Why cant Britain handle the truth about Winston Churchill?

A person from a racist time was racist? What a shocker!

I find it difficult to care, one way or the other, because he's long dead.

I'm sure most people don't really care either. If you asked the average person on the street about Churchill, they aren't going to be thinking about his policies or his impact on wider society. They're going to think:-

Churchill was prime minister in WWII -> Hitler was the bad guy -> We won the war ∴ Churchill was a good prime minister

durangodawood said:

What is getting destroyed? A myth? I think reality should get priority over myth making among historians.

I do think we'll need to find a way to recognize how greatness and evil coexist in societies and individuals.

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There is the matter of perspective. Ghandi's push for independence resulted in horrendous violence between religious and nationalist groups, and the splitting of India and Pakistan, which has caused conflict and oppression to this day. He - according to some biographers - expressed disdain for black africans during his time in SA, using the derogatory term kaffir for example, and believed that the whites should stay in power there. It all depends what metric you use - with Churchill, a major role in coalescing resistance to Hitler, with Ghandi, independence for India. Both came with a heavy cost in human lives. Everyone has their sacred cows, what can be irritating about the woke crowd is the sense they give of their own perceived superiority or the superiority of their particular set of sacred cows. When looked at, this sense always turns out to be bs.

durangodawood said:

No actually a lot of people, myself included, were not aware of Churchills views until quite recently.

The challenge is now how to reconcile individual greatness with vileness that was woven into the larger culture. The path to this goes through reality, not around it.

One precious bit of conservative ideology that must be abandoned is that the individual is responsible for everything they think, say, or do. We all have to recognize how much people are products of their times.

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I think there's a difference between how politicians are viewed in Europe and in the US. Over here at least as it seems to me politicians are generally just expected to do their job and listen to the people they represent (not that they always do), but I get the impression that a lot of people over there form an emotional attachment, at least to presidential candidates, and seem to feel some need to either put them on a pedestal or hate them with a fury. The author of the article is way off if he believes many people idolise Churchill, it's more just the case that Brits (and others) think he did a bloody good job as a war PM.

Think about Reagan - some of the absolute horror unleashed through the deposing of democratically elected governments and the installing of some of the most sadistic animals ever to rule a country by the Reagan administration led to the stuff of nightmare across Latin America, but from a US perspective he was a great president.

myst33 said:

They create an unecessary conflict between civilizations. "Your heroes were not woke" - so what? Being "woke" was not a thing, when they, for example, saved Britain from Hitler. I do not expect Indian or African heroes to be more "woke". That does not mean I will dedicate my life to proving that. So, whats the motivation behind all this?

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"Woke panic" is literally making people afraid of discussing reality in a historic context. Instead, we see people retreat to myth and plant their flag there.

Tom 1 said:

I think there's a difference between how politicians are viewed in Europe and in the US. Over here at least as it seems to me politicians are generally just expected to do their job and listen to the people they represent (not that they always do), but I get the impression that a lot of people over there form an emotional attachment, at least to presidential candidates, and seem to feel some need to either put them on a pedestal or hate them with a fury. The author of the article is way off if he believes many people idolise Churchill, it's more just the case that Brits (and others) think he did a bloody good job as a war PM.

Think about Reagan - some of the absolute horror unleashed through the deposing of democratically elected governments and the installing of some of the most sadistic animals ever to rule a country by the Reagan administration led to the stuff of nightmare across Latin America, but from a US perspective he was a great president.

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The Reagan worship here is ridiculous. I think its mainly about latching onto certain key tenets of his ideology while maintaining appalling ignorance of many of his actual polices, and especially of his rogues gallery of a cabinet.

Tom 1 said:

There is the matter of perspective. Ghandi's push for independence resulted in horrendous violence between religious and nationalist groups, and the splitting of India and Pakistan, which has caused conflict and oppression to this day. He - according to some biographers - expressed disdain for black africans during his time in SA, using the derogatory term kaffir for example, and believed that the whites should stay in power there. It all depends what metric you use - with Churchill, a major role in coalescing resistance to Hitler, with Ghandi, independence for India. Both came with a heavy cost in human lives. Everyone has their sacred cows, what can be irritating about the woke crowd is the sense they give of their own perceived superiority or the superiority of their particular set of sacred cows. When looked at, this sense always turns out to be bs.

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Independence was coming one way or the other. European global empires were all reaching their shelf life. Gandhi's strategy of non violence was inspirational and he deserves to be regarded highly for that.

Im all for respecting greatness. Whitewashing not required. But understanding context is.

durangodawood said:

Independence was coming one way or the other. European global empires were all reaching their shelf life. Gandhi's strategy of non violence was inspirational and he deserves to be regarded highly for that.

Im all for respecting greatness. Whitewashing not required. But understanding context is.

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There was nothing inevitable about the end of British rule in India, although resistance to it was inevitable the flashpoints were the result of some pretty stupid decisions and basic carelessness and complacency under the Raj. The way it ended does matter, a lot, it opened the floodgates to total chaos. It’s not a question of assigning blame but just looking at what actually occurred. Ghandi was a remarkable figure, but what happened is what happened.

Yes there should be open debate, but one side of the woke/reactionary arguments is just as guilty of trying to ‘cancel’ opinion as the other.

Goonie said:

This has nothing about being 'woke'. Historical figures are not idols, but actual human beings and part of historical research is knowing who they were, what they believed, the whole person not just the idol in order to understand why they did what they did.

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Many people will prefer the idol over historical research of the whole person. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, considering that those closest to me, such as my children, I tend to focus primarily on their good rather than their faults... That's just how some people are.

myst33 said:

Do you think thats some kind of news? Everybody always knew that. So again, why this boom now, whats the goal?

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Yup. Exactly. They're here to solve a problem that only exists in the imagination

Landon Caeli said:

Many people will prefer the idol over historical research of the whole person. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, considering that those closest to me, such as my children, I tend to focus primarily on their good rather than their faults... That's just how some people are.

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Having a faulty view of historical figures ill-informs the people who want to believe what they want to believe.
This is generally not a good thing.

If you want heroes then don't disect them. Because you'll find a lot that is unpleasant.

'But mention his views on race or his colonial policies, and you’ll be instantly drowned in ferocious and orchestrated vitriol.'

This is hyperbole. The British are very far from unanimous about Churchill. I think most people now see him as a flawed hero. He was, after all, the last great Victorian. That he was an Imperialist should come as no surprise. He fought for the Empire in India and South Africa.

He was already old when he came into office. He had already been vilified as the initiator of Gallipoli which was a notorious bloody defeat in WW1.

And has been pointed out above he was heavily defeated in 1945 after a campaign against the Labour Party in which he repeatedly claimed that the country would be sold out to the USSR and would 'lose India'. He was only half right. India gained its independence within three years but the Attlee government was staunch in its stance against the Communists.

Goonie said:

Why can't Britain handle the truth about Winston Churchill? | Priyamvada Gopal

So if someone does something truly great, does that mean everything else is forgiven and should never ever be debated?

Thinking of the debate on Lincoln's 1858 white supremacy quote, in another thread.

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Is it not possible to both celebrate the great accomplishments of a person and condemn the bad actions?

I don't think Australians think about him much these days. World War II is ancient history for most of them.

My father was a strong unionist, and he fought in World War II. He didn't talk much about Churchill, but he did remark one day "We'd have lost the war without him."

He made a general comment about statesmen at the same time saying "A statesman can motivate a people to do something they don't want to do, and keep doing it." He remarked "We didn't want the war". But Churchill motivated the British and their Empire to do something they didn't want to do, and to keep doing it. Looking around the Australian scene today, I can't see too many politicians who would fit into that category - they're having trouble as it is just playing down their macho treatment of women in federal parliamentary circles.

Granted Churchill had his flaws, some of them serious. He was an imperialist, and had a mixed record with the working classes.

He and the Australian wartime Prime Minister John Curtin had their differences but I think they sorted them out over a time. The main bone of contention between them was Curtin's desire to withdraw Australian troops from North Africa and bring them home. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese made Australian's position far more vulnerable.

He also committed Australia to the US as it's main defence partner instead of Imperial Britain, which was a massive shift of allegiance.

Curtin and Churchill could not have had more different backgrounds. Churchill came from the "upper classes" in Britain whereas Curtin was born to a working class family in a Victorian mining town.

Curtin would have been well aware of Churchill's sometimes heavy handed methods of dealing with the workers in the UK. But World War II meant they had to work together.

If I had to choose from the main leaders in World War II, I'm glad we had Churchill, Roosevelt, and Curtin (from an Australian viewpoint) rather than Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo or Stalin.

Oompa Loompa said:

Is it not possible to both celebrate the great accomplishments of a person and condemn the bad actions?

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Not for some extremist types.

Oompa Loompa said:

Is it not possible to both celebrate the great accomplishments of a person and condemn the bad actions?

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No.
Its either
1. shut out reality to preserve the myth (This one has been argued for here)
2. completely tear the person down as if they are entirely personally responsible for all their flaws.

There's an unpopular option 3: acknowledge and view people's bad ideologies as products of their times while celebrating their worthy achievements or character. Nobody seems to like that one.

Goonie said:

On either side. One side, who attacked these university debates, believing he should be uncritically treated as a patriotic idol, and yep the other that tears down statues irrespective of why the statue was put up..

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I remember the 2010's, when people used to advocate "tolerance". Those were fairly good times that might be a good idea to return to.

...Seems like nowadays, radicals are on the move.

There are all sorts of politically incorrect quotes from Winston Churchill. The one about Islam being to men what rabies is to dogs was particularly prescient...

...I like the historic Winston Churchill better than the myth.