A few days ago I stumbled upon a video about Confederate Monuments in the United States, specifically - one in New Orleans. A major of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu made a decision to take down a monument dedicated to Robert Edward Lee - commander of Confederate States Army during the Civil War. There are discussions about why the war broke out - is it because of states' rights, slavery or both? I don't want to get into it, nor am I competent enough. The problem for some is that the monuments to generals like Robert E. Lee remind them of times when slavery was practiced and the main question that I asked myself is it OK to take them down because of that? Or more generally is it OK to take down monuments because they remind us of some past injustices, whether they were real or not?
Example that I have locally in my little town here in eastern Croatia is a monument to fallen soldiers of NOB(Narodnooslobodilački rat) or National Liberation War directed against occupational forces of so-called Independent State of Croatia, Nedić's Serbia that where both Nazi puppet states, as well as Montenegro and what is today Croatian coast under Italy.
The problems that someone like me can have with this as a someone who is a libertarian, anti-communist and anti-fascist is that it still represents an ideology of communism. It represents a new man - selfless, learned, healthy, muscular and enthusiastic in spreading the socialist revolution. Under the statue, there are engraved names of men who died in that war and I think that there should be some kind of monument dedicated to them. But does it make it any different?
On one side we have a monument to those who fought against totalitarian regimes, but on the other side we can see another totalitarian ideology that tried to model some kind of new man and it failed. Honestly, I don't mind that monument at all. I think we should learn from history, and there are lessons that can be taught in toughest of times and monuments like these are a glimpse into history and I think it is worth preserving them to remind us of lessons that we may forget. I believe history should be a source from which we learn from our mistakes and try not to repeat them, not something that should be deleted just because we fell that they represent something we despise. What do you think?
