Should we erase all history that offends modern views?

[Richard]

Clearly not, we must remember the holocaust.
The legacy of slavery is very shameful but not just in western society's historic past.
African tribes have a very long history of habitually killing other tribes and enslaving many that were subservient.
Arab Muslims traditionally bought countless slaves from African leaders, by far in excess of any in the west.
I could name many African countries that supplied slaves and killed or butchered enemies over territorial issues.
Muslims would have destroyed all visible cultural artifacts in tribal Africa but for British involvement in the past.
Russians and Chinese leaders have probably massacred millions of their own citizens.
Yet we are now seeing statues pulled down in a frenzy (all over the 'enlightened' western countries) by people with strong views who know little about history 'in the round' and seize upon any excuse to further their agenda.
This reminds me of anarchy writ large.

[cbe]

The vast majority of those 'protesters just don't know that they are being used in a move to de-stabilise Western society.

[Richard]

The American problems are definitely worth protesting about. There is every likelihood that some reform will take place. But when the protest moves from the US to Britain, it looks like a knee-jerk reactiom. Britain is one country that has repeatedly, openly, and constructively tried to address institutional racism in law enforcement.

[seahermit]

History is very complex and many figures from history were flawed personalities - aren't we all? Neither Churchill nor Ghandi nor countless others were saints, Ghandi neglected his own family and, some say, treated them abysmally in pursuit of his campaign against the British.

The mobs who are protesting are unlikely to all be educated people with a broad and even-handed view of history. They are of course being manipulated, current political and racial agendas are exploiting people's frustrations and aiming them at historical figures. But when all the statues have been pulled down, what will have actually been achieved? Nothing, the world will be the same, except for a lot of divisions and enmity between different sections of society. As opposed to coming together harmoniously, which is what the world should really be aiming to do.

[cbe]

...and where does it end? We have statues being either pulled down or demands being made to have them pulled down. We have regular deplatforming at Universities and I read this week that in the US some an academic suggested that the word 'looting' should be banned as it has racial connotations? We are on the slippery slope to book-burning.

Our problem is we have a Prime Minister-in-Hiding who just pops up from time to time to bend
with the wind blowing on that particular day

[Richard]

Some of the teachers are not educated also:
A youngster regurgitated garbage on TV - last night - "Our country was perfect and peaceful before colonial imperialists came along".
Or words to that effect.
What are they on??

[cbe]

When I went to school, admittedly a long, long time ago, I never heard any teacher
utter anything that could be described as political.
Now it seems as though the entire curriculum is riddled through with a political agenda.

[Richard]

The logic of the victim cult treats people as morally fragile, easily offended, and susceptible to ‘trauma’ simply through watching something or hearing something. This is a completely regressive idea in itself; the fact that it is an idea that is more likely to be applied to black people than white people makes it positively chilling. This racial paternalism benefits nobody.

[cbe]

agreed

[Richard]

Slavery was a social and economic phenomenon, not a racial one. Indeed, English cotton-mill owners initially introduced not black, but child slavery in England.
Karl Marx drew attention to the rapid death and replacement of workers in the bakeries of London, the potteries of the West Midlands, and the cotton mills of the North West.
There is a common interest between white and black; a common enemy we should be easily able to identify, provided we stop thinking racially?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/1 ... privilege/