Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

The United States. If this is some sort of technical 'gotcha' that they were the Confederate States by then that isn't recognised. It's called the American civil war for a reason.

---------- Post added at 21:10 ---------- Previous post was at 21:09 ----------

Oh I see. It's because I didn't use The United States instead of America. :rolleyes:

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

Germany was very selective in it's teaching of history and that's not just me that's from my friends that were west germans at the time and it was taught with a very heavy dose of guilt whilst as i said in east germany the authorities absolved the population of any responsibility for what the Nazi's had done but gave a fuller education of it. Robert E Lee was what at that the time they called a southern gentleman and as nearly all such people he had slaves he wasn't responsible for the culture of slavery though he was like many many others a user of the culture. He was a very good general and achieved significant military victories and that's why statues were put up in his honour and he fought that war with honour for the time.

Do i as an individual agree with slavery absolutely not it is repugnant to me but i grew up in a country and culture that had long since adopted that position and I'm able to acknowledge that had i been bought up in the southern america of that time my opinion and perspective may have been radically different.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

No technical "gotcha".

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

Yes and I am sure you, and everyone else, calls it 'America'.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

They seceded in 1860 the first conflicts were in 1861 and no the north didn't recognise the C.S.A but at the time of hostilities they were technically not a part of the U.S and while slaves were a big reason there were other reasons for why they split and why the war happened. Despite the belief of the south it's a part of history and there are still many in those southern states who feel connected to that time and the confederacy and are not Nazi's or far right nutjobs at all. I get uneasy when we start messing about with any history as i feel it's a slippery slope that ends at some point with a worthless history rewritten so many times no one has any faith or belief in it.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

Anyone who knows what happened in the southern states after the war would say that he was a patriot defending his state from almost complete destruction and it's population from mass rape and murder.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

If they had won the civil war they probably would have counted their independence from the date they claimed to have left but without the rest of the country, or any other country, recognising it then they were never an Independent country. It was a civil war after all.

And yes it did have other reasons than slavery.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

And the statues weren't put up until the 1910's and 1920's, around the same time as the Jim Crow laws came in - they were part of the revisionist history of the badly treated South.

Lee himself said there shouldn't be statues of him. Nobody has a problem with stuff like this being in a museum - but a statue is a celebration, and how can someone who was a traitor to the USA be celebrated; we don't see statues of Sir Oswald Mosley or Lord Haw Haw in the UK.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

But what happened is what happened after the war. It changed the course of the country. Lots of bad things have happened to countries that started wars then lost but they don't justify the war in the first place. Unless he was a time traveler it was the objections he had prior to it that caused him to fight in it.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

Exactly.

It's not representative or I would be worried too.
The Don's words are indefensible and the US manufacturers that have left his now-defunct advisory council like Johnson & Johnson and GE are testament to this.
Those who crowed about the UK being at a front of trade deal with the US should now know it's a valueless promise.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

No it's not. Stop making stuff up Andrew. :rolleyes:

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

And yet Abraham Lincoln himself didn't think he was a traitor as no one not even Jefferson Davis were ever tried for treason.

Why would there be a statue of Lord Haw Haw for providing everyone with a laugh in our darkest hours beside which he was an American who renounced his citizenship of Britain perhaps better examples would be charles I and oliver Cromwell considering one was tried for treason and the other for regicide (admittedly after death) are there statues of them, why yes less than 2 miles apart as well but then I guess they're not facists and you need the comparisons to be as bad as possible

War is always bad and it was always going to be fought on Virginia 's doorstep he knew that and that's why he refused high command in the union army offered by Abraham Lincoln himself to defend his home state.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

Maybe that was because Lincoln wanted there to be peace between the two sides and any such persecution might have fuelled even more resentment...Perhaps that was something that the allies should have considered after 1918 in Europe when they decided to really scapegoat Germany. We might have avoided WW2 if they had.

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

All those celebrating the removal of statues etc. out to be careful what they wish for because from where I'm sitting there are plenty of symbols directly and indirectly related to horrors of the past so at what point is all this going to stop? When enough people get angry enough to make it happen? How many people is enough and how angry do they have to get? How far back are we going to go in expunging any such symbols of discrimination, slavery from our society? Slavery wasn't all white on black either - it went both ways and even within each racial group. Are we going to stop at statues or include paintings for example. Is it going to stop at 'art' symbols or are we going to find angry people start demanding that certain huge German and Japanese companies, for example, which were key to and grew rich on the horrors committed in WWII, for example, be targeted in some way, have their names changed and their history exposed for all to see. I can fully understand why people might get very upset about such things and want to react but this could easily become a very slippery slope.

As regards the make-up of each side of the trouble in the US, I reckon there were degrees of dangerous extremist on both sides and some using the situation just to stir up trouble for reasons best known to themselves. Were there more of one type than the other in this case, well probably yes but to claim they were all as bad as eachother is patent nonsense. Yes there were probably more extreme right wing nutters but let's not pretend that extremists of whatever type aren't just as nasty and dangerous as eachother.

If we're not careful what I can see happening over time is an increasing number of tit for tat demonstrations, attacks etc. which, unless tough action is taken, could escalate into big trouble as one side seeks revenge on the other and the ante is upped...

:shrug:

Re: US: Violent clashes Charlottesville
 

It's true Lincoln did want that, he was also very concerned a court might find in their favour as well though.