Lef  - 2021-07-07
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
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Two Jar Slave - 2021-07-07
If you somehow don't know, this isn't a random outburst: it's in response to the recent discovery of nearly a thousand unmarked graves at three former residential schools. They were found using ground radar, and there are over a hundred more schools to scan. The results are not going to be pretty.
Activists are targeting symbols of colonialism, from toppling a statue of Captain Cook burning half a dozen Catholic churches to the ground.
Here are my thoughts, as of today:
- If there's a united voice among a colonized community that says X is a symbol of oppression and should be removed, I say the settler/white society should listen and work with them to remove or recontextualize it to their satisfaction.
- If the settler/white society WON'T take steps to remove or recontextualize the symbol, the wronged community has my personal support in vandalizing it illegally. For whatever that's worth.
- When it comes to symbols of oppression, it's easier to be united against statues than against churches, because churches serve many functions, including as community centres and places of worship, wedding and funeral venues, and simple landmarks.
- I don't think activists working alone without strong support from their community should vandalize or destroy symbols.
- Sometimes, the worst thing an activist can do for their own cause is to pollute a valid, morally secure topic with acts of symbolic vandalism that are not fully supported by their own community. This derails the conversation from, say, "we need to do more for reconciliation" to "how dare those people burn down our X." This has been the case with the burning churches, more or less. I personally don't value Catholic churches, but I think burning them has done more harm than good in terms of the goodwill generated in the wake of those awful discoveries.
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Lef - 2021-07-07 Victoria was a monster. Her statues regularly get defaced across the country.
They can no longer keep the John A MacDonald statue up in Dorchester Square (Montreal). The head would sometimes be sawed off along with constant graffiti.
Maybe it's OK for Canadians to get angry and smash a statue. It's the only way many of them can make a point.
Voting sure as fuck hasn't changed anything and established media and big tech guide the narrative in the direction it wants. Smashing a statue can serve a grand purpose.
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John Holmes Motherfucker - 2021-07-08 In the US, at least, a church is private property. The legislature is a public space. To use the analogy I'm more familiar with, when you've got a statue of Stonewall Jackson on your courthouse lawn, the implied message is that the courts are there to support white supremacy, and that was always on purpose.
In Portland, Maine, where I lived for some years, there was some recent controversy at the Unitarian Church, where I had sometimes attended, a n historic building with a progressive membership. There's a plaque from the 1850s commemorating a visit from Jefferson Davis. Obviously, that's before the War. It mentions Davis for his role as Secretary of War to Franklin Pierce. It's none of my business, but if it was, I would be for leaving it up. It's not a symbol of white supremacy. It's not a public space where laws are written or enforced, or even a public park. It's not meant to lionize anyone, but to commemorate an actual historic event. I don't think there's a problem.
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Nominal - 2021-07-09 Voting never changes anything about taking down monuments to oppression, except in the South where it has.
Lef is a trolling anti-vaxxer tool in case anyone's forgotten.
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Chicken the Did - 2021-07-09 If the Catholic church said something, anything maybe I would feel different maybe. They chose to stay silent and now their shit can burn until they offer a proper apology. They owe those people something. If not then this can escalate to the point where people play knock out game with clergy for all I care. If the church wants it to stop they know what to do.
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casualcollapse - 2021-07-09 Big Tech... Narrative..you sound just like him you know
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