Dr. Zizek’s lecture on the history of revolutionary violence made me question some of the ways in which historical conflict is percieved. The killing of George Floyd, and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have presented some interesting perceptions of history. I want to examine why some of these perceptions exist.
One such example of a perception of history is to be found in the USA, where many falsely claim that the American Civil War was “The War of Northern Aggression,” started not by the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter but by the Union. This claim is likely accompanied by an explanation of how the Southern states were simply exercising “State’s Rights,” though which particular rights of a state are never mentioned. The reason this historically inaccurate rhetoric exists today can be traced back to the Republican party’s Southern strategy, where white, formerly Democrat-voting southerners were “switched” to voting Republican in the wake of the civil rights movement. In an 1981 interview, Republican party strategist Lee Atwater explained: “You start out in 1954 by saying, [the n-word]. By 1968 you can’t say [the n-word] — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” By associating the perception of the American Civil War with segregation in this way, “State’s Rights” became a dog whistle for white supremacists in the south, attracting them to the Republican party while keeping support in the north.
In the USA, these perceptions have lead to the contentious issue of removing Confederate statues. Similar debates rose to greater prominence worldwide when protesters toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a slave trader, and pushed it into Bristol Harbour. In New Zealand at least, many statues of colonists have been called into question (though not for the first time), with graffiti appearing on statues of Captain James Cook in Gisborne, and the removal of a statue of Captain John Hamilton in his namesake city. However, there is strong opposition to the removal of statues, with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters calling it “mindless” and a National MP saying it was erasing history. I disagree with this assertion – if I walk up to the statue of Governor Grey in Albert Park, I learn nothing of his Invasion of the Waikato and raupatu that followed. So why do people believe that the statue’s removal would be erasing history? I couldn’t answer this question.
