(Since I wrote this post, I have seen a number of academics and historians make this point more clearly and more succinctly than I have below. I suggest you reads their posts – especially Melitta Hogarth’s work on the AARE blog. I’m retaining my posting here merely as a reflection of my own thoughts, as an erstwhile history enthusiast and teacher).
Perhaps not surprisingly, there are plenty of bad faith arguments about protests and protesters at the moment. And, equally not surprisingly, many of these bad faith arguments stem form sources with vested ideological interests in maintaining the status quo. Take, for example, the dishonest stories promoted by The Australian newspaper regarding the spread of COVID in Victoria; despite a clear denial from the deputy chief medical officer, journalists are attempting to suggest that the current second wave of outbreaks are the responsibility of the #BLM protestors – and not the result of family gatherings. This is no longer journalism in any way, shape or form. When journalists attempt to denigrate democratically elected leaders – through outright dishonesty, as in this case – we are no longer dealing with the ‘marketplace of ideas’ (and how I detest that phrase), and instead advancing a strictly one-sided agenda.
Another example is the arguments about statues. This has plenty of interest to the modern civics scholar. I’m particularly interested in the ‘arguments’ made by those defending the statues, and criticising those who are pulling them down. I think there has been a bit of an evolution in the arguments made by these people. The first argument is that this is an example of lawlessness, vandalism and civil disobedience. The second argument is that these are historical artefacts, and they should not be torn down as they have some value. And finally, the third argument is that by tearing down these arguments, we are erasing our history, and instead we should recognise that the people these statues represent are complex, with good and bad traits.
None of these arguments hold much weight with me, to be honest. They’re either ignorant or they’re a veil to hide something far more sinister. Let’s take the third argument – the erasure of history. The first question that springs to mind (and it’s critical in every sense of the word) is whose history are we erasing? Building of statues to commemorate the actions of certain individuals necessarily ignores the histories of their individuals and groups – especially those that have been marginalised. So, if you want to build a statue to Lachlan Macquarie, you need to recognise that by commemorating him, we are ignoring the history of those people that he attacked and killed. Statues are not just representations of history, they are history-making in action. And that leads to some of the other arguments. In the US, at least, many of the statues that have been torn down were not built in the first decades after the Civil War; instead, they were build as a response to desegregation – that is, their purpose was less to commemorate, and more to threaten. Again, this is hardly new or revolutionary – but statue-defenders seem to be unaware or unwilling to countenance it. And to my final point: rather than an act of ‘the mob’ or lawlessness, tearing down statues is what people do- it is an expression of democracy. In many ways, it’s an act of solidarity. Individuals working alone would struggle to pull down a statue – but as a group, as a demos – it’s a very powerful act of democracy.