With the Confederate Statues down, are the Lee Counties next
naturalplastic wrote:
So...A British movie director honors Gandhi. Outwardly that would seem analogous to statues to Lee in the modern USA.Except for two things: Gandhi won, and Lee's confederacy lost. And Gandhi was morally vindicated (even India's former British oppressors admit that India was right to seek freedom). Lee may not have been a villainous individual, but he was famous for serving a cause (the Confederacy) that has not been vindicated because the Confederacy's whole reason for being was to preserve slavery. So even though Attenborough's film may seem equivalent to a statue of Lee, it isnt really.
Mahatma Gandhi is a international icon for peaceful protest. Almost all forms of peaceful protest from women's equal rights, civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam war protests, anti-apartheid protests to almost every type modern peaceful protest stem from Gandhi's non-violent movements against British occupation of India.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/cult ... l-protest/
That Attenborough made a film about Gandhi's life has nothing to do with anti-British sentiment because Gandhi is a global figure of peace and reconciliation. The movie transcends silly British foibles.
General Lee is (to put it simply) a mercenary who was a) protecting his own interests and b) protecting the slave holders of Virginia. He is a despicable human being who's legacy and that of the confederacy belongs in a museum along with the swastikas and jack boots of the Nazis.
cyberdad wrote:
That Attenborough made a film about Gandhi's life has nothing to do with anti-British sentiment because Gandhi is a global figure of peace and reconciliation. The movie transcends silly British foibles.
Imagine if an American producer were to make a film telling the story of the overthrow of the Allende Gossens government in Chile in 1973, from the point of view of somebody who supported that government. I happen to believe that would be possible. Many Americans in Hollywood would have no trouble showing that point of view, except a.) this happened so long ago that it's mostly off peoples' radar, b.) Such a film would probably not have much of a box office, and c.) it wouldn't seem relevant in today's current political climate which is focused on a different set of concerns.
ezbzbfcg2 wrote:
The_Walrus wrote:
Having counties in America named after Robert Lee and Jefferson Davis is like if we had counties in Britain named after George Washington.
There is a well-known statue of Abe Lincoln in London.
Abraham Lincoln wasn’t a traitor against Britain. A better example would be the statue of Washington in Trafalgar Square, or the statue of Gandhi in Parliament Square. But in either case, I was talking about renaming a county, not a mere statue. We haven’t renamed Staffordshire “Washingtonshire” or Durham “Gandhi”. Although in either case that would be better than naming them after Davis or Lee - as natural plastic intimates, Gandhi and Washington are considered morally justified traitors (I have never heard someone seriously refer to either as a traitor, although I quite like jokingly calling Washington a traitor when around Americans), whereas Lee and Davis fought for a despicable cause.
MaxE wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
That Attenborough made a film about Gandhi's life has nothing to do with anti-British sentiment because Gandhi is a global figure of peace and reconciliation. The movie transcends silly British foibles.
Imagine if an American producer were to make a film telling the story of the overthrow of the Allende Gossens government in Chile in 1973, from the point of view of somebody who supported that government. I happen to believe that would be possible. Many Americans in Hollywood would have no trouble showing that point of view, except a.) this happened so long ago that it's mostly off peoples' radar, b.) Such a film would probably not have much of a box office, and c.) it wouldn't seem relevant in today's current political climate which is focused on a different set of concerns.
Perhaps as a Hollywood production, but there have been a few subversive fiction movies that point to a national security state pulling puppet strings to overthrow foreign governments. However Hollywood tends to frame these in the context of a few bad apples that infiltrate the government rather than a systemic problem inherent in the US government.
