Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville.

[samuel]

As everyone knows I believe the Ancient Egyptians were BLACK. And the worst thing you can do to a people is take away their history. Robert E Lee is being portrayed as a White Nationalist on CNN and MSM. If I am not mistaken he was going to serve the Union until he realized his devotion was to his State of Virginia.

[zarahan]

No doubt Lee had a sense honor, in the sense of fighting to uphold what he believed to be
right, and I have no doubt he considered himself a patriot of Virginia and the South.
And yes, he was dedicated, hard-working and skilled in carrying out the mission he believed in.
In a GENERIC sense, generic I said, all these things are perfectly understandable, even commendable.
And no, stating the generic case above does not constitute any "endorsement" of slavery or
the Confederate cause. Far from it

As for his portrayal as a white nationalist- if some folk are trying to make him out as a
19th century southern version of fanatical Adolf Hitler, I believe that this is too extreme.
Its not that dramatic, and there is no need for such distortion of Lee.

But some points to consider:

1) Since when is any history being "taken away" from white people? This is rather dubious.
There are tens of millions of white people who passionately believe in Robert E. Lee.
No one has "taken away" anything from them. In fact well into the 1980s school textbooks
handled slavery and the confederacy with kid gloves, and white right wing groups like
the United Daughters of the Confederacy had huge influence on educating about slavery
and the Civil War, some of that influence is dubious or even bogus.In short, white right
wingers have had a pretty good run as far as history, and as far as being gingerly handled
even by some textbook publishers today. Yet even with this, one key change SOMETIMES seen today
is that Lee and the COnfederacy get searching scrutiny, not the hero worship of old.
This is what white right wingers are really lamenting about- the easy, simplistic propaganda
narratives of the as are no longer automatically accepted by many folk.

www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/01/why-do-people-believe-myths-about-the-confederacy-because-our-textbooks-and-monuments-are-wrong/?utm_term=.dbe27b580c3c


2) Lee believed in the southern slave system and fighting to preserve it. This is why he went to war.
In fact numerous southern states said they were going to war because of slavery- call it states rights
or whatever- the bottom line 'states right' was slavery.



3) Lee believed slavery, in a disciplinary sense, was necessary for
black people. Quote:

The painful discipline they [the blacks] are undergoing is
necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare
them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be
necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.”
--FROM: Robert E. Lee letter dated December 27, 1856 to US President Franklin PIERCE


4) As well respected and inspirational leader of the fight to preserve slavery, Lee
is often invoked by white nationalists, who cite points 2 and 3 above in his defense,
and in defense of slavery and the Confederacy.

[samuel]

I just find it disgusting that people are talking about destroying all the statues in the country. It's wrong period. There was even a tweet by vice saying "We should blow up Mount Rushmore" The Egyptians were great and leave behind a legacy far richer than Rome or even Greece because they were conservative. I'm sure it would have been automatic death penalty for you and your family to even say out loud you were going to destroy their monuments. Pre Islamic conquest their monumental architecture was known all over the world. I just hate seeing history destroyed.

[zarahan]

I am no fan of Confederate personalities but there is historical value in certain monuments particularly
generic memorials to war dead etc etc. Some allowance has to be made for history. Why can't a town erect
memorials to local war dead for example? Extremist calls to erase everything are just too much. But who
says non-extremist folk are out to destroy everything? They are not saying destroying all. In most cases the
issue is keeping certain statutes on PUBLIC property. Certainly statute proponents are free to erect or
move them to private property, just as churches have had to move their statutes and monuments
to church property only. I think this is what will happen- many of them will go on private land,
and some will stay on public.

Second, the Egyptian legacy included indigenous Nile Valley people. Even the 25th Kushite Dynasty right next
door in Nubia and today's southern Egypt were RESTORATIONISTS of Egyptian culture and ADDED to the statute,
temple and building work, calling themselves true followers of Amun who were restoring things. Likewise
several pharaohs were of Nubian origin such as in the 12th Dynasty and others, and when the Nubians
were forced south they still continued to hold true to some Egyptian originalism as they saw it. They
were preservationists and preservationists.

By contrast, there would be few African-Americans erecting statutes to the pro-slavery confederacy
or paying it honor. Blacks have been in the South since day 1. What do they have to celebrate? That is
the key difference. The Egyptians got indigenous Nile Valley people they dealt with on board. The Confederate
celebrations though, are basically only for ONE group- white right wing celebrations that exclude millions of
people who were there toiling in chains to build up the south, and whom the south would not let go free, whose
only future basically was more slavery for them and their children.

This is what makes your analogy to ancient Egypt a deeply flawed one.

[piccolo]

All statues and monuments are eventually destroyed or eroded. That happens. There are probably tons of ancient civilizations whose statues were lost to time. Also, it was reported on the news that Muslim extremists did ransack an ancient(can't remember which) temple of some kind. It happens. That's just life. Are you still shedding tears over burning of the library of Alexandria?

With a country that's becoming less white by the day. You both should know this was bound to happen. No way in hell were the descendants of slaughtered Native Americans and African slaves gonna uphold statues and monuments of men who terrorized their people and are the sole reason we are in the position we are in today.