Some Disordered Thoughts

So this is a thing that happened:

https://wkow.com/2020/06/23/protesters-pull-down-forward-statue-outside-state-capitol/

Demonstrators had been marching around downtown Madison, frustrated after the arrest of a protester earlier in the day.

The same group also tore down the Col. Hans Christian Heg statue a short time later. The group then went on to throw the statue into Lake Monona. Heg fought for the Union during the Civil War and was a stark opponent of slavery during that time.

I have thoughts, and surprisingly feelings, on this that I would like to share.

Now I can image some preemption along the lines of  "Why are you talking about this when there's so much else going on?"

To which I respond:

A) Its my blog, I can write about what I want. Not everything has to serve some grand political purpose or be . This should go without saying, but so should a lot of things that still somehow need to be said.

Demonstrators had been marching around downtown Madison, frustrated after the arrest of a protester earlier in the day.

The same group also tore down the Col. Hans Christian Heg statue a short time later. The group then went on to throw the statue into Lake Monona. Heg fought for the Union during the Civil War and was a stark opponent of slavery during that time.

B) I don't think I have any message on police brutality, systematic racism, or many other parts of *gestures* all this that doesn't have a better messenger. But I am the worlds leading expert on my own feelings.

So, the story is that yesterday there was a protest in Madison, and after dark the folks who were left apparently decided on using vandalism as direct action. Fair enough, I suppose. And as part of this they tore down, decapitated, and dumped in the lake a statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg.

The TL;DR of Heg's life is that he was an immigrant and an abolitionist. He led Wisconsin's branch of the Wide Awakes. He commanded the 15th Wisconsin Volunteers and was, per the the inscription, felled at Chickamauga.

So naturally, in the context of national uprising against racism, police injustice, and that everything is fucked up and bullshit, protesters did this:



And I think this was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. I could waste your time with a lot of dissembling along the lines of #notallprotestors, but bluntly I think that a lot of people are angry, some people just like to use the cover of protest to smash, and people do make mistakes like this when their blood is up.

Public monuments and statues are symbols. They make public statements about what, who, and how a community should commemorate the past. Given how much of politics is essentially aesthetic and symbolic (a fact which I am not terribly pleased with, but whose reality I acknowledge) erecting such statues is a symbolic and political act. So is tearing them down.

Building a statue of the traitor Lee in a black community in the 1960's says a combination of "Actually the Confederacy was good", "Fuck you" and "know your place".  Tearing down or vandalism that statue is a (long overdue) repudiation of all that.

Building statues is a symbolic act. Tearing them down is a symbolic act. But What is this supposed to symbolize? And more, meaningfully, what is actually symbolizing to people?

I won't pretend to know what the intention behind this was, but I suspect it wasn't terribly thought-out and the people responsible (assuming they are our noble comrades in the struggle for justice, and not fascist running-dogs trying to besmirch the good name of the Real Left) are either scrambling to construct a post-hoc rationalization, trying to quietly pretend it didn't happen, or blamimg someone else. That's what people usually do when the fuck up.

But in understanding how the the general public will interpret acts of anonymous vandalism like this there really is no other way to interpret the "text" than the death of the author.

And in that interpretation how would the general public interpret this? Chaos, destruction, disorder. I'm a bit worried that if this becomes what most people (who you need to remember are less political, less engaged, less informed than you - and will still be in November) associate with BLM, social justice, and left-of-center politics in general. Because, bluntly, there's a whole bunch of comfortable (white) people who don't have a preference between the peace of the conquered and the peace of justice as long there's peace. And if we want the peace of justice, we need to win in November, and win big, and that means getting at least some of those people to vote for us by showing them that its the police who are the rioters and the right that is party of  chaos, misrule and violence.