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George Monbiot Profile picture
@GeorgeMonbiot
Jun 7, 2020 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
I support the toppling of #EdwardColston's statue. Slavery should never be celebrated. It was wrong to erect it. The protesters were right to dismantle it.
#BlackLivesMatter
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/black-li…
These symbols are immensely important. Those who deplore this demolition should ask themselves where they stood on the removal of Saddam Hussein's statues, or Stalin's. We should not allow those who exercised power in the past to govern us beyond the grave.
A lively, democratic nation is one that renews its self-image and changes its symbols to reflect its changing character. This should include some of its statuary.
While we're at it, could we please change the official emblem of Parliament?
A portcullis, symbolically shutting us out
Surrounded by chains, symbolically constraining us
Surmounted by a crown, symbolically concentrating power.
Let's have some democratic imagery. Image
The way we see ourselves helps to shape who we become. Let us see ourselves as a democratic, inclusive, lively nation, and develop public imagery that reflects these values.
If anyone gets fined for toppling this statue, I would be happy to contribute to paying it off. I'm sure many others would too.

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More from @GeorgeMonbiot

George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 28
1. The one benefit of Brexit was a new farm subsidy system, paying for public goods like ecological restoration. But now the government has frozen the new grants, while swiftly cutting off the old ones, leaving farmers high and dry. It's deeply unfair and highly destructive. 🧵
2. It will leave farmers who started investing in restoration out of pocket, and destroy their faith in the green transition. The sharpness of the transition will drive some to bankruptcy.
3. Two obvious questions:
A. What is the government playing at?
B. Where are the big environmental NGOs who asked for this transition, but are now failing to defend it? Why are they not raising hell about this betrayal?
Read 5 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 15
1. People are objecting to my lashing of academics and intellectuals in today's column. I understand this. Here’s my reasoning. I chose examples of topics that are endlessly circled by researchers with ever diminishing returns, while huge and existential questions are ignored.🧵
2. I see the obsession with the Bloomsbury Group etc as highfalutin celebrity culture. The effort and attention spent on it, in scholarship, publishing and reviews, seems to me to signal a deep sickness at the heart of intellectual endeavour. It has a name. Denial.
3. It reminds me of Eliot’s comparison of the mindless gossip in the pub with the mindless gossip in the high society salon in Part II of The Wasteland:
"‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag -
It’s so elegant
So intelligent"
Read 5 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 13
1. A few days ago, I wrote a thread about the pros and cons of staying on this platform and asked for your views. They were very helpful. As a result, I’ve decided to stop using X from January 20. Already I’m mostly posting now on BlueSky (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social) instead.🧵
2. I won’t delete this account, as I don’t want to lose the archive. But I won’t post anything here after then. Will you join me in setting January 20th (a significant date) for the Xodus?
3. I thought for a while that the best alternative would be Threads. But Meta’s deliberate downgrading of political content and suspension of journalists on Threads rules it out as a prime platform for people like me. .theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Read 6 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 12
1. Who really won the US election? The fossil fuel companies and other polluting industries. We scarcely heard about them during the election campaign, which is just how they like it. Almost everything we *did* hear about was a distraction from the real agenda. 🧵
2. Trump’s campaign was an economic war against the interests of almost everyone on Earth, on behalf of the planet’s most powerful and destructive industries. But it was dressed up, as always, as a culture war: a trick that has been used to great effect for more than a century.
3. It’s not as if Biden/Harris were seriously curtailing polluting industries, especially oil and gas. It’s shocking how little Harris even mentioned the existential threat to humanity that climate breakdown presents. But now? It’s a free-for-all.
Read 7 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 10
1. Here are my thoughts on the pros and cons of staying on this platform.
Pro: We were here long before Musk took it over. We built this.
Con: He has used our creation to help elect a far-right autocrat, and build his own grim political career.
🧵
2. Pro: We should never cede any space, real or virtual, to the far right. Fascist trolls are trying to drive us out. Don't give them the satisfaction.
Con: Our presence could be used to legitimise a far-right hellsite.
3. Pro: It remains, amid the viciousness, a good place to share information, ideas and opinions.
Con: It is also an abysmal, dispiriting place to inhabit, the humour, lightness and kindness crushed by bots and trolls.
Read 5 tweets
George Monbiot Profile picture
Nov 7
1. My column on what happened, what comes next, and just how easy our fake democracies are to overthrow. + short thread on where our remaining hopes lie. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2. People seek to destroy what they feel excluded from. Centralised “democracies” exclude all but a rarefied circle from genuine power. Centralised democracy is a contradiction in terms.
3. Disempowered people tend to be profoundly unimpressed by “rational arguments” for this faction or for that one: they have an entirely reasonable desire – however unreasonable its expression may be – to kick the system over.
Read 7 tweets

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