Pulling Down Statues, Removing Movies, Deleting History?
Channel: Daily Insight
Date: 2020-06-12

Modern-day book burning is upon us. Protesters from around the world have found a new target — statues. Statues from across the globe are being defaced or toppled because of their links with the slave trade. The statue of Edward Colston was ripped down a few days ago by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol and dumped in the River Avon. He has since been fished out. Confederate statues from around America have been defaced or toppled as protesters go on the warpath. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling for the removal of Confederate statues from the US Capitol. Protesters in Australia are demanding for the removal of Captain James Cook monuments, despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s pleas that Captain Cook had no involvement with slavery. In the UK, protesters are demanding the removal of the Cecil Rhodes statue from the University of Oxford, much to the angst of Vice-chancellor Louise Richardson who has warned against “hiding our history”, and stating that “we need to confront our past and learn from it”. Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, holds a similar view. But it’s not just statues that are being targeted. American pay TV network HBO have pulled the movie Gone with the Wind due to “racist content”, due to the movie depicting the American South during the US Civil War, despite the actress Hattie McDaniel being the first ever African-American to win an Oscar. Little Britain has also been pulled from a number of streaming services due to its inappropriate blackface content. Similarly, Australian Comedian Chris Lilley is in the process of being deleted. A number of his shows have been removed from Netflix due to his use of brownface while portraying non-white characters like Jonah from Tonga. The long-running American TV show Cops has been axed after 32 seasons, apparently due to its celebration of bad policing, and its depictions of poor American communities. So here we are. Fully blacked out. We’ve removed all that is wrong in history. Is that what we wanted? Just to erase the past? You know what this reminds me of? George Orwell’s 1984 — The Ministry of Truth. The Ministry was responsible for any necessary falsification or deletion of historical events. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in this kind of world where we just blackout history… Do you?

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#statues #blacklivesmatter #georgeorwell