AH but the goal of the right is different in this case.
By dragging this issue out where honoring a group of people that even in there own times where considered horrible (to put it mildly) you will logically have at some point have casualties of statues of people that weren't included in the original list of terrible people.
That is not to say that the right-wing isn't going out and destroying statues, we have seen enough examples of right-wing white nationalist posing as ''antifa'' and doing the things they claim the other side is doing.
Why dont they start destroying the biggest slavery monument: the piramides.
Anyways why would a statue piss you off anyways, nobody around in the western world has been a slave in their lifetime so why would you get upset. I am living in the Netherlands where we still have a king, any my grand parents might have been servants to this family but i am not upset when i see him of his family around so whats the deal.
Last edited by tromage2; 2020-07-07 at 11:09 AM.
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
If you prefer a symbolic victory to tangible one...
...then you shall have it.
Not entirely by slaves, that is true. But we do not know if some may have been slaves. We do know however, that slavery existed in Egypt during that time period. And the odds are pretty strong, that the Coliseum in Rome, slaves had some impact on it being built, as slavery was very common. Why wouldn't you use some free labor?
" If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.." - Abraham Lincoln
“ The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to - prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..” - Samuel Adams
I agree that it's likely that some labor were used, especially for quarrying the stones (which historically has been a slave-intensive work).
However, to answer the question of 'why not': one could imagine that slaves weren't good enough for the pharaoh for some religious reasons (or just that slaves weren't good workers) - but exactly what is meant with slavery in ancient Egypt is also a bit unclear, as their concepts seemed to differ a bit.
Yeah, no. All of Egypts pyramids were built during the Old and early Middle Kingdoms with the last structures tapering off towards the end of the Middle Kingdom. Slavery was not a practice in Egypt until the New Kingdom and is suspected to have been imported by the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period. Pyramid builders were seasonal temp workers and fairly well paid ones at that if the archaelogical evidence is anything to go buy (i.e. being fed with beef).
Last edited by Elegiac; 2020-07-15 at 11:55 PM.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
Well, the Romans used slaves and prisoners ( not much different than slaves ) in the arena's for entertainment. I can easily see them using slaves without any feelings for their lives. Then again, some slave owners did treat their slaves well and a Gladiator, could even win their freedom in the arenas if they were a slave. Not all where.
I guess my point is, why tear down a statue of a person or a monument, yet not the Coliseum? I do not think they should of course, but I do sense some hypocrisy in action.
" If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.." - Abraham Lincoln
“ The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to - prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..” - Samuel Adams
1) The Coliseum is, at the end of the day, a piece of public infrastructure and not a monument. What you should be asking for here, logically speaking, is a memorial to be set up for the people who died there.
2) It is not practical to remove the Coliseum from public view without destroying it. The entire reason monuments are getting destroyed was due to resistance to them being rehoused boiling over into people just deciding to get rid of the fucking things by any means.
3) The Coliseum no longer has any connection to a system of oppression and exploitation because the peoples, cultures, and polities that built it have long since transmuted into unrecognizability. The same can't be true of statues commemorating colonial figures.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
Yes, I agree and the problem is that we know so little of those times and we have gone from "built by slaves" to "built without any slaves" with little evidence - since it fits a narrative.
I just explained why slaves might not have been used, but it's also possible that slaves were also used (especially in quarrying). We simply don't know. And regardless of whether there were slaves the pyramids were a gigantic ego-trip without any real benefit for most of the population.
- - - Updated - - -
Technically "the coliseum" is a nick-name based on the gigantic monument of Nero that stood in front of it. So, one can argue that it was already torn down.
That society has transmuted can also be said of many of the European status discussed in this thread.
Obviously it's different in the US with statues of civil war generals raised in the early 1900s.
Or one can attempt to Godwin this thread and say that the Coliseum was built by the spoils of the war that later led to the Jewish diaspora, and we can thus trace a line from the funding of the Coliseum to the holocaust. Is that what you want to commemorate?
Last edited by Forogil; 2020-07-16 at 06:27 AM.
That’s kind of the thing, it seems like tearing down these statues, is teaching people history of those statues, better than them standing there for decades. Look at your post and a large portion of posts on this thread, explaining significance of these monuments. If they were helpful in maintaining or remembering or even learning history, these posts wouldn’t exist.
In noting this... to answer the actual question on what to commemorate... It’s eye of the beholder...
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
We do know the Coliseum was used to hold events which involved slaves, from the historical records we have from the Romans themselves. And the pyramids held religious significance. They where not just randomly placed where ever. They also viewed the Pharaohs as a living god in some cases.
Not disagreeing with your overall points however. And there are certainly a lot of things we do not know for sure about history.
" If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.." - Abraham Lincoln
“ The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to - prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms..” - Samuel Adams