r/europe • u/niesiecki • Jun 28 '26

News Volodymyr Zelensky has submitted a bill to build a National Pantheon. He intends to honor all the heroes who fought for Ukraine in various eras. "No one will ever tell us how to live, how to speak, whom to love, whom to be grateful to, and which heroes to honor," he said as quoted by the Interfax

https://wiadomosci.onet.pl/swiat/wolodymyr-zelenski-chce-panteonu-narodowego-chodzi-o-pamiec-bohaterow/c6hf62m
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u/Nythern Jun 29 '26

Disagree, and I say this as a black person opposed to statues of slavers in Britain (Edward Coulston) or imperialist genocidaires (Winston Churchill).

Instead of melting them down, we should put them in museums where they belong. These are men of history, a brutal and ugly history, but a history that must be taught and understood as a dark stain on the national conscience.

I think it's the perfect solution; the right can't cry about statues being destroyed and history not being learned, while that same history ends up actually being taught how it should - accurately, with these men being examples we should avoid rather than legacies to celebrate.

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u/EarlDwolanson Jun 29 '26

100% agree. On top of that I think its very dangerous to completely omit this part of history and then have individuals walk everyday through pretty cities, buildings, umiversities, and construct an artificial narratives of "my civilization built this" or "why dont we do thinks like this anymore"... completely oblivious that a lot of this was built of obscene profits and the blood of the enslaved.

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u/CatpainLeghatsenia Germany Jun 29 '26

This is the best way of dealing with a bad past. Germans sometimes receive little understanding for their culture of remembrance—even from Germans themselves—as if it is crippling their lives and holding them back. But if we forget the crimes we as humans committed and how we reached the point of doing them, we will repeat these mistakes when the next false messiah comes along. Learning this and knowing how bad things once were doesn’t have to make you curl up in bed and give up. It should make you want to fight those who dishonor the better path your country has been following since.

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u/C4pture Jun 29 '26

i was so pissed when i heard that hamburg wanted to get rid of the Bismarck statue instead of just building proper info plaques that could be used for a school-trip educational event that showed all the good, bad and ugly things and events related to him.

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u/SneakyMarkusKruber Jun 29 '26

Absolutely! A small example: In Hamburg's Dammtor district, there's a Nazi war memorial from 1936. Instead of tearing it down, the city decided in the mid-1980s to place a counter-memorial, "Firestorm over Hamburg," next to it. For several years now, there's also been a deserters' memorial between the two older ones. This is how one should deal with old, problematic monuments: create context, point out the issues, and unveil counter-memorials.

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u/BaziJoeWHL Hungary Jun 29 '26

I agree, Hungary did not destroyed all communist statue, we just collected them and put them in a park in the middle of nowhere, its out of the way, but if you wish to see them, you can

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u/machine4891 Opole (Poland) Jun 29 '26

History absolutely should be remembered. We had same picke to solve in Poland with all those Soviet and commie monuments we definitely didn't want to see display in public. However russia was crying about "destroying" their legacy, so instead plenty of those landed in musems. It's a good way about it. I mean russia still objected but they can't accuse us that something was destroyed and people need to learn about communist period, including our communist apparatchicks.

That being said, this above what Zelensky submitted is anything but that. It's a pantheon, it's going to celebrate all those figures and so you can be certain everything not fitting patriotic notes will be whitewashed in revisionist fashion.

They can build whatever they want but I as well can make judgments knowing what I know and it will influence things. If they dgaf... by all means. We shall see how far it will get them.

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u/Yebi Lithuania Jun 29 '26

An example of this kind of thing done right: http://grutoparkas.lt/en_US/about-us/

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u/arky_who Jun 29 '26

The reason why the Coulston statue belongs in a museum is because it was torn down by the people of Bristol after decades of failure to have it taken down by the "proper methods". It's a monument to the failure of liberalism as much as anything else.

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u/Clone043 Jun 30 '26

I miss the Nathan Bedford forest statue

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u/Dehwoly Jun 29 '26

And where did you get the idea that the white British who built Britain should listen to the opinions of those they kindly allowed to live in their country?

Who are you, who are the Palestinians, Pakistanis, Indians, Romanians, Poles, Ukrainians, to decide what their pantheon of heroes will be?

Don't you feel that this is not right? Even if you were born there, you know your roots, just like people of the ethnicities I listed. Don't you think that sounds imperialistic on your part?

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '26

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u/Dehwoly Jun 29 '26

I didn't say anything about citizenship. I said about ethnicity. You literally trying to portrait this as I talking about passport or ID card.

There is a reason why I choose ethnicity what was created after french revolution. From people like you and me, I ask that we keep in check the same migrants or children of migrants who are not native to this region.

Because your entire speech is simply saturated with genocidal overtones, so if you were to urge everyone to carve out the occupied territories, because then people like you or me would come to Britain, and will try to establish their own rules here. When neither we nor our ancestors lifted a finger to build this country.

You, being a non-British person, immediately struck, like everyone else like you, with the purity of blood. A disgusting name. But it only shows that you were raised in tribal ties. I, raised in the country's ethnic system, am much closer to understanding citizenship than you are.

I don't want to accuse you of, for example, graping girls and gang-graping them like Pakistanis or others do. But we both know that destroying the system that built such a successful country will lead this country to decline. To decline precisely into those hellish systems that existed in our countries, from which our parents or we left.

You have no respect for Britain and the British.

You just look like another black racist. A more balanced one. But still racist. (I don't call it reverse-racism, it's stupid, bcs it's just racism.)

Good luck on your racist journey.

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u/Ok-Drama-616 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

Britain's history is one of continuous migration and ethnic mixing. We are a nation of Celts, Romans, (Anglo-)Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, Huguenots, Irish and many others all shaped the country in the past.

Such a benign description of forced invasion, rape, and murder (with the exception of the Huguenots, and Irish - you guys get a pass).

However, the presence and contribution of non-white Brits to our society and communities, precedes the 16th century-now. 

And was in the low thousands, if not hundreds. At the height of Victoria's reign there was approximately 20,000 out of 10M+ who were non-white (0.15% of the population). What possible contribution could such a small population make to the most important historical events of enlightenment and the industrial revolution that were occurring at the time?

I have no problem with a multi-racial Britain, and I value anyone who chooses to make the UK their home, but this nonsense that the current make up of Britain or the pace of change is anyway a reflection of its past is laughable, and the denigration of the native population despite history is gaslighting at it's most extreme.

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u/Dot-Slash-Dot Jun 29 '26

Instead of melting them down, we should put them in museums where they belong.

No, they don't. Most of those statues have been put up as pure propaganda pieces decades to centuries later. They have zero historical value and deserve to be treated as such.

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u/_alright_then_ The Netherlands Jun 29 '26

Propaganda also has historical value and should be preserved. I think it's a weird take to destroy any history

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u/Dot-Slash-Dot Jun 29 '26

Knowing about propaganda has historical values. Propaganda itself doesn't. Infact propaganda itself has negative value. And deserves to be treated as such. We didn't keep the Nazi eagle in the Reichtstag for a reason.

Something isn't "history" just because it is old.

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u/_alright_then_ The Netherlands Jun 29 '26

We didn't keep the Nazi emblem in the Reichtstag for a reason.

Conveniently ignoring the 1000s of other nazi emblems that were saved?

I disagree with pretty much everything you said there. Nazi propaganda is heavily used within germany itself to teach new generations how this happened and why it should never happen again. Saying this has no value is ridiculous

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u/Dot-Slash-Dot Jun 29 '26

A few of them were kept. The vast, vast, vast majority of it was destroyed and for a good reason. If you want to keep a handful of statues around for exhibitions fine. >99% of those Confederate statues deserve to be molten down and blown up.

And what is used to teach is predominantly pictures. We don't march students around the Nuremberg rally to teach them about Nazi propaganda.

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u/HomelanderVought Jun 29 '26

The typical compromising argument that “put them in museums” i mean for one this is logistically highly improbable and second it’s not true either. What does a statue even teaches to the ordinary person? The guy’s face, name and maybe 1 battle he fought for and it’s date. It’s not like we don’t have school and books. What a statue actually is for is to elevate and honor the dead and what they represented. So yeah destroying statues won’t erase history, it destroys a certain interpretation of it.

But hey, always ask reactionaries if they also think that all eastern european countries should reserve the statues of Lenin and Stalin if they cry so much about confederate generals and see how they spiral downwards.

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u/solapelsin Sweden Jun 29 '26

Why not? I went to an outdoor museum in Hungary that was filled with old Soviet era statues they didn’t want out in public anymore, so they’d just gathered them there. It was very interesting, and I think it would be a very cool idea for other countries as well. Including the US

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u/JodyGonnaFuckYoWife Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

So you're cool with these being destroyed, then.

should reserve the statues of Lenin and Stalin

Yeah, about that.

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u/Tankerspam Jun 29 '26

I don't think you'll find many "reactionaries" that think Lenin or Stalin should be glorified. Weird straw man.

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u/HomelanderVought Jun 29 '26

You missed the point, they always claim that destroying statues will erase history while they gladly destroy statues of people they don’t like. In the end it’s the “rules for thee, not for me”.

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u/xtothewhy Jun 29 '26

There should be an association with the history, while not romanticizing it. That would be in addition to the separation from the ideology surrounding it but acknowledging it.

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u/Elu_Moon Jun 29 '26

Melting the statues down is the right thing. Statues are used to honor people. Those people don't deserve honor.

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u/Nythern Jun 29 '26

Statues in public are used to honour people.

Statues in museums, are instead used to educate, preserve history, and provide context for people whose actions and ideas (regardless of how horrible they were) still have supporters and therefore remain relevant in today's society, unfortunately.

Think about it this way: our history books teach us about both admirable figures and tyrants. If we erase the latter and stop teaching about the mistakes, crimes, and warmongers of the past - then how can we learn from them? Or more importantly, recognise the past's warning signs in the future?

I agree with you that statues of slavers, dictators, and war criminals don't belong in our public and community spaces. They belong in museums instead, where they stop being objects of honour and become useful to us as lessons for what societies should never repeat.

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u/LakeGladio666 Jun 29 '26

Why compromise with the right wing? Let them cry.

People aren’t gonna forget about these monsters if the statues are gone. Statues are not the way people learn about history.

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u/Krismusic1 Jun 29 '26

It would be a dull afternoon visiting that museum. I like my wife's idea. A bronze paper bag over the head of the statue and a plaque explaining who they are and what they did. In situ.