Protestors Topple Confederate Monument in North Carolina

[vanguard96]

As long as we're talking failed regimes guilty of massive war crimes I'd like to see these get toppled too:
Lenin Statues in America
Las Vegas - outside Red Square Restaurant, Mandalay Bay Hotel - Headless
Atlantic City, New Jersey - in the Tropicana Casino
New York City - on top of the Red Square apartment building, E. Houston St. in the East Village[3]
Seattle - Fremont neighborhood (See Statue of Lenin (Seattle))
Head of Lenin, Los Angeles, California - outside a branch of the Ace Gallery, the Ace Museum, on the corner of La Brea Avenue and 4th Street.
Stalin:
A bust of Stalin is displayed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

[vanguard96]

They should replace every Confederate statue in the South with General Sherman

That's a terrible idea. They should rip down the Sherman statues in NY, MI, and everywhere. He advocated total war against civilians. Why even honor military generals - glory hounds who would send reluctant young men to die futilely.

[vanguard96]

As long as we're talking failed regimes guilty of massive war crimes I'd like to see these get toppled too:
Lenin Statues in America
Las Vegas - outside Red Square Restaurant, Mandalay Bay Hotel - Headless
Atlantic City, New Jersey - in the Tropicana Casino
New York City - on top of the Red Square apartment building, E. Houston St. in the East Village[3]
Seattle - Fremont neighborhood (See Statue of Lenin (Seattle))
Head of Lenin, Los Angeles, California - outside a branch of the Ace Gallery, the Ace Museum, on the corner of La Brea Avenue and 4th Street.
Stalin:
A bust of Stalin is displayed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

Not crazy about Lenin/Stalin statues either and wouldn't have a problem with them being taken down. Although I think the headless one is supposed to be making fun of him. The Red Square Restaurant has a ironic/mocking Soviet kitsch theme. It's a lot easier to laugh at something like that since we don't have thousands of hardcore Marxist-Leninists marching around and launching numerous attacks every year, as is the case with Neo-Confederates/White Supremacists.

Regardless, why are we bringing up statues of Lenin and Stalin in a thread about Confederate monuments?

I would like to see the Confederate ones removed too - but if we're talking about honoring failed movements (Confederates and Nazis) why not mention the one that the left turns a blind eye toward again and again and again? 

So many people died on the orders of Lenin and the Soviet Union, Mao and Communist China, Che and the Cuban regime - I understand personal items such as Andy Warhol's pop art but a statue of the Communist leader who ordered the killing of dissidents in the US on display in public?

It's as disgusting as the Bedford Forrest privately owned statue in Brentwood, TN - which I would not mind its removal, BTW

So much of it comes from honoring so called 'Great Men' political leaders and military generals that should be put in museums not blatantly erected after the fact by those who idolize them - neo-Confederates / KKK and Socialists (in the case of the Lenin statues).

 

[vanguard96]

It is really remarkable that Americans are now further from achieving Lincoln's dream of national unity than they were in 1890; there are people in this thread right now who feel more animosity towards the Confederacy than did many of the men who actually fought against it.

That most of you seem to view the civil war as 'WWII on American soil' is an indictment of the American educational system.

Is absolute national unity a worthwhile goal if it means that people will have another Civil War?

[vanguard96]

As long as we're talking failed regimes guilty of massive war crimes I'd like to see these get toppled too:
Lenin Statues in America
Las Vegas - outside Red Square Restaurant, Mandalay Bay Hotel - Headless
Atlantic City, New Jersey - in the Tropicana Casino
New York City - on top of the Red Square apartment building, E. Houston St. in the East Village[3]
Seattle - Fremont neighborhood (See Statue of Lenin (Seattle))
Head of Lenin, Los Angeles, California - outside a branch of the Ace Gallery, the Ace Museum, on the corner of La Brea Avenue and 4th Street.
Stalin:
A bust of Stalin is displayed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

Lenin statues in vegas/atlantic city are probably more insulting to the man than tearing the things down would be.
Also In regards to the Op the statue at hand was put up in 1924 at a height of a KKK revival .

At least Seattle should go down then along with changes at these statues in the south - as well as Stone Mountain which was carved in 1916 by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

[vanguard96]

As long as we're talking failed regimes guilty of massive war crimes I'd like to see these get toppled too:
Lenin Statues in America
Las Vegas - outside Red Square Restaurant, Mandalay Bay Hotel - Headless
Atlantic City, New Jersey - in the Tropicana Casino
New York City - on top of the Red Square apartment building, E. Houston St. in the East Village[3]
Seattle - Fremont neighborhood (See Statue of Lenin (Seattle))
Head of Lenin, Los Angeles, California - outside a branch of the Ace Gallery, the Ace Museum, on the corner of La Brea Avenue and 4th Street.
Stalin:
A bust of Stalin is displayed at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

I don't know much about the other Lenin statues, but I know a lot about the Lenin Statue in Seattle, so let me explain why I think there's no comparison to be made here between it and the Confederate monuments:

- The statue was singled out for preservation because it had several unique features among Lenin statues that made it artistically significant.
- After being determined that it was not going to be destroyed, it still needed to be removed to the us from Slovakia specifically because Lenin was seen as the symbolic antithesis to the new government, just as the Confederate monuments are in the US.
- The statue has basically no meaning to local far-lefties, and despite Seattle having one of the largest Marxist blocs in the country (albeit one which is still tiny), I have never heard of any rally at the statue, it being associated specifically with Soviet Communism in their mind.
- To the rest of US, the statue is, like HisGrace noted about the statue in Vegas, essentially a symbol of Soviet kitsch. We decorate it for Christmas, we decorate it for the Fourth of July, and just for fun. In that regard, it is much more a symbol of our victory in the Cold War than anything Lenin ever personally achieved. It would be similar to a Statue of Robert E. Lee being put up at the US Grant Presidential library, or one of Jefferson Davis in the White House bathroom.
- To the vast majority of Seattlites, the statue represents our ability to make light of old conflicts, bury the hatchet with the former communist countries, and generally thumb our nose at McCarthyists. The important distinction is that nobody here feels any sort of historical allegiance to Lenin and, quite the opposite, see him as something worthy of mocking and messing with. If there were any statues in the South that were treated similarly, maybe I'd feel different about them being removed.

I disagree of course and feel it is a tacit acceptance of a dictator who had many people killed. Some activists also paint the hands red - I don't think that move is a joke like dressing him up - more a symbolic gesture that he has blood on his hands which is absolutely 100% true.

https://www.geekwire.com/2017/time-pull-seattles-lenin-statue-silicon-valley-venture-capitalist-takes-relics-place-wake-charlottesville-tragedy/

[vanguard96]

The WWII generation hated socialism! Which is why they voted for FDR four times and thanked Democrats for Social Security by giving them control of the House for most of the century.

I was talking about culture, not economics. Many of the people who voted for FDR were culturally conservative and would not be welcome in today's left.

Also, FDR was not a ''socialist''.

FDR was a racist, state interventionist who was admired by authoritarian despots and did not seek to distance himself from them.

It was a deliberate choice by the apologists who commissioned his statue to put him in a wheelchair which he rarely appeared in and did not like to be seen in - and without the monocle either to make him more palatable for the left who so revere him.