Erasing History !

When the second world war came to an end the symbol of Germany's National Socialist party - the Swastika - was torn down from buildings and destroyed.  It is illegal in that country to use the Swastika as a means of nostalgia in advertising displays or for any commercial purpose.  That rejection of the Nazi regime came both from the conquered German people and from the occupying forces of the country's victors.  Germans were eager to forget the horrors of the concentration camps and the Holocaust.

A century earlier the Americans fought a civil war and when it ended the Confederate states suffered a similar occupation.  That nation was divided into an industrial north and an agrarian south.  The difference was that the defeated south retained pride in their famous generals and preserved old battlefields.  The " Stars and Bars " - the flag of the Confederacy - proudly flew over state houses and statues that commemorate the war take pride of place in cities and towns throughout the region - and have done so until now without incident.

There were many grievances as the cause of that war but the pivot was clearly the issue of slavery. Cotton was underpinning the economy of the south and that depended on slaves to work the cotton fields.  Abraham Lincoln wanted America to be a slave free nation.  It took a war to force that decision on the south.

In todays world the focus has changed.  Many Americans now see that war as purely a matter of white supremacists fighting for their supremacy over people with a black skin.  Angry mobs are rioting in the streets and demanding that statues of Confederate generals be torn down and the Stars and Bars removed from state houses.  It seems that many want all reference to the civil war erased.

That seems to be a very selective objective.  The angst is directed solely at the years of the civil war and completely ignores the foundation of the American nation.   George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and most of the people they venerate were slave owners.  That was an era when Africa was exploited by many world nations and slavery was common in many sectors of what was then the great British Empire.

More to the point, Generals like Robert E Lee had the respect of northern commanders.  He was a brilliant tactician and he won many encounters.  The Confederacy fought a war that divided families and could have gone either way except for the industrial might of the north being able to arm and supply its forces while the south suffered a debilitating naval blockade.   It was a war fought with honour by both sides.

This rejection of the Confederacy is fast becoming a hysterical crusade to tar it with a white supremacy label.  The angry mobs are trying to rewrite history.  The rhetoric is now depicting those war years as a shameful event in the American psyche that should be deplored in similar manner to the Hitler era.

Some time in the future America will come to regret this carnage of statues and memorabilia.  It would be like Australia trying to suppress all memory of Ned Kelly.   He was a criminal who murdered three policemen and held up banks, but he was a part of our early history and we remember him with pride.