Virginia governor to announce removal of Lee statue [Richmond, VA] [ed]

AP ^ | June 4, 2020 | Alan Suderman and Sarah Rankin

[C19fan]

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is expected to announce plans Thursday to remove one of the country’s most iconic monuments to the Confederacy, a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee along Richmond’s prominent Monument Avenue, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. The move would be an extraordinary victory for civil rights activists, whose calls for the removal of that monument and others in this former capital of the Confederacy have been resisted for years. “That is a symbol for so many people, black and otherwise, of a time gone by of hate and oppression and being made to feel less than,” said Del. Jay Jones, a black lawmaker from Norfolk. He said he was “overcome” by emotion when he learned the statue was to come down.

[C19fan]

Governor Black Face caves into the mob. If Lee is going down then the other Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond are doomed: Jackson, Stuart and Davis. This is a disgrace. I am a Yankee and Lee is one of the greatest generals in US history. He, Jackson, and Stuart fought to defend their homes Virginia. I always thought Davis should come down because he made the conscious political choice to rebel against the US and secondly he is not a native of VA. His spot should be replaced by another great Virginian Civil War general who fought for the Union George Thomas.

[Theodore R.]

This is what happens when conservative Virginians sit out elections. Bet Lee wishes the Confederate capital had been kept in AL.

[American Infidel]

This is an absolute disgrace. As you indicated; he is clearly caving in to the mob and trying to erase history.

This is an example of never letting a crisis go to waste. Governor blackface understands that he needs to strike while the virtue-signaling iron is hot, knowing full well that no one will object under the current climate.

This will happen incrementally every time there is a crisis like the one we are currently experiencing until every vestige of Confederate history is erased.

I hope they are at least going to move the statue to a privately-owned location like a museum.

[LittleSpotBlog]

Virginia is now home to a lot of sick people, including its blackface-wearing (or was he the one in the KKK hood??) governor.

[C19fan]

I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.

-General Grant

Too bad the mob is not as generous as Grant who had every reason to seek revenge.

[Leaning Right]

In Stalinist Russia people often fell out of favor. And so they were erased from history. Their names were removed from public buildings, they were airbrushed out of government photographs, etc.

But wait. There was more. Librarians were instructed to go to their library encyclopedias, and cut out all mention of the individual.

Will that be the next step for the American left?

[vg0va3]

Life long southerner (Georgia) here.

Why should I care that Democrats are taking down statues that racist Democrats put up?

[Lockbox]

Standard Commie move, destroy history of the people.

[RonnG]

Replaced with a George Floyd monument?

[nathanbedford]

Some Thoughts on the Destruction of Statues of Confederate War Heroes, (originally posted here years ago).

My consistent reaction over time to the destruction of statues of Confederate generals has been to regard them as the spasms of the mob and the result of cultish ideology or (more particularly in the instance of Robert E Lee or Nathan Bedford Forrest), the product of a generation of misguided education.

But of course they have a broader meaning and a more sinister impulse. The French Revolution stands as an example of iconoclasm as a tool rather than a mere expression of ideological tyranny.

Statues are icons and for millennia icons have stood the place of written language. They are a physical, visible symbol of what is to be respected, venerated or even worshiped. Often after an episode of iconoclastic destruction, new icons are erected to represent the new values to be respected, venerated or even worshiped.

So it is in the French Revolution that we see the destruction of churches along with the physical bodies of churchmen, we see the decapitation of the statues of Kings along the façade of Notre Dame. This was part of the almost rabid anticlericalism of the French Revolution. But keep in mind, the destruction of religious icons in the course of the French Revolution was not limited to the initial upheaval but extended for years. Not surprisingly, after Robespierre had led the way in a bloody spasm of murder and iconoclasm, he erected a new icon toward a supreme being and summoned the people to a festival. Shortly thereafter he was guillotined.

Robespierre had erected a new icon, however transitory it’s historical life, to represent a new supreme being who was to be celebrated if not respected, venerated and even worshiped. Napoleon came along and was not in doubt about what should be the object of iconic worship; statues of Napoleon together with paintings exaggerating his Imperial Magnificence became abundant. The more the cult of Napoleon grew, the more intrusive his secret police.

The point is that the iconoclasm unleashed by the storming of the Bastille, a solid fortress torn down in fit of iconoclasm, was a tool of the revolution. No less than the propaganda chief Goebbels, the Jacobins knew that the icons of their ideology must supplant those of the ancient regime.

Czar Nicholas of Russia and his family learned to their sorrow, just as Louis XVI and Marie at Annette learned to their sorrow, that living human bodies are also seen as icons which must be destroyed if the ideology they represent is to be successfully supplanted. Small wonder that statues of dead Confederate generals must also be executed.

Often the iconoclasm has the aura of religious indignation. That is the sort of iconoclasm we have seen as the Taliban smote graven images into bits and out of history. We saw much the same in the Protestant Reformation among the nonconformist sects. These examples are illustrative of an impulse to destroy the icon because it is the absence of the icon, or any icon, that conforms to the new ideology.

The French Revolution justified its iconoclasm by declaring it stood for liberty, equality, fraternity all enlightened impulses. But regicide or the murder of priests and nuns can hardly be described as noble. The Taliban justify their iconoclasm as obeying the diktat of Allah but they offer the same justification when they lopped off the heads of women and children.

I wonder what will be the new icons erected and consecrated in the wake of the march of political correctness?

[Pravious]

Ralph Northam sure has balls the size of peanuts.
Well, really SMALL peanuts.

[C19fan]

This mocking statue has moved from its original location in NYC to Richmond:

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/10/kehinde-wiley-bronze-statue-in-times-square/

[jarwulf]

What do statues have to do with civil rights again?

[Scram1]

“This is your daily reminder that Joe Biden voted to restore US citizenship for Robert E. Lee in 1975”

President Trump retweet “Interesting”

Leahy too was there. Senator Byrd left a mark.

Pelosi’s father was erecting statues to a non-citizen?

[P.O.E.]

But wait. There was more. Librarians were instructed to go to their library encyclopedias, and cut out all mention of the individual. Will that be the next step for the American left?

It's already being done online.

[Leaning Right]

> It’s already being done online. <

You’re right. And I was showing my age there. When I think of the word “encyclopedia”, I first think of a set of heavy books on a shelf somewhere.

But encyclopedias are all online now. So it’s quite easy to turn a person into an unperson. A few clicks is all it takes.

[Pollster1]

I am not generally a fan of graffiti, but if the globalist 1984 fans rewrite history to remove General Lee, I would love to see a template made to keep him on people's minds:

With a template, it would take mere seconds to spray paint that in black at a dozen new locations around Richmond every night. History can be erased, but decent people should not permit that to happen - especially not under the threat of violence. Thugs, arsonists, and looters must always fail.

[KobraKai]

Very nice. I like the transition to ‘living humans’ becoming the iconoclast.

[P.O.E.]

I was digging through the garage and found a box of old “Funk & Wagnalls” from the 30s.

A) written with a higher reading level without seeming pedantic
B) “drier” history - i.e., everything not dripping PC
C)I brought them in and put them on the shelf.

[metmom]

The dems are intent on destroying out culture and country.

With this stupid shutdown over the panicdemic (at this point) many of them are taking it past the fourth, thus, for this year, eliminating the recognition and celebration of our most patriotic holidays.

They are trying to erase from memory what this country was and what it was founded on.

It will take time but eventually, there will be a generation that knows nothing of what we grew up with and only knows the revisionist history that the government indoctrination centers feed them.