There are "low-key" confederate monuments like this in just about every state, the only real difference being how much they are advertised.

You have to look for them around where I live, but drive a few hours down the 95 corridor, and you start to see road signs for them. The large one of Stonewall Jackson in Virginia is even called a "shrine" as opposed to a "monument."

On another note, Baltimore moved quickly to remove four confederate monuments overnight, citing safety concerns. If those concerns were due to riots or fears of jangly tweakers pulling it down on themselves was not made apparent:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-…

While I have no problem with the removal of such things, I do have to admit that the Jackson-Lee memorial that they took out of Wyman Park was a beautiful statue, so I just hope they replace it with something as visually pleasing and skillfully made. One hopes they do not put some piece of shitty and gaudy modern art up there made out of painted highway guardrails or something like that.

The problem here is the same with the Lenin statue: a privately owned memorial/statue on private land. Should it go? Yes, but if you pressure Lake View to get rid of this confederate memorial, then a lot of the rationale for not getting rid of the Lenin statue goes away.

I don't get it. This isn't honoring Jefferson Davis or Robert E Lee or Stonewall Jackson. This isn't in Mobile or Gatlinberg or some other southern shithole city. And as far as I know, there aren't hate groups rallying around this old chunk of rock.

You know what the Confederate Army was mostly made up of? Poor redneck farmers who joined either because they were forced to, or because they hadn't eaten in days and didn't have another option.

(The same is true for the average Union soldier: Do you think they all were fighting to end the grand injustice of slavery? No, most were either drafted or joined because it was the only way they could feed their family)

Does that mean we should leave all the old statues of the CSA up? Of course not. What they stood for was reprehensible, and should not be honored so.

But the average grunt (and I was one, Afghanistan 2009-2010) doesn't really fight for a cause, or even his country. He fights because it's his job, because he's told to, and most of all, he fights for his buddies, with whom he has a closer bond that, if you've never served, you cannot understand.

So even if I think it was a just war won by the just side, I can still respect that poor bastard Confederate soldier, dying in a freezing, muddy ditch while his buddies try to put his guts back in. I can separate the way he fought and the cause for which he fought. But maybe that's just me.

Steve Earle made a great comment about the confederate flag and civil war memorials in general last night at his show, which was something like "White people's opinion of these things don't matter - the only opinion about them that matters is what people of color think."

Agreed, Steve.

@4: It is not about logic or reason, at this point it is about ego on both sides. The monuments are just the latest battlefield now that we have over a year until another election.

When the statues are removed, or people get bored of the topic, this fight will move to another proxy item, personality, or location.

I'm curious where these removed statues are going. I hope they're being demolished.

@4: the Lenin statue is IRONIC. the CSA memorials aren't. they were put up by "fine people" of the KKK, essentially, at the high-water mark of their popularity.

you know, when Fred Trump was in it.

There's also a yacht in the Elliott Bay Marina with a confederate flag painted on it. I say we removws that motherfucker to Cabo. Who's with me?!

10: I didn't say all the rationale for keeping Lenin goes away, just a big part of it. Admittedly, I've never been a big fan of the Lenin statue, but that's another discussion.

I just don't see how even the best intentions of these confederate memorials erase the fact that at least 360,000 Americans died fighting against what the CSA stood for.

@4 the Lennin statue is an ironic WAR TROPHY. It's a tongue and cheek symbol that we "won" the cold war. Like how conquerors like Napoleon stole artifacts and obelisks from conquered lands.

Why is it that the Confederacy, the traitorous losers of war to defend their right to own and torture human beings, have statues and memorials in nearly every state in the country? Meanwhile there are precious few memorials to the Union soldiers or to the slaves that died?

Getting rid of these romanticized shrines to racism and replacing them with an accurate history is what we need.

By the way Lake View Cemetery is run by a non-profit association with a loose affiliation to the parks department. So it's only kind of a quasi-private entity.

I am sort of "Meh" on a CSA monument in a cemetery... where I believe there actually *are* CSA veterans buried. I am more happy that we no longer have Jefferson Davis Highway that I had to look at every time I crossed the Washington border.

I wouldn't object to the CSA memorial removal from Lakeview if enough people want to, but I am not going to deny that traitors used to live among us in Seattle... and perhaps the cemetery is the best place to leave them.

Great piece here about Robert E. Lee statues and how, even though the country did not try him for treason, they made sure to tell him to fuck himself. (Basically, they took his plantation for Arlington National Cemetery.)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some…

@17

So you support keeping the Lenin statue around and regret the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue?

Replace 'chattel slavery' with 'child rape' then tell me again how it's just a monument & good people fought on both sides for what they believed in.

I don't have a problem with a monument to those killed in the American Civil War. I have a problem with the monument to the ones fighting to kill some Americans in order continue to enslave in perpetuity many others.

@3
You took the words right out of my mouth.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT! Really? So the excuse of "well, that statue of my hero---ah, I mean,---and ironic statue of Lenin, is on private property so shut up!" is fine, but a monument to the Cuckfederacy on private property is wrong? REALLY!!??

If a little stone in a cemetery dedicated to the losing side of a war to keep slavery is such an offense, then I massive statue of a mass murdering asshole who inspired countless other assholes—from Mao to Sawant—should also be torn down.

Fuck the cuckfederacy and its alt-right fanboys, and also, fuck the USSR and its alt-left fanboys.

@13
yeah, a "war trophy" that is erected upright in a city that elected a communist apologists for mass murder and a follower of Lenin's twisted ideology.

I think someone should build a statue of a helicopter with the words "Chilean airways!"on the tail and a sign that says "free rides for Marxists!" I mean, it would be "ironic"

Normally I'd be ok with a monument in a cemetery, but it better not be there after this Friday

Fuck me I agree with Sargon Bighorn @8?

I've been in Seattle for nearly 30 years and not one time have I heard that the Lenin was "ironic". Well, that was until this week on The Stranger.

@21 -- The "alt-left" does not exist.

Alt-right is the latest in a long string euphemistic names to make white supremacy seem less evil, and more mainstream. Thanks to the nob from WSU, I suppose paleoconservative will soon be an equivalent.

We don't need an "alt-left" label for a few reasons:

#1 (and probably most importantly) it is a label being applied to anyone left of "Supremacist" to attempt the false equivalence that the "alt-right" is in any way morally the same as people who take a stand against the fascists.

#2 - Alt-right was an adopted moniker by those scum, to disguise the fact that they were simply the latest in a long line of post-civil-war racists dating back to the days of Nathan Bedford Forrest's KKK. We are happy to be known as the ACLU, Progressives, Social Democrats, Black Lives Matter, Anti-Fascists etc. We don't need obscure names to hide our intent, because our intent is not abhorrent.

I'm sorry all you Whatabouters bleating about the statue of Lenin, but what exactly is stopping you from protesting in front of it? What exactly is stopping you from starting your own petition for its removal? What exactly is preventing your from contacting the owner of the statue? Why haven't you started a go fund me to raise the money to purchase it and have it destroyed?
I mean, if it really is so offensive and appalling to you?
Go ahead, have at it.

I don't know if the statue of Lenin in Fremont was intended to be ironic or not.

However, I am confident that the was no "Jim Crow" moment, where someone decided to bring this piece of Soviet style "art" to Seattle to keep a downtrodden portion of the population *in it's place* and let them know there would be blood spilled if they tried to buck the status quo.

@26
if the alt-left does not exist, then what the fuck are these racist leftist assholes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xlcjpk9…

The commies are just as bad as the Nazis. And just because someone is against fascism does not make them good people. Stalin fought the fascists. Is calling him a "red fascist" incorrect?

@27 anyone who did so would receive death threats from the antifa/Seattle alt-left. They are an extremely violent pack of shitheads.

@28 Actually, there are a number of Tibetans in Seattle who were oppressed by what could be called Jim Crow, and still are today in communist controlled Tibet.

And again, why not an "ironic" statue of Pinochet?

I love how the leftist look at stupid memes like this: https://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Adolf+… and think "a neo-nazi made that!" but look at a statue of Lenin, in its original state, created as a piece of communist propaganda, set up so that everyone in the area has to look at it, and think "yeah...unlike that EVIL NAZI MEME, that statue is just ah...ironic."

Bellevue needs to build a statue of Ayn Rand flipping the bird to the other side of the lake.

I believe there IS a difference between memorializing the dead in a cemetery and positive memorials to treason and slave owning society maintained on public land left in their original prominent locations where they were intended to be active symbols of white dominated social structures. But I'm still open to argument on the subject, ruminating on it.

@31 I'd never thought of it that way before, but the Lenin statue really is like a spoil of war from the Cold War. Already said my piece on this subject in the thread specifically on the Lenin statue.

@32

Surely there are ways to memorialize one's dead without celebrating their participation in a treasonous activity.

Didn't that person not accomplish *any*thing else in the rest of their 51 years on Earth??

I mean, why not build a monument to their time in the High School Debate Club? Or, better yet, that one time they stole candy from the 5&10?

Having said that, since it appears to be on private property, and since racist assholes aren't dancing around it waving their dicks, idgaf.

Just FYI, according to KIRO, it IS a grave as there are 11 men, along with the wife of one of those men, buried there.
http://www.kiro7.com/news/local/why-is-a…
I still signed the petition, since I think it could be replaced by something a little more low-key, but it's not just a standard memorial and would have to be replaced by something for a grave marker.

It's on private property so you can get and cry but it isn't moving. You violent communists can try to smash it and rewrite history but that'll just make you look like ISIS... which we know you are already like.

@29 - actually there have been multiple vandalisms and protests about the Lenin statue (Seattle loves to protest) and somehow your imaginary "alt-left" never showed up.

Also, "alt-left"? Aren't you a good little lapdog, repeating Trump's talking points as soon as he says them? "Alt-left" isn't a thing. "Alt-right" is a name the white supremacists chose for themselves - "antifa" is a name anti-white supremacists chose for themselves. "Alt-left" is a made-up thing Trump's using to try and pretend like "Nazi" and "Anti-Nazi" are equivalent positions.

At #4 you called Mobile a shithole city? Have you ever been there?