Does anyone else think Trump has a point?

I didn't realise there were two BlueBelle/bluebell on here I think one of needs to change the names are too alike

I would guess that most people on here consider themselves 'good', what do any of us do about the slavery supporting out high tech lifestyles and cheap sweat shop clothes?

The poor whites in the south, just as the poor anywhere, never did have and don't have much in the way of freedom.
I remember when Dylan mentioned that at Live Aid and got booed.

When you can come back and assure me, that everything you posess comes from totally ethical sources, I will be impressed by your 'goodness' until then, we have to consider our own culpability.

People are not automatically bad, when they disagree with your viewpoint, the people that disagree there in the USA have their own history to consider, they try to defend it.

I don't see people going to the Roman ruins and protesting about the Christians being thrown to the lions, or boycotting Morrocan and other eastern holidays because they took slaves from Cornwall. History has its place in the world. I get that people by and large do not like Trump,(although I cannot see he is much different to any of the other war mongering, sex pest, trouble makers ) but, he is right there is good and bad in every group of people.

We can't point the finger until we lead by example. What we have is often provided by slaves, or we wouldn't be able to afford it.

If you think those slave traders were worse in the days when they knew little better, and some believed they had a biblical consent to it, where do we stand now, when we do know better, and are happy to go along with it for a fancy phone?

Just come back to this. Sorry, BlueBelle! My mistake.

No it was my mistake Baggs I ve realised since I wrote the post that there is another BlueBelle but with a small b so it was me wrong not you I think I d better check the name change business out cos if I can confuse my own pen name others will too

How shocking to see this on "Gransnet".

GracesGran - Yes. I think the 45th president is a vile character BUT re the taking down of statues etc - Do we destroy the Elgin Marbles because they are the product of a society based on warfare and slavery? What was, was. Better to know the truth about our past.

sandel having a statue up to Lee does not tell us the truth about the past. Moving the statue to a museum which chronicles the history of slavery, the civil rights movement etc places it in its context and does tell the truth about the past, this would include why it was moved. In general , having a statue raised is a positive gesture so seeing a statue to Lee in a public place with no context is at the very least misleading. Black people in the Southern states still see statues like this every day - many of these people will have had slave ancestors and many of them would have relatives involved ( and maybe murdered) in the fight for civil rights in the 50s and 60s. How does their experience compare in the slightest to seeing the Elgin Marbles( the ownership of which could be a debate for another thread

I agree with the statue being removed as it represents a part of American history that is highly dishonourable and it being put on public display is, I think, an affront to black people. (I think Alidol 's analogy re a Jimmy Savile statue is a very apt one).

I also agree with the anti-fascist groups making their presence felt at the white supremacist protests. As others have said, it is important that vile doctrines such as that of the white supremacists be visibly challenged.

However, I do not think that it is right to instigateviolence as part of a protest and to see it as a valid way of challenging injustices, although I do understand people defending themselves if they are attacked. If one accepts that violence is a legitimate way to achieve one's ends, then I think that sets up a very dangerous scenario.

No I don't think he has a point. The white supremacists are spouting hatred about a certain group in society (non whites) their aim was to incite violence, yes there is violence from both sides but from all the accounts I have read that violence was perpetrated by the alt right groups the KKK and neo I Nazi's. I can't believe that there is a President in the USA who has refused to unequivocally condemn them. The only reason he hasn't is that he has a lot of support from those groups and he is afraid of upsetting those who helped put him in power. We are living in very sad and dangerous times and I worry for my grandchildren.

When Oswald Mosley and his fascists tried to march through the East End in 1936, they were confronted by many anti-fascist demonstrators. Would any of us say that both sides in the Battle of Cable Street were equally to blame? And that there were some "very fine people " amongst the Blackshirts? Or would we see it as brave resistance to fascist ideology, which helped to stall the progress of the British Union of Fascists? I think most people take the latter view.

It is very clear that Nazis like David Duke are prominent in the "alt-right" movement which is responsible for the violence in Charlottesville, and I doubt it will stop there. It takes courage to stand up to these white supremacists. and to tar their opponents with the same brush is absurd. Trump is well aware that many of his supporters are on the racist far-right - hence his appointment of Steve Bannon - and is trying to avoid losing their support.

Bluecat first rate post - the perfect example and much better than references to the Elgin Marbles

As Teresa May pointed out this morning, here in the UK Far Right groups are banned. They work underground on football terraces etc but the authorities know who they are.... they are kept "under control". Thank God we live in a civilised society and not that of America ...we have learned lessons over the years...America seems not to have done. You would have thought by now the KKK would have almost been extinct if there was the political will to do so...obviously not.

I don't think the Savile anology is the same tbh.Savile was a criminal of the vilest sort.
What some posters are saying is that they don't like a statue of a Confederate General from the Civil War because he owned slaves at that time.Presumably there are reasons that some townspeople ( other than white supremacists who quickly got in on the act) like the statue because Lee represents the bravery of a lot of men who fought for the losing side, the war was about territory after all ( it always is)
Freeing the slaves was a bonus side issue for Lincoln.
Perhaps the council there should have had a vote on the removal issue.
The neo nazi thugs will always seize upon something and be ready to mob the streets.
It's not such a cut and dried issue ( the statue not the violence) as people in the UK think IMHO.

The council did vote to remove it Roses.

Well done Theresa May - a clear statement about the far right and the lack of moral equivalence.

You cannot wipe out history. You will get resentment from other groups.

I think the criticisms of Lee and what he is a symbol of are a little more sophisticated than 'he owned slaves'. Not only has Charlottesville voted to remove the statue from the city park( a very public place) but New Orleans removed his statue and that of 3 other Confederate era figures after a democratic City Council vote. Houston renamed a high school that had been named after him - again by a democratic vote of the School Bowrd. As for rewriting history, 'The Lost Cause' revisionist narrative about the Civil War was adopted by Southerners with Lee as its central figure after his death. This grew in popularity and in the 20s monuments to him were erected just as the new Jim Crow segregation laws were adopted and the KKK was experiencing a resurgence. So in fact the statues in the first place resulted from a rewriting of history - it could be said that pulling them down is re-establishing the truth.

Totally agree, can't re-write history, but what you can do is learn and so improve. Isn't that every parent has always tried to teach their young?

Marie who is wiping out history?

There is an Article in "The Atlantic" an American publication.

They argue that General Lee's fiction of kindliness and heroism is based on a person that never existed.

They argue that he was not the stratetician that history would have us believe but in fact his decision to attack the North was a poor one. He was responsible for killing thousands of Americans in the defence of the South's authority to own millions of humans as property because they were black.
Lee's elevation is part of 150 years propaganda campaign to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate case as noble.

In fact "white supremacy" was one of Lee's core convictions.

He talks of slavery as a necessary evil, arguing that "the painful discipline they (the African) are under going is necessary for their instruction as a race"

So rather bizarrly Lee argues that slavery is bad for white people but good for blacks. What the blacks wanted was not important to Lee. As a white (supremacist) he was entitled to make the decision.

His cruelty as a slave owner is well recorded inflicting both physical and mental cruelty on his property. He was notorious for rupturing his black families - something most slave understood was beyond the pale.
He undertook punishment beatings himself upon his property.

I'm pleased to see that most people answered the OP in good faith and many (not all ) accepted that was the way I had put it forward.

I find the fact that the KKK and the Nazi party - or any other hate preaching group - are allowed to exist in the USA makes me even more sure we are more like Europe than America.

I have learned more from you posts about the way history is being, perhaps, put in it's proper place rather than expunged.

I have still not really found an answer how we address and what we say about those who wish to attack the people who come in the name of hatred of some inborn part of another person.

There had to be one - your not you!

ww that chimes with what I read - so what the neo-nazis are defending is a re-written history of Lee promulgated in the 1920s. Whole new slant isn't it? Good on the Bushes by the way - again no moral ambiguity or equivalence

these are the people you are talking about

Never excuse them.

They 'the white extremist' in terms of history have only be on 'American'
soil for a blink of an eye.
On the one hand you have Americans (I Count my newly found cousin in this)
Who spend time looking into their family tree in the hope that they have relatives in the UK and Ireland.

And then you have people spouting that they have some God given right to America or at least the Deep south.
It was their forefathers that took the slaves from their homeland.

I wonder what history is actually taught in the South.