How I defiled Sir Winston Churchill: an Eristic experience

[Nibor the Priest]

As you may know, there've been Black Lives Matter protests in the UK (partly in sympathy with the American protesters, partly because our police suck too.) These have included various acts of disrespect to public statuary, including chucking a statue of slave trader Edward Colston into the fucking sea. Despite concerned citizens' wailing about "erasing history", nobody outside Bristol had heard of Edward Colston last week and this has probably done more to educate the British public about him than leaving his statue standing for another century would have done.

In preparation for the big BLM protest on Sunday, which ended up not actually happening, some statues, including this one of noted tactician, imperialist, cigar aficionado, eugenicist, alcoholic, giant baby lookalike, architect of the Bengal famine and national patron deity Sir Winston Churchill, were encased in protective boxes, because the establishment know what they've done:


Rightwing journalist Antonello Guerrera tweeted a photo of the box, with the text "Churchill’s statue today in London. I’m speechless."

This went semi-viral, probably just in the UK, with various replies from patriots and pisstakers.

I copied that picture into GIMP and spent about two minutes mashing this up after a shot from TV's "The Walking Dead":


to make this:


I did not expect anyone to
(a) believe that it was a real picture, or
(b) believe that I had expected anyone to believe it was a real picture.

Unfortunately my fellow humans have let me down on both counts.

The picture has gone viral and the responses are about one part people appreciating the joke; one part people thinking it's real and hilarious; one part people thinking it's real and terrible; one part people who think it's real but a false-flag operation by anti-BLMers; one part people mad at me for "spreading fake news"; one part people thinking they're clever for spotting it's "fake"; three parts "don't racist open inside??" and four parts predictable arguments about Churchill and Was Someone Really Bad Just Because They Starved Three Million Indians and You'd Be Speaking German If It Weren't For Him, because for some reason rightwingers always think the worst thing about a Nazi victory would have been having to learn a new language.

This is still going on, even after I changed my twitter username to "You're not meant to believe the statue thing is real" yesterday afternoon.

Some people seem to have been joining in the fun: https://twitter.com/search?q=%22churchill%27s%20statue%20today%20in%20london%20i%27m%20speechless%22&src=typed_query

Today I made the quality journalism of the Sunday Times:

(who not only can't be arsed to fact-check, they are too classy for contractions.)
The article is behind a paywall so I don't know if the picture is in there.

Hail Eris, I guess.

[chaotic neutral observer]

 


I love it.

In all honesty, I was unaware of Churchill's racist pedigree; it doesn't get a lot of air time.  Googling "Winston Churchill racism" was...informative.

[Junkenstein]

8.5/10, the Yes Men would be proud.

You have potential. Do not disappoint.

[Doktor Howl]

In preparation for the big BLM protest on Sunday, which ended up not actually happening, some statues, including this one of noted tactician, imperialist, cigar aficionado, eugenicist, alcoholic, giant baby lookalike, architect of the Bengal famine and national patron deity Sir Winston Churchill, were encased in protective boxes, because the establishment know what they've done:

Oh, that's the guy that managed to get the Brits to fight the Nazis long enough, right?  Oh, the bastard, etc, etc.

[Doktor Howl]

I mean, Burma (and it's rice) had fallen to the Japanese and there was that massive drought a couple of seasons prior, affecting national stocks, but why let a couple of pesky facts get between us and attacking the last non-trashed opponent of the Axis?

But I have to ask, why would anyone want to trash the people that defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo?  What possible motive would anyone have for dragging the enemies of fascist regimes?  Certainly not an attempt to whitewash the axis by damning their enemies or anything.

You cunts will be after Eisenhower and Montgomery next.

[Cain]

No-one wanted to trash his statue. That's the whole thing. The government boarded it up as a "precautionary measure" while whispering to the press that "they want to take away YOUR CHURCHILL", which precisely no-one had said. There wasn't even a protest yesterday, so when the Nazis (yes, actual Nazis) turned up to "defend" the statue, they instead got bored, started drinking and then picked fights with the police.

[Doktor Howl]

There wasn't even a protest yesterday, so when the Nazis (yes, actual Nazis) turned up to "defend" the statue,

This entire timeline is fucked.

[Cain]

There wasn't even a protest yesterday, so when the Nazis (yes, actual Nazis) turned up to "defend" the statue,

This entire timeline is fucked.

They were literally doing Heil Hitler salutes while standing around the statue. It was....quite the sight.

[Nibor the Priest]

I mean, Burma (and it's rice) had fallen to the Japanese and there was that massive drought a couple of seasons prior, affecting national stocks, but why let a couple of pesky facts get between us and attacking the last non-trashed opponent of the Axis?

He redirected food from India to elsewhere in the empire, then blamed the Indians for "breeding like rabbits" and refused to send aid.

Popular country Ireland did an educative thread on this, and a lot more of Churchill's record, a while back: https://twitter.com/ireland/status/954797879499083776

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion." - Sir Winston Churchill

"I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." - Sir Winston Churchill

Some sources:
BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10/how_churchill_starved_india.html
Guardian: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study



The suggestion that Black Lives Matter protesters (well, the imaginary ones who turned up and vandalised the statue, which didn't happen) are trying to absolve the Axis is just bizarre.

For what it's worth, this isn't the argument I wanted to start, though. Sorry for misreading the room.

[Junkenstein]

There wasn't even a protest yesterday, so when the Nazis (yes, actual Nazis) turned up to "defend" the statue,

This entire timeline is fucked.

They were literally doing Heil Hitler salutes while standing around the statue. It was....quite the sight.

"... The far right demonstration was marred by outbreaks of violence" kind of shit has been going around a lot in the media. As though the issue is the few extremists with himmler costumes.

This is pretty much the goal of the alt right shit. Normalise enough nasty shit that a far right demo is OK, it's just those people spoiling it. This is why there's invariably a goon in a crap suit to denounce a few of his own to laud the "patriots". It's like our own personal libertarian movement and that ended going so well in the US.

We will end up with Branson running a coalition with Tommy Robinson at this rate. Probably with Mr motivator as health sec. Bernard manning as foreign sec. Sadowitz as home sec. Ken dodds accountant at the exchequer etc.

[Nibor the Priest]

"... The far right demonstration was marred by outbreaks of violence" kind of shit has been going around a lot in the media. As though the issue is the few extremists with himmler costumes.

This is pretty much the goal of the alt right shit. Normalise enough nasty shit that a far right demo is OK, it's just those people spoiling it.

And when I scribble on a picture of a board covering a statue, it's "you cunts" and I have to answer for half a culture war.

I feel I've been done wrong, and I demand I get over it.

[Cain]

Though my dissertation was more on the mainstreaming of "counterjihadist narratives" through government counterterrorism programs and the press, I really feel like I could just through the whole thing and cut-and-paste in "bullshit about cultural Marxism, immigrants and Labour" and it would still be a coherent scholarly piece.

[Faust]

Dont racist open inside

[Doktor Howl]

There wasn't even a protest yesterday, so when the Nazis (yes, actual Nazis) turned up to "defend" the statue,

This entire timeline is fucked.

They were literally doing Heil Hitler salutes while standing around the statue. It was....quite the sight.

I feel as if the Large Hadron Collider might have been a mistake after all.

[Doktor Howl]

He redirected food from India to elsewhere in the empire, then blamed the Indians for "breeding like rabbits" and refused to send aid.

Did you check the date that occurred on?   

And where in India was that food directed from?