Republican lawmakers called for a statue of slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk to be installed in the U.S. Capitol following his murder.In a draft letter to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) blamed "hateful rhetoric from the left" for the killing."To honor this legacy, we ca...
  • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    281·
    17 hours ago

    If your understanding of why there are any statues of MLK boils down to “he was a famous guy who said stuff and then got shot,” your history teachers have failed you. And if that’s not your understanding, then it’s a terribly dismissive way to describe one of the greatest social traumas for Americans in the 20th century.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      59·
      16 hours ago

      If your understanding of why there are any statues of MLK boils down to “he was a famous guy who said stuff and then got shot,” your history teachers have failed you.

      If we want to get down to the nut of it, he was an icon of a large and very successful social movement who was cut down in his prime by his political opponents.

      But that does technically also qualify for Kirk. Also, for any number of Confederate General statues we’d thrown up across the nation in the wake of Jim Crow. Statues don’t go to the “Good Guys”, they go to the people whose movements have the wealth and the influence to build them.

      If your history teacher hasn’t conveyed that message, you might need to ask her why we’ve got Andrew Jackson’s face on our money and a pedophile carved into Mt Rushmore. Monuments and statues aren’t handed out objectively. They are propaganda works erected by the wealthy and powerful to venerate historical icons. Very real possibility we end up tearing down the MLK memorial under our current President in order to clear a space for these goons, sycophants, and freaks.

      • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        15 hours ago

        One was fighting for a better world, one for a worse one.
        One of them deserves a statue, the other one not so much.
        I just hope that those who want to have a statue of that hateful, spiteful, horrible person get what they deserve.

          • zergtoshi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            5 hours ago

            That’s right, but not what I was focussing on. I was talking about the people who want statues for people who (morally) don’t deserve them.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        15 hours ago

        a pedophile carved into Mt Rushmore.

        Wait, I know trump was SAYING he was going to put his face on…but I never heard news that he DID it!