A Confederate memorial is to be removed from Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia in the coming days, part of the push to remove symbols that commemorate the Confederacy from military-related facilities, a cemetery official said Saturday.

The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.

  • cbarrick@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    There’s a Confederate memorial in the National Cemetery?

    What the actual fuck! They were literally the enemy of the United States.

      • derf82@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        It was a deliberate “fuck you” to the confederacy. They literally said they wanted to bury the soldiers on the land of the man that killed them. Having a Confederate memorial is purely disrespectful. But they put it in the early 20th century where they started that Lost Cause BS while at the same time justifying Jim Crow.

  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

    I dunno, it sounds like the old Roman war memorials depicting their defeated enemies submitting to peace.

    Edit: I just read the Wikipedia article describing the monument’s design and history. The sculptor was actually working in Rome, so the similarity to Roman monuments may not be accidental. But he was also using the monument to imply that Black slaves supported the Confederate cause, so the memorial’s removal is clearly appropriate.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        A shame he stopped where he did. I’m sure that’s a coincidence.

        Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      Do the next sentence too:

      Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

    • NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Yeah if we had treated them the way Rome treated it’s conquests or if they had actually beaten their swords into plough shares this might be true.

      Back in reality their great-grandchildren are trying to bring about civil war 2.

      So no, this is a monument to an imaginary peace held by traitors that should be melted down into a monument to all the slaves who were forced to fight against their own freedom.

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      The whole “lost cause” movement is about making it seem as if the Confederates were the “ethical” side, even though they lost. They symbology of the statue is heavily wrapped up in this concept - that even though the Confederacy was defeated, it was just and noble. Which, of course, implies that it would be noble to try again one day.

  • derf82@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.

    The “party of Lincoln” everyone. /s

    What awful humans Republicans are

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    dope. arlington is for people who died defending america, not for people who died trying to destroy it. racist traitors don’t get consolation prizes, they should’ve been hanged for the traitors they were.

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    11 months ago

    Whats Matthew Perry Got to do with the price of fish ? Oh crappy website cant be scraped for correct article info and instead gets info on Matthew Perry if you dont edit it.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      How is a monument put up in 1914 a trace of history?

      Unless you mean the history of racists who praised the Confederacy but were never a part of it.

    • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      The folks itching to repeat it are the same folks who have hooked their “heritage” on a traitorous nation that lasted less time than some of my underwear and socks.

      I don’t think removing these monuments to traitors from US soil is going to make much of a difference to them.

      Also - monuments aren’t history books, and the folks trying to get sensitive events out of history books are also the same group of people trying to keep the monuments to traitors in place.

      • Tremble@sh.itjust.works
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        11 months ago

        This. I grew up in Virginia with folks talking about how the civil war was about states rights and not about slavery.

        They use all kinds of circular and backwards thinking to somehow suggest that the confederates were heroes.

        Smelt all the confederate statues to make new statues that commemorate all the people who fought against these racist southern bigots.

        Take your southern heritage and shove back up your ass where it came from in the first place.

    • Machinist3359@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Simply replace it with a memorial for the enslaved folks these losers fought to subjugate. Let the Confederate legacy be lost to time and honor the people who persevered through unimaginable evils.

      • DannyMac@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Sadly, there’s probably a huge overlap between the people for keeping that monument and people that wouldn’t be opposed to installing Nazi monuments

    • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      We don’t want to celebrate wrongdoers with memorials.

      There’s a reason why you don’t see statues of Hitler in Germany. That doesn’t mean he’s not part of their history or that they are not trying to learn from the mistakes.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Most of the Confederate monuments were put up by the KKK in the early 20th century as an intimidation tactic.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Honoring racist pieces of shit just makes more people racist pieces of shit.