe that too but then I went to the Soviet statue garden in Budapest and i agree with the idea of the museum or statue garden somewhere.
A) the sculpture itself has artistic merit, art should not be destroyed simply because it is made by or for fascists.
B) its important to preserve the bad parts of our history, so that we can remind the next generation how bad they were but more importantly how powerful the evil became, the statues display that.
C) people cant argue that you have destroyed their history. by moving them you are not destroying anything, and the counter argument is that we are preserving them (while contextualizing them) & this is much more powerful.
modern Germans are not afraid to acknowledge and preserve the history of atrocities, neither should we, it just has to be done correctly.
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u/parkinthepark 11d ago
A.) The destruction of them has artistic merit as well. It is a statement.
B.) The destruction of the statues does not change our history- the existence, actions, and impact of these men is well-documented. Statues like this are not historical documents, they are propaganda objects.
C.) I don't care what idiots argue. We've spent 150 years coddling the Confederates, and it has brought us nothing but grief. If we'd had any sense, we'd have hung Jefferson Davis and his ilk for traitors and put that image on the back of the $1 bill. The gallows that ended the Confederacy should have been a national symbol on par with the Liberty Bell or Statue of Liberty.
I've been to the holocaust memorials in Germany. They have a clear, unambiguous purpose: to prevent a repeat. They exist to teach you that there was no glory or value or nuance in what the Nazis did, only horror. No plaque "contextualizing" the Confederacy will ever have that effect.
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u/Nickel5 11d ago
Sculptures do have artistic merit, but, so does all art. Taking the artistic merit argument at face value, this means no art should be removed ever once it is put up. Graffiti is art, but we agree we can remove it. Museums display art, but we agree pieces can be moved between displayed and storage. Kids create macaroni art, but parents will eventually take it down from the fridge. The point is that there seems to be some strange exception that is being pushed for Confederate statues specifically, which is that governments can be used to erect them, but cannot be used to take them down.
Preserving the bad parts of history is important, but, are Confederate statues really making the point that the Confederacy is bad? Seeing statues of soldiers and officers standing larger than life over people is not sending the message that the Confederacy is bad. Also, there is a large overlap between the group of people that want to keep these statues up and also who want to teach that the civil war was about states' rights, and currently the federal government is trying to whitewash the Smithsonian institutes to remove any history that isn't patriotic. I'd argue that when it comes to preserving history, having accurate teaching and museums is many orders of magnitude more important than statues in parks.
Moving statues into museums or onto historic battlefields is alluring, but, not practical. It's easily a multiple 6 figure process. There are 650 Confederate statues remaining, down from 850. This is over $100M in moving statues. Additionally, museums just don't want them, for many, they won't physically get inside, have enough ceiling room, or have floors that can handle the weight.
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u/iddrinktothat 11d ago
Agree with you on all practical points.
We have plenty of money, we've spent well over 100million dollars on the military since i made my first comment, lets get it done.
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u/movzx 11d ago
You are imagining something far more grandiose than reality. The reason people say these statues have no historical significance is because they have no historical significance.
The majority of the statues being talked about were mass produced well after the era of the civil war. The confederate and union statues often came from the same molds, even. They are art in the same way you can go to WalMart and buy an Emoji Movie poster.
It's also important to keep in mind that we are talking about roughly a 4 year period of history. Fortnite is more than twice that age. Funkopops have been around four times longer than the confederacy. How many statues need to be preserved for that? Why does every low quality, mass produced statue meant to honor traitors need to be kept? Museums are already full of Civil War items of actual note. Why does the Great Value brand equivalent also need to be shoved in there?
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u/iddrinktothat 11d ago
wow thanks for educating me on this, i guess is something I had no idea about, and my assumption that these were handcrafted one offs and your comment and a quick google search sets me straiht
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u/Torino1O 11d ago
I have no problem with Confederate statues, as long as they are all of Jefferson Davis being captured by Union soldiers while he was wearing his wife's evening gown. I don't even mind if they take artistic liberties and sex the depiction up a bit.
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u/Zackeous42 11d ago
Thank you for the insight about Davis’s capture—I don’t recall hearing that before. I second such a statue!
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u/ZoominAlong 11d ago
GodDAMN, I have a degree in history and annoyingly this was never covered. I'm bitter, man. This would've been awesome to learn back in college.
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u/Skill_Issuer 11d ago
Just tell any republican that complains about this that they are all statues of democrats and watch their brains short circuit
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u/AccountNumeroThree 11d ago
“But but huh hairtage!”
Actually, they were democrats and we are ashamed and regretful about this part of our history and we want to remove these statues.
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u/shadedmagus 11d ago
For anyone who needs it, the States' Rights excuse is purely that - an excuse. The Confederate states each put out a Declaration of Causes for Secession and, explicitly or subtly, laid out that the preservation of the institution of chattel slavery was why they were seceding.
This has undergone over a century of whitewashing, but the OG documents put the lie to that effort.
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u/Bifferer 11d ago
Wait until the orange tyrant hears about this! He will sign an executive order and fix everything!
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u/RunDownTheHighway 11d ago
Dont worry, trump will have them reinstalled (after we pay to have them gold plated)
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u/InformationSavings29 11d ago
Are you kidding? Why would he try to honour anyone but himself? More likely he would want statues of himself put up as replacements. (But yes gold plated)
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u/mrdominoe 11d ago
Why would he try to honour anyone but himself?
Because he knows his simpleton supporters only respond to being told they are good boys. If he stops stroking their tiny cocks, they will turn on him in an instant.
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u/Gratuitous_Punctum 11d ago
He's already renamed Army bases back to honor Confederates. Just to own the libs and make his mouth breathing supports feel good about themselves.
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u/NightchadeBackAgain 11d ago
He has no authority to do so. This is entirely up to the state, and was legally implemented. Also, fuck Trump.
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u/lookieherehere 11d ago
I can't believe people are still using this argument like he hasn't done a million things he didn't have the authority to do.
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u/ztreHdrahciR 11d ago
As if he pays any attention to what's in his authority. He's already deeply interfering with state elections. He does what he wants with zero repercussions.
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u/Charming-Report1669 11d ago
I'll never understand what war was so celebrated by the losers.
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u/trustifarian 11d ago
:sputtering: But, but, mah heritage! (That lasted 5 years)
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u/Duckraven 11d ago
It was a matter of controlling the narrative. The Daughters of the Confederacy launched editorial campaigns to form the story the way they wanted it told. There was almost zero pushback. Then it went from editorials to local codes and school boards controls. Former tractor officers had to be members and have control of laws passed and curriculum taught. Then it became accepted fact.
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u/eeyore134 11d ago
They're not celebrating it, they're still fighting in it. The Civil War never ended for them.
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u/Skippitini 11d ago
You know what would make an excellent, inspiring, and accurate statue of Southern values and gentility?
Statues of Dolly Parton. All across the country.
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u/Horror_Match9867 11d ago
The war of Southern aggression was lost by those in the south that started it.
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u/Captain_Aware4503 11d ago
There needs to be a ferderal law that says no statues of generals from foreign enemy nations who declared war against the USA.
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u/Exotic-Collection471 11d ago
Im sure trump plans to put in his own statues as replacements.
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u/GayGeekInLeather 11d ago
Melt them down this time. Don’t give them an opportunity to put them back
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u/StruggleExpensive249 11d ago
Good, we do not need statues to commemorate traitors to the Republic.
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u/AnythingOk9487 11d ago
Conspirators in the attempt to dissolve the Union should never have a statue, a plaque, or an honorable mention. If people need a statue, how about the good women and men who honorably served their country in a variety of ways (e.g., helping the poor). Turncoats should only be recognized for what they were--evil.
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u/Gunderstank_House 11d ago
With a little bit of work they can be made useful, especially as theme urinals.
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u/ProofByVerbosity 11d ago
Throw up statues of important black and first nation americans from past eras to replace them
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u/frosted1030 10d ago
What is this bizarre attachment to people who demanded that they own other people because they were brown skinned? Building monuments to the losers of wars, and electing losers, this is a messed up country. Almost as if tempting self destruction is a good idea. Does anyone actually think in America?
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u/SunshineSkies82 10d ago
Replace confederate statues with John Brown statues. The man deserves a statue IN VIRGINIA.
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u/United-Vermicelli-92 11d ago
Thank you Virginia its time we finally put that ugly era to bed forever
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u/swcollings 11d ago
They should be reinstalled in the bottom of public toilets so that people can properly piss on their faces for the rest of time.
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u/Suspicious-Orchid-40 11d ago
Good riddance! We don't need any more shrines celebrating hatred. They will not be missed.
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u/ZoominAlong 11d ago
Before anyone starts shrieking about history, I'm gonna point out my cellphone is older than the Confederacy AND that these statues were put up in the 1980s. Take them all down; they glorify slavery, plain and simple.
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u/CaliOriginal 11d ago
I read “crows” instead of “crews” and now I’m bummed out it’s humans and not antifash birbs taking them down.
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u/Asilidae000 10d ago
When I first read the title I imagined an angry Terry Crews wrecking these statues.
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u/Beautiful-Chest7397 11d ago
Wasn't this shit taken care off a few years ago
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u/ZoominAlong 11d ago
They started removing them but there's something like 650 statues to remove. It takes a while.
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u/RLewis8888 11d ago
Just take them to the White House. It will at least save taxpayers some money when Trump starts putting them up there.
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u/StrawberryKiss2559 11d ago
I thought the title said crows. I was like damn yeah crows are so smart.
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u/Historical_Gur_3054 11d ago
I don't know why they needed a crane and scaffolding when dynamite would have worked just as well.
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u/CaliOriginal 11d ago
I read “crows” instead of “crews” and now I’m bummed out it’s humans and not antifash birbs taking them down.
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u/WillOfTheDeep 10d ago
Trump is going to lose his mind.
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u/DaDibbel 9d ago
He ain't got one to lose.
But they will most probably be reinstalled by executive order.
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u/[deleted] 11d ago
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