Churchill statue defaced by `woke' society
If we allow former U.K. prime minister's legacy to be torn down, whose can stand?
The statue of Sir Winston Churchill in downtown Edmonton was found defaced with red paint on Thursday. It's another act of woke totalitarianism.
This comes on the heels of Sir John A. Macdonald statues being removed or vandalized across the country.
Churchill, the British prime minister from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955 was integral in successfully defeating the Nazis during the Second World War and the certain tyranny that evil regime would have inflicted upon all of Europe and perhaps other parts of the world had Churchill not been in power at the time.
Mark Milke, president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary, says it's chilling to contemplate what the world would be like now had Churchill not been there.
“Imagine if Churchill hadn't been there and the United Kingdom either did a peace treaty with Hitler or fell during an invasion,” said Milke, who has an undergraduate history degree and a PHD in political philosophy and international relations.
“Nazi Germany would have controlled much of Europe for perhaps the next 50 years with the Soviet Union controlling the other half and Imperial Japan raping Asia. Canada and the U.S. would have been pretty much alone in the world. I assume South America would have been divided between fascists and communists.”
Under those totalitarian regimes, defacing public property might have led to a lengthy and harsh prison sentence at best or to a death sentence at worst.
Don't scoff. Just this week, Saudi Arabia executed a young man for “protest-related offences” that rights groups say he allegedly committed while under the age of 18. Now there's something worth protesting about.
Mustafa Hashem al-darwish was arrested in May 2015 and charged with protest-related offences, many of which occurred when he was 17. He was executed on Tuesday in Dammam, a statement from Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Interior said.
That's what happens to protesters in totalitarian regimes. That's the kind of tyranny all of those brave Canadian men and boys — 45,000 of whom perished in the Second World War — were fighting against. Few historical figures can withstand current-day scrutiny and those of us living today might not fare so well in the decades to come, either.
The proper way to judge historical figures, says Milke, is by answering the question: “Did they contribute to freedom and flourishing in their own era?”
Clearly, that's the case with Churchill, who was himself a military hero during the South African War and a renowned journalist in his day as well as a prolific and well-paid author.
“Churchill is not a Civil War general from the South fighting to protect slavery. He's not Josef Stalin or Chairman Mao or Adolf Hitler,” continued Milke.
For the historically illiterate who like to throw paint on statues, Stalin is responsible for the deaths of more than 20 million of his own citizens. Mao Zedong's regime in China murdered 70 million of his own citizens and Hitler is responsible for the murder of 10 million people — six million of them Jews — in the Holocaust.
“Churchill defended Jews in an anti-semitic age in his own country and in others,” continued Milke.
Churchill's wartime leadership is significant enough, but even socially, despite his aristocratic upbringing, he “favoured the minimum wage, he favoured cutting factory hours for factory workers, he favoured pensions for widows, he argued Black South Africans should be treated equal to whites, he argued minorities in India should be protected from the majority, so that was Winston Churchill in addition to his wartime effort.
“Without him, the 20th century would have been very, very different post-1945. It would have been much, much worse.”
The society is planning to erect a statue of Churchill in Calgary on June 6, 2022, the 78th anniversary of D-day.
“Obviously, we'll take precautions as to where we put it now,” said Milke.
In a string of tweets Thursday, Premier Jason Kenney derided the vandal who threw red paint on Churchill's statue.
“Edmontonians erected this statue in Winston Churchill Square to honour one of the greatest leaders of the twentieth century. Churchill led the free world with heroic courage and skill to defeat global fascism in the Second World War.”
“People should continue to debate Churchill's complex legacy & record,” tweeted Kenney, “but vandalizing public property like this is shameful. No member of the greatest generation can meet the standards of contemporary wokeness. But we should still honour those who secured our peace and freedom.”
What never seems to get mentioned is these statues are works of art. This destruction is not unlike the Taliban destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001. These woke folk are Talibanesque.
Part of what's happening is younger generations are not learning about our history — how we became if not the best country in the world, then certainly one of the very best. People from all over the world risk everything to move and live here.
We're all shocked and disgusted by recent revelations of the 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children discovered at a former Kamloops Residential School property. According to information that came out during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Indigenous children became infected with tuberculosis at 20 times the rate of non-indigenous children in Canada and the inadequate food many of them received at these schools didn't help their survival. Nor did the treatment they received.
Many of these children, forcibly removed from their homes, were sexually and physically abused, made to feel shame for their culture and beaten if they spoke their language. It's a horrific and shameful legacy and one we should all learn about more fully.
Since Sir John A. Macdonald was the first prime minister to be in power during the establishment of residential schools, now people want to tear down statues of Canada's first prime minister. As Kenney said during a media conference on June 1, without Macdonald, Canada would not exist.
“His authoritative contemporary biographer, Richard Gwyn, said, `No Macdonald, no Canada,'” said Kenney. “I think Canada is worth celebrating. I think Canada is a great historical achievement. It is a country that people all around the world seek to join as new Canadians. It is an imperfect country, but it is still a great country, just as John Macdonald was an imperfect man, but was still a great leader.”
Churchill is worth celebrating, too. If we allow his legacy to be torn down, whose, pray tell, can stand?