Thread by @SteB777

1) The sophistry of Boris Johnson. Johnson claims that to remove statues means we would "lie about history" by trying to "edit or censor our past". I will detail in a series of tweets why this is an utterly dishonest argument, an actual lie.
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…

2) Sophistry is false, but clever argument, a sophisticated form of lying. A specious argument is one that is superficially plausible, but fallacious on deeper examination.

3) Statues are placed in public places to commemorate certain people who have supposedly achieved great things, and to do it very publicly, and to say to the public you must honour this person.

4) The argument for removing these statues is simply that this person may have donated money to public causes or have achieved other things, but as they were a slave trader, owner, a racist etc, we should not be honouring this person.

5) In other words, there is no attempt to erase this person from history, simply not to honour them in a public way. No one is attempting to remove them from historical accounts, it is simply about not honouring them in a very public way.

6) This is why this is entirely false argument by Johnson who is using a well known logical fallacy i.e. misrepresenting what your opponent has said (knowing misrepresentation is lying) to make it easy to argue against.
logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallaci…

7) Exactly how is removing a statue lying about history, or trying to censor or edit history? This is why Boris Johnson is lying, because self-evidently that is not why people are asking for these statues to be removed.

8) Protestors are asking for these statues to be removed, because having a statue symbolically gives these people an official seal of approval, which often overlooks their repugnant actions or views.

9) In fact, honouring someone with a statue, when they have done or said morally reprehensible things is "lying about history" and attempting to "censor and edit history". It is attempting to say this person is great and to conceal the unpleasant things they did.

10) Perhaps the vast majority of the public, were unaware that many of these statues were of slave traders, slave owners or people who had openly racist views. This is why having statues to these people is trying to mislead the public i.e. lying, because that is what it is.

11) Note how Johnson uses euphemisms. - 'The prime minister, who has written a biography of Churchill, added: “Yes, he sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial.”'
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…

12) Why doesn't Johnson say what these "opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today" are? Because he's hoping the public are unaware of this. This is why it is Johnson who is attempting to "censor and edit our past" and to lie about our history.

13) What the right have got most angry about what that Churchill's statue was daubed with "was a racist". Why if such people demand the truth about history be told, does anyone object to this, it after all is objectively true?

14) Below is a direct quotation from Churchill from 1937 '“I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia. ...'
inews.co.uk/news/winston-c…

14a) '... I do not admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, or, at any rate, a more worldly wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
inews.co.uk/news/winston-c…

15) If that statement by Churchill is not racist and based in white supremacy, then I don't know what is. Why do people so object to Churchill being called a racist when he was quite proud of being a racist.

16) How about another 'I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses ...'
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_vi…

17) The pathetic excuse is that people didn't know any better at the time or such views were normal back then. If that's true, then it lets Hitler off the hook, because he was a contemporary of Churchill. The victims of such racism, always objected.

18) How can you argue that history shouldn't be "edited or censored", that we "We cannot pretend to have a different history", whilst objecting to the truth that Churchill "was a racist" being daubed on his statue?

19) It is crystal clear that Boris Johnson and those of his political ilk are trying to "edit and censor the past" and want to pretend that we have a different history to the one we actually have. @GeorgeMonbiot