Let’s leave statues to history

Hello All of you, 

I was thinking if I should comment current situation connected to protests and riots around the world, we can see in the news every day, but after today’s article, I read I really must. I read today that in France that was marked statue of the leader of Free France and the French Republic Charles de Gaulle by the word „racist“. Fight for equality and tolerance is extremely important and I do not want to discuss this at all. I just want to remind you that it is important to understand historical consequences as well.  

We have to understand what does it means to be “racist” or to be “intolerant” today and what does it mean in the past. Was Winston Churchill racist because he wants to preserve the British Empire? Colonialism is a problematic part of history, but can we simply destroy such type of historical figure based on the fact that this person did his job and what to do what politics of that time should do? In Churchill time Great Britain was an empire and the job of every politic of that time was to preserve this empire. Did anybody from these people on streets talked to him and does understand what had Churchill really in his head? I cannot judge it. Remember that it was the first politic in the UK who openly resist Adolf Hitler and without him, the United Kingdom would probably sign a separate peace with Hitler after France capitulation in 1941.

Even I am not a big fan of Charles de Gaulle's political approach he was the key person who contributes to end of the civil war in Algeria and transformed France politics. Together with Churchill was the key leader in European resistance against fascism in World War II.

Every country which had colonies (and believe me in certain time every country wants to have a colony – only resources and location was limitation) didn’t want to lose it. You can calculate to imperial countries except for the above-mentioned countries as well Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Japan. Was every leader of these countries in the whole colonial age all the time personally racist and such evil that we must vilify these figures? Please remember that even the USA declared that never was the colonial state it is not true (Philippines + islands in pacific). 

I would put one question on the table – was Abraham Lincoln racist or he protects black people? Why I am asking? Abraham Lincoln prohibit slavery, but his government keeps in society strong segregation and even slaves were liberated they didn’t have the same right as white people. (prohibition of slavery was not Abraham Lincoln's key war target, and this was possible only due to changes in the situation on battlefields (after the Battle of Gettysburg). Again, I am not so brave to judge this. I would like to remind you that slavery was prohibited in all USA states in 1865 – this is less than 50 years before World War I and only 155 years until today's days – from that time society made great progress in the question of tolerance. In the history of mankind, it is a very short period.

Think about it - what is the main reason why are West European countries so wealthy and why is democracy so developed? One of the important factors is colonization. These countries used colonial resources and developed rapidly and connected to that regime moved slowly to liberate democracy as there grow a group of the strong middle class. Colonization was not done by the leaders only – who were people who control colonies? Made a trade and transport commodities? These people were our ancestors. We have to accept it and understand that this is the part of history we have to deal with. 

Let’s think about what we can do at this moment, how we can improve society and tolerance, and how to live in a better world, and let’s leave statues to history. All these figures had some influence on history and create today’s world (even you like or not). All of them were human beings and in many cases, they would be different if they would grow in today's western society. So, we have to be careful to judge the history – all these figures were people like you and me, many of them were limited by age when they born, and they did the best they could. (I do not generalize here to all historical figures but talking about examples as Churchill or de Gaulle who made great good and made some mistakes and was no 100% tolerate to everybody). Destruction of statues will not change anything. Change is inside us. In the case that we say we should be tolerant let’s tolerate our history and its mistakes as well – instead of that let's learn from it. 

Good days to all of us.

Karl K.