The Churchill Question

American astronaut

Scott Kelly stepped unwittingly into a social media hornets’ nest when he chose to quote former British prime minister Winston Churchill to send a message of unity to his compatriots in a time of arguably unprecedented political acrimony. “One of the greatest leaders of modern times, Sir Winston Churchill,” tweeted Kelly, “said, ‘in victory, magnanimity’. I guess those days are over.” No doubt intended as innocuous pabulum, Kelly’s tweet generated plenty of acrimony and division itself, all of it catalysed by his apparent endorsement of Churchill’s ‘greatness’. The scolds and harrumphers, who seem perpetually to be lurking on Twitter, quickly descended on poor Kelly, pointing out that Churchill supported British imperialism on the grounds of racial superiority, that he was in large part responsible for the 1943 Bengal famine and the deaths of millions. Alarmed, Kelly backpedalled, tweeting that he would “educate” himself further, only to incur the wrath of those who still venerate Churchill, who accuse the latter’s critics of taking his words and actions out of context, and insist that he must be remembered above all else as the man who led the effort to defeat the Nazis. In typical social media fashion, Churchill had been shorn of complexity, presented as either a hero or a villain without the faintest consideration that he might have been both. That said, at least for Kelly, the outcry perhaps did succeed in complicating Churchill, in reminding him that history as written by the victors (a remark often (mis)attributed to Churchill) must be disputed.