I don't care if you're canvassing in a suit and tie or spray painting Marxist slogans on banks - respectability doesn't matter. Results do - and consequentially speaking, destroying things that people consider symbols of pride is not going to win you many friends among moderates. If you want to argue that trying to clandestinely pull down a statue prompts a national conversation about the motives of the vandals, then sure, I can agree with that reasoning. But actually making the argument "no accomplished people should be celebrated at all if they weren't morally squeaky-clean"? That's purity politics, and a continued association between progressivism and puritanism is not going to win any friends or allies.

The people who consider Confederate statues “symbols of pride” are not moderates, just in case there was confusion there.

there wasn't - to be absolutely clear, I don't think the generals of a breakaway slave-state should be celebrated. Hot take, I know.

There's a significant difference between a statue to Robert E Lee and a statue to Churchill (or, say, a stained-glass celebration of this Fisher guy).

Fisher has published works confirming his belief that different races have different “innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development”. Is that not racist enough to be considered racist?

yes, that's obviously racist. But you do realise that publishing about how much he hates racial minorities isn't the thing he's being celebrated for? Robert E Lee's primary contribution to the world was trying to defend the right to own slaves. If Fisher was being celebrated as a race scientist or whatever then I'd be against that too. It's not like celebrating Fisher's accomplishment is an endorsement of his racial beliefs - a statue celebrates a person's achievement, not the entirety of their being.

This entire idea is backwards as hell.

There aren't singular people behind progress. If Newton had never been born we would still have Calculus, and in fact we don't teach Newton's calculus in schools. Einstein was part of a team, and his team was only slightly ahead of another team.

Statues and shit paint a picture of a lie: That great people drive the world.

Human progress happens because other areas progress, the new ideas are inevitable, the person who does them has no real bearing on whether they happen or not. History is not driven by "great men" but by society working together.

The entire "great man of history" thing is actually a giant pile of racist garbage, used to promote unjust systems and reinforce tribalisms, which is the very thing you're talking about it being good for.

Also, Churchill (who I believe you brought up earlier) was a piece of dog shit who starved millions of people in India out of spite. Very few people have done as much actual evil as Churchill did, and his statues and images should be shit on.

The fact that you aren't aware of those things is entirely down to "great man of history" nonsense being the place where you get your ideas. It's bad, it's backwards, and it's really not defensible.

I get that you're arguing a systemic position and it's one that I mostly agree with but I do think you take it too far - great man don't drive history alone, but they do contribute incrementally to it. The Wright brothers weren't the only ones trying to invent the plane, many had come before and were attempting simultaneously, and it was all based on existing work from those who came before, but they were successful where others were not. That counts for something.

Where did I say that either the great men of history model, or national pride, were good things? My whole point that I explicitly laid out was that attacking symbols that people think are good is not good praxis. That doesn't mean that perpetuating myths is good, but if you want to win people over to your side, taking a shit on thinga they think are good is not the way to do it. It just makes you feel good in your righteous indignation, which is basically the image a lot of moderates have of progressivism in general.

Teams are important, but sometimes "great men" have a huge impact on history. What do you think the world would look like today if Arthur Wellesley hasn't been present at the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon Bonaparte rolled over the Allied lines?

> What do you think the world would look like today if Arthur Wellesley hasn't been present at the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon Bonaparte rolled over the Allied lines?

Most likely, another general would have defeated Napoleon.

Wellington wasn’t some unique tactical genius. He had 1.5 times the men Napoleon did. I’m sure he was a perfectly competent general, but if he wasn’t there, the next guy in line would be.

Doubt it. Napoleon came close to winning as it was. Having more men doesn't count for much if they're in the wrong position.

And vice versa, Napoleon is a prime example of an individual who changed the course of history.

Not tearing statues down and not scouring flawed people from history also didn't help. Cancelling people who do it is also purity politics. They got exhausted trying to be polite and nonviolent while nothing changed or things got worse, tore down a racist statue erected by racists for racist reasons, and now you claim that's why you don't listen to anything they say even though you weren't listening before.

are you under the impression I'm defending Confederate statues? To be clear, I'm not; I'm defending the celebration of people like Fisher, the subject of this actual article. Fuck the confederates.

The Union celebrated General Lee. Maybe we should tear it down, too.