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Winston Churchill was a genocidal mass murderer
108 Plays3 years ago
A statue of Winston Churchill in Edmonton recently got an artistic re-imagining. Nisha Patel and Najib Jutt join host Duncan Kinney to talk about the racist, murderous legacy of Winston Churchill and the British Empire and what it is to be done about the statue, squares and schools named after this mass murderer.
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Transcript
Introduction & Guest Backgrounds
00:00:01
Speaker
The Progress Report is a proud member of the Harbinger Media Network. A pod on the network that I want to highlight is the latest from the Alberta Advantage. Journalist Lee Phillips joins the team to examine the low-key, super important topic of industrial policy. I'm about halfway through this pod right now and this is something that the Alberta Advantage is great at.
00:00:19
Speaker
They take something that I've never really thought too much about, and which actually kind of sounds super boring, an industrial policy, and actually turns it into an excellent podcast where I learn about how the world works and how Alberta works, how Canada works. And that's the kind of content you get on Harbinger. So I'd encourage you to go become a supporter of Harbinger today. You'll not only get exclusive supporter-only content, but you get to feel good about yourself about supporting a network that supports this kind of content.
00:00:45
Speaker
Easiest way to do that is go to harbingermedianetwork.com, but I don't want to take too long. Let's get to the show.
00:01:04
Speaker
Friends and enemies, welcome to The Progress Report. I am your host, Duncan Kinney. We're recording today here in Amiskwitchi, Wisconsin, otherwise known as Edmonton, Alberta, here in Treaty Six territory on the banks of the Kasiska-Saw, Mississippi, or the North Saskatchewan River. Joining us today on the pod are Najib Jut, a political strategist with statecraft, and Nisha Patel, the now just literally former poet laureate, like the ceremony to appoint the new poet laureate just happened before the pod. Is that right, Nisha? That is correct.
00:01:33
Speaker
the now former poet laureate of Edmonton to talk about Winston Churchill, specifically the recent vandalization of his statue, as well as his incredibly sordid, murderous and genocidal past and discussing why so much stuff is named after this guy. So I'll give a bit of the context and then I think we can
Churchill Statue Vandalism: Protest or Crime?
00:01:58
Speaker
kind of dive into it. But just last week on June 17th, it was discovered
00:02:02
Speaker
that the Winston Churchill statue in downtown Edmonton, just directly adjacent to Winston Churchill Square, had been given a new, and to my mind, a very interesting and correct artistic interpretation of being covered with a proper sloshing of red paint. Nisha, I know you did a bunch of media on this day and you were talking about it on Twitter. What went through your head? How did you feel when you kind of first saw the pictures?
00:02:28
Speaker
You know, my instinct is just to be happy that people who are frustrated have a way to take out their frustrations and show why they're frustrated or what they're angry about. I think that we don't hold enough space for anger in any sort of political discourse and that if people are resorting to throwing paint on statues, we should let them because it's telling us something that we didn't know before and that we haven't made space for. And Dejib, what was going through your head when you saw those photos as well?
00:02:58
Speaker
Well, most of all, it's about time. I've been kind of on this bandwagon for a while now and as much as I appreciate the conversations around Grandin and Oliver and the Edmonton Eskimos, here's a man who was known for his genocidal tendencies. We've erected a statue to name the public square after, named an LRT station after right in the heart of our city.
00:03:22
Speaker
So again, you know, I think it's about time we started having that conversation. And, you know, as Nisha said, it's we shouldn't focus on the fact like we saw many politicians that this is vandalism or, you know, the idea of law and order. But why does it need to get to a point where people's frustrations have to have to result in action like this to just get a conversation going to get someone to pay attention? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I thought it looked pretty fucking cool, to be honest.
00:03:52
Speaker
I think now more people than before are aware of the crimes that Winston Churchill has committed. Vandalism works, folks. The media, by splashing a bunch of red paint on Winston Churchill, the media was forced to talk about why someone might want to splash a bunch of red paint on a statue of Winston Churchill. That leads us into ... I'll go ahead, Nisha.
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, I just, you know, Churchill is someone who's lauded with like, starting democracy or whatever, or, you know, really being a big proponent of it. But I think what we did in, in accepting that, like, you know, the democratic ways that way forward is really leave out other forms of communicating with, with systems of power, right? If you have a system of power that disenfranchises others, there's obviously going to be ways that we engage with them that are outside of
00:04:44
Speaker
the system's intentions, right? And so like for Churchill to be up on his high horse and say like, oh, like democracy is the greatest thing to ever happen to the Western world was a way to delegitimize like systems that he didn't like, right? Responses that he didn't like. Yeah,
Revisiting Churchill's Legacy
00:05:00
Speaker
absolutely. And you know, we put up a statue of a man who used violence to solve his problems and then wonder why people may act violently towards him.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah. I just might even mad about it. I mean, I don't think property damages violence, but like the, you know, Churchill is not just some like drunk racist uncle figure. You know what I mean? Like he was a mass murderer and that is why someone might want to splash red paint on a statue of him.
00:05:29
Speaker
like to see someone like Trichel, and we're going to get into the details of his atrocity shortly, but that's why, you know what I mean? And if it takes flashing some red paint on a statue to start having that conversation about how this guy was a mass murderer and a genocidaire and did incredible, terrible things in the name of British Empire, let's have that conversation.
00:05:53
Speaker
I left this part purposely open. I mean, where do you want to start when it comes to Winston Churchill's atrocities?
00:06:02
Speaker
You know, it's such a long list. And for me as like a poet, language is the thing that comes up first, right? The language of the violence, you know, not even looking at the acts. The things that he said were just, you know, by our standards today and even standards back then quite horrible. And the audiences mattered too. Who was it that he was speaking to? What kind of whiteness was he speaking to? You know, and what folks in power were the ones listening to the things he said?
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, do you have any, uh, any, any particular language? I mean, the, the quotes are like, again, he was a racist, even for his time. And like, there's no shortage, no shortage of like terrible things that he said. Right.
00:06:50
Speaker
for sure. And I think like, when like, I'm from a South Asian background, and he called Indian people a beastly people, you know, and I'm like, there is no kind way to say beastly, in my opinion, right. And you know, Churchill died while my parents were still alive. Like, this isn't some ancient, you know, 200 year old history, like, this is one generation removed from my life.
00:07:17
Speaker
the 40s and 50s is literally not that long ago. Najib, what a particular Winston Churchill atrocity or crime kind of jumps out at you that you want to start off with. Again, the list is endless. In Mao, Kenya, forcing 150,000 people into concentration camps, chemical warfare in Iraq against the Kurds and the Afghans, the famine in India that we all know about. The list is endless.
00:07:46
Speaker
And his defenders will say, you know, these are all things that, you know, you do in times of war, but Churchill was on another level in terms of his white supremacy, you know, which is where all the language speaks to. You know, he believed in white supremacy, he believed in eugenics, he believed in hierarchy of race, and that white Protestants were on the top of that hierarchy, you know, and that, you know, they were the people that
00:08:08
Speaker
will best bring civilization to different countries and different cultures. His quote exactly was, the Aryan stock is bound to triumph, to which some historians have credited him as being not that different from Hitler and his views on white supremacy.
00:08:26
Speaker
No, I mean, everything that Churchill did was in service of the British Empire. And why I think it's useful to examine Winston Churchill's crimes and his atrocities is that you really just have a handy list of the past 100 years of
00:08:41
Speaker
the crimes that the British Empire committed, right? And he, from a very early age, was an enthusiastic progenitor of empire. And like, as a 23 year old, Winston Churchill went
00:08:57
Speaker
to what is now the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan and took part in essentially like a punitive expedition, like the rebels. There was a rebellion in the area and the British Empire had dispatched some army units to go put it down.
00:09:15
Speaker
And this was really the first taste that he got of war and the empire in action. And this was something that the British Empire was very experienced at, especially in Asia, was putting down these rebellions.
00:09:33
Speaker
brutally via brutal violence. And he viewed, from a young age, Churchill viewed war in service of the empire as a way for him to get noticed, as a way for him to win medals, as a way to essentially make his political bones. He was an incredible, yeah, he was an incredible opportunist. His political ambition was, I think, almost unrivaled for folks at his time. And some of his ideas came from people who are unnamed, people who will not be given a place in history.
00:10:02
Speaker
And other ones were ones that he carried out or promoted in order to further his own goals of being someone who would be lauded as some sort of savior. And these are the kind of behaviors that feed into the most toxic and nastiest parts of politics. This is not an every man. This is not an everyday politician who was out on Oxford Street shaking hands. This is a man who wanted power and did everything he could to keep it and to gain it.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah, like here's Churchill, you know, writing about his time in Afghanistan as a 23 year old. We quote, we proceeded systematically village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. Again, this is, you know, your crimes of the British Empire just Winston Churchill cataloging. But it wasn't just empire
00:11:00
Speaker
that Winston Churchill was a fan of. He was also no fan of working people. And like in the UK, he was the home secretary in 1910 and 1911, when Tony Pandey and Lanelli happened, which were kind of two large scale strikes where Winston Churchill as home secretary sent in the military and like people died, like regular working as people, coal miners or people who were attached to this strike at the railway station.
00:11:30
Speaker
And, you know, like when you go down Churchill's resume, he was an enthusiastic user of violence, whether it was at home or abroad. And anyone who got in his way, he was happy to use, you know, the military. In the case of Ireland, he was happy to send in like
00:11:53
Speaker
a murderous gang of 10,000 former World War I British soldiers called the Black and Tans to essentially pugrom Irish Catholics and to do mass rapes and targeted killings of Irish Catholics, both Republicans and civilians, starting in 1920. That lasted for two whole years.
00:12:14
Speaker
I think a lot of people forget that kind of terrorism he inflicted on folks that were white as well. This was not a man who just hated people of color. This was a man who hated everyone who wasn't British, who wasn't white and British. And it wasn't an aristocrat and British, right? Yeah, exactly. This was truly someone who should have been the enemy of all people. It wasn't just a racist, a classist as well.
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah, an enthusiastic progenitor of class warfare, right? Yeah. And we're going to get to the Bengali famine, a bit more detail on it, but I've got to go down his resume, his CV of atrocities. And you brought it up already, Najib, what happened in Kenya with the Maumau rebellion. He was prime minister between 1951 and 55 before he became ill and died, I think, shortly after. And to be fair to Winston Churchill,
00:13:10
Speaker
The Mao-Mao rebellion and the response to it by the British government at the time was a bipartisan consensus. The Labour Party and the Tories were very happy to do what they did in Kenya and really is the last big brutal colonial hurrah of the British Empire. Do you have the details on this?
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, I just think that there's so much in history that has been written down about these things. These are not things that are up for discussion or consideration. These are actual proven events that happened from people that knew him. And some of their descendants are still alive today. And some of the people who were alive during Churchill's, especially last year's, are alive today, who can testify to the truth of these things.
00:14:02
Speaker
And also, you know, I think it's important that people realize that these types of tactics that the British used, you know, as they built the empire, you know, still go on today, right, and other other militaries have learned and use these tactics and continue to use them. Right. So that's another leftover from from Churchill's legacy, right, is that he these scorched earth tactics that they used all over the world.
00:14:25
Speaker
where their belief was that if they had to retreat from anywhere to make sure that that country, that civilization never knows peace again, which explains what they did with Kashmir and East and West Pakistan and all of this during partition. So these tactics are used today too by the Americans, by other militaries as well.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, you said 150,000 people were rounded up in the Malmau rebellion, put in concentration camps. I've seen numbers higher than 300,000. I think that number might be underestimated. And it was essentially ethnic cleansing, right? Like the British army showed up, rounded these people up, forcibly displaced them from their lands, put them in concentration camps, tortured the leaders, murdered a whole lot of them. There's a book written on this by a historian named Carolyn Elkins called Britain's Gulag.
00:15:15
Speaker
and like the quotes like what she wrote about because there was like a recent lawsuit because again this is recent this is the 50s right like Queen Elizabeth was the queen when this was happening and here's a quote from that book
00:15:31
Speaker
I've come to believe that during the Mao-Mao War, British forces wielded their authority with a savagery that betrayed a perverse colonial logic. Only by detaining nearly the entire Kukuyu population of 1.5 million people and physically and psychologically atomizing its men, women, and children could colonial authority be restored and the civilizing mission reinstated.
00:15:53
Speaker
After nearly a decade of oral and archival research, this author Elkins had uncovered a murderous campaign to eliminate Cuckoo people, a campaign that left tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands dead.
00:16:06
Speaker
Yeah, and so, you know, why does this sound familiar, right? How is it any different than what's being done to the Uighur Muslims in China or what's being done in Palestine or what's being done in the US with kids in cages, right? So this is like, you know, standard military operating procedure that, you know, was done back in Churchill's time today and now we
00:16:25
Speaker
We look at it as inhumane and psychological torture and physical torture. There's no reason why we should be letting Churchill off the hook for these acts.
00:16:39
Speaker
Exactly. And there's one final atrocity I want to bring up before Bengal that I think also betrays like who he was kind of fundamentally, which is that what happened in Greece kind of post World War II after the Nazis had been driven out in 1994 on Churchill's orders, British troops shot dead 28 Greeks and injured another 124. And those Greek people had been shot dead by British troops.
00:17:04
Speaker
because they were anti-fascists, essentially. They were communists. They had driven off the Nazis from their land that they lived. And Churchill wanted to reinstall kind of the right-wing government and the monarchy of Greece. And the people who had written off the Nazis into the sunset weren't super keen on that. There was 200,000 people in the streets after the Brits demanded that the guerrilla groups responsible for this victory kind of disarm.
00:17:33
Speaker
And that's when Churchill ordered British troops to turn their guns on the Greek people. And again, this is a deep fundamental part of his ideology, which was anti-communism, right? And in a case of history repeating itself, Churchill ended up installing a veteran of the Irish atrocities that were perpetrated in the 20s to train the new Greek security forces and to route out communism in Greece.
Historical Violence & Modern Impact
00:18:02
Speaker
Yeah, and again, these are publicly available facts and things that we know have really happened and that we've had the benefit of researching and that people have poured money into verifying the truth of, you know, and as long as we
00:18:17
Speaker
have these documents available, I think it's understandable today that we know that history does affect the generations that are alive now, that it isn't some forgotten thing. We don't just let people exist in our memories to the fullest extent of their good qualities, but that we do take into account the
00:18:37
Speaker
complicated and nasty bits as well, and that people are allowed to be angry about it. Because if anything, you know, colonial impacts are ongoing. We know that. We have proof of that. Even if people invented the word post-colonial, I don't really think it's been something that's been in practice for very long. I mean, it's so important.
00:18:59
Speaker
that both sides of history are always taught and made aware of. And this is the problem with having statues and schools and streets named after, you know, these so-called great men is that rarely is the other side of the history taught.
00:19:15
Speaker
and learned, right? So this is why, you know, why we have this argument that these statues and memorials, they belong in museums with an accurate accounting, not a whitewashed, sanitized accounting that we get when we just put up these dedications, these memorials to these people. And the final atrocity and the one that should, I mean, all of that should disqualify Winston Churchill from having a statue and a square named after him.
00:19:44
Speaker
In 1943, in Bengal, what is now the state of West Bengal in India and Bangladesh, two to three million people Bengalis, two to three million Bengalis died as a result of Winston Churchill's decisions and policies.
00:19:57
Speaker
The famine that happened at that time was not a result of a drought. The scientists have gone back and looked at historical soil samples, and they've confirmed that this was not, in fact, a natural disaster. This was a man-made political disaster. Rice was still being exported from India during this famine. Australia and Britain and Canada and the United States all offered to send rice and wheat to Bengal during the famine, and Churchill refused.
00:20:25
Speaker
The Viceroy of India said that Churchill's attitude towards said, quote, Churchill's attitude towards India and the famine is negligent, hostile and contemptuous. Even Leo Amory, who was the British Secretary of State in India at the time, said, quote, he didn't see much difference between Churchill's outlook and Hitler's. To speak to your point, Najib, like this is who we have a statue of here in Edmonton.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and it's so disappointing when we see politicians, you know, jump on an incident like this one and just talk about the law and order aspect and not actually engage in these conversations, right? I mean, we just had a statue of John A. McDonald removed in Kingston, Ontario, because there was a protest from Indigenous people there who did a sit-in until it was removed, right?
00:21:14
Speaker
you know it's just so unfortunate that you know when we have politicians and leaders just to jump to defend and to you know try to try to reframe the conversation rather than actually say hey you know let's have let's have let's have this conversation and let's figure out what you know everybody's upset about and what these and I think that's the biggest part of it is that
00:21:39
Speaker
we downplay the psychological impact to the people that were oppressed or marginalized by these men and their ancestors who were the people that were on the other end of the actions of someone like Churchill, right? When you see this, and this is why it upsets me, and I'm sure why it upsets Nisha, because we're both South Asian, and we know of what happened in India. And yeah, to your point of numbers, right? Who knows what the real numbers were?
00:22:07
Speaker
much higher numbers for the Bengal famine as well. We can't even get numbers right during a pandemic in the modern world. Who knows what numbers really were? And they usually are downplayed in these atrocities that happened in history.
00:22:21
Speaker
It's not just the stories of people who look like me that matter. It's people who were historically and still are marginalized who continue to face the violence spoused by Churchill and his followers, which include me and the hate mail that I've been receiving for speaking out against historical violence. It becomes an ongoing violence.
00:22:47
Speaker
And we have to be aware of the role that these advocates are playing, that they're putting themselves on the line more so than even I am, right? Being out there protesting statues, doing the sit-ins, blocking pipelines. Like these are people who have had everything taken away and are still fighting for the good of everyone around them, whether those people recognize it or not.
00:23:08
Speaker
It reverberates to modern times, right? I mean, his point, his views on Palestine, you know, reverberate to modern times. You know, he believed and said that Arabs were a lower manifestation and that, you know, people could choose which civilization they prefer. I mean, that's like the rallying cry of colonizers, you know, throughout history, right? Is that, you know, the oppressor is the one that's bringing civilization. And the indigenous people are the ones who are backwards.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah. And I think, I think you brought up a good point there. And as you both like the political reaction to this, like what the, what we saw from figures like Jason Kenny and John Zadok and, um, Michael Walters, uh, hilariously was this like, you know, a Pearl touch Pearl clutching about, you know, the sacred artifact being defaced. And like at the very most, you know, you get a nod to Winston Churchill had a complicated legacy.
00:24:09
Speaker
But like, uh, come on. I don't know if I have a good one. I think it's tough. I used to dream of being in politics. Like I worked in municipal government for three years and it's so funny because if you had told me that, you know,
00:24:29
Speaker
I would get more traction with political leaders as a poet than as a political analyst and advisor. I would have laughed. I would never have believed you. And now what's happening is that these same people are, I feel for them to some extent because some of them are stuck in these positions where
00:24:48
Speaker
They've been told that they can have an influence and instead they spend their time defending people who don't need defending. They compare hate crimes to splashing paint on a racist statue. And I just, I don't want to live like that. And I'm glad that I left that world behind because I can sleep easy at night knowing that I'm doing the right thing. And I can't say that every politician I know does that.
00:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and this is the amazing thing to me as a political analyst and strategist that politicians are having such a hard time getting on the right side of these conversations right I mean, since the murder of George Floyd I mean you must understand that the public sentiment has changed.
00:25:29
Speaker
That's why you can have honest conversations about Palestine now and still retain your seat as we've seen politicians all over the U.S. do. People want more honest conversations. People want to have the hard conversations. And these politicians just don't seem to get it. They still seem to want to straddle that line. And I think what's really at the heart of it is so many of these
00:25:56
Speaker
politicians, and let's face it, by and large, their white men, you know, have lived on these legacies of John A. McDonald and grew up on these legacy and Winston Churchill and admired them, you know, and see themselves also, you know, frame this way and don't want their legacies also to be besmirched, you know, after they're retired or after they've passed on. I just feel like
00:26:20
Speaker
There's so much also trauma for these men as well as their heroes are now subject to scrutiny. Yeah, and not just scrutiny, but I mean the funniest part about these politicians pissing their pants about a bit of paint on a statue.
00:26:34
Speaker
was these same politicians then trying to compare it to drawing a swastika on, I forget if it was a mosque or a synagogue. Yeah. And it's like, no, those are in no way equivalent. And you making that comparison is incredibly offensive to all of the people who are very rightfully not a big fan of Winston fucking Churchill.
00:27:03
Speaker
When I read that, I was just like, holy fuck, like how deluded do you have to be to make that comparison? And I know in his mind, he was saying like, both are terrible acts, but dude, come on, man. A family just got mowed down for their faith a week ago. We have women every day seems like being attacked Muslim women, visibly Muslim women on the street in the city.
00:27:29
Speaker
being attacked to say something like that just shows how deluded some of these politicians are. There is no comparison. The comparison in his mind was that, oh, if it wasn't for Churchill, we'd have swastikas everywhere. What a ridiculous out of touch comparison to make.
00:27:48
Speaker
Yeah, if it wasn't for Churchill, we'd all be speaking German. Remember that. Yeah, right. One of my favorite and but stupidest. Yeah, let's not forget, you know, like this, this, you know, a tribute, a tributeation to, to Churchill as having won the war against the Nazis, right? I'm pretty sure that other people, including Stalin, would have something to say about that. The other European allies would have something to say about that.
00:28:11
Speaker
the Americans would have something to say by that. Some historians believe that even without Churchill, we'd still win. It's ridiculous to think that one man turned the tide of history and ensured the democracy we enjoy today. It's ridiculous.
00:28:26
Speaker
It's a real strawman argument. I was a competitive debater for eight years, and this is the kind of unwinnable argument that would be completely dismissed by anyone who gives it any thought because you're literally facing it off an idea, an idea that is unproven. Whereas what we know from history is that this was an allied effort. There were tons of people
00:28:52
Speaker
And Churchill was desperate to hold on to his spot because someone would have replaced him, right? Like, we can't say for sure what actions would and wouldn't have happened. But, you know, like, based on history alone, you know, it's not a viable and tenable intellectual position to be like a single man stopped.
00:29:11
Speaker
you know, the entire movement of Nazism, right, the entire movement of fascism. And also we know that it wasn't stopped, right, that in Germany, for instance, they had to put in extensive
00:29:24
Speaker
you know, elementary, junior high, senior high level, educational campaigns just to counter things like anti-Semitism, right? Like these are ongoing conversations and efforts and we didn't see any of those things happen here to prevent it from happening again. So like Churchill might have, you know, been lauded as winning a war, but he definitely wasn't the only person who contributed to a war effort. And also like the premise that winning wars always makes you the good guy is totally false.
00:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, not to mention the millions of soldiers and innocent people that gave their lives and minimizing their sacrifice. Churchill didn't really, I mean, he expressed an admiration for Hitler in 1935. He said, quote, he admired his, quote, the courage, the perseverance and the vital force which enabled him to overcome all the resistances which barred his path.
00:30:18
Speaker
Like, you know, Churchill may not have liked his persecution of Jews, but he definitely liked the fact that he was an anti-communist. And Churchill was far more worried about communism than he was about fascism and Nazism. Exactly right.
00:30:34
Speaker
Yeah, he fought against a lot of these things that inspired modern day labor movements and stuff like that. Churchill was against all of that. And to defeat an enemy that you yourself propped up and have some sort of denialism about what you did when it's literally in recorded history is a new level of delusional leadership.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah, it was only when fascism and Nazism became a threat to the British Empire did defeating fascism and Nazism become a higher priority than crushing communism for Churchill. He was an arch conservative imperialist. Churchill was fine with appeasement and giving in to the initial demands of Nazi Germany, just like most of the British ruling class was, because they thought they were gearing up for not a fight against the Nazis, but a fight against Stalin's Russia.
00:31:28
Speaker
And you can see it in his actions, right? He signed a peace treaty with fascist Spain that survived, I think, until Franco's death, funnily enough. The British and the Americans did not give a shit about the Spanish Civil War and let the communists and anarchists get slaughtered by the Franco's army that was supported by fascist Italy.
00:31:52
Speaker
and Nazi Germany. You just have to go back and read some history books to find out that Churchill was not a good guy, but we still have people like Jason Kenney and Michael Walters and John Zadok, these city counselors in Edmonton, who get up on their hind legs and defend this guy.
Defending Churchill: Valid or Vain?
00:32:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that's the context we should be looking at, you know, not just Churchill, but all of these, you know, warmongers through, right, is that what is it that they were trying to protect? And what did they, you know, what did they do at the altar of that, that sacrifice, right? I know Churchill is very simple. He was protecting the British Empire. And whenever anything encroached on that is that's when he, you know, went to war and committed his, committed his atrocities, right? Other than that, he was very accepting of a lot of things that we wouldn't accept today.
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a character that has sprung out into the public's eye as a result of this artistic reimagining of the Churchill statue. And apparently you'd had a bit of a relationship with it before. I was only dimly aware of it, but the Winston Churchill Society is a thing that exists and they will provide quotes to the media saying that Churchill was great. And I went a bit down the rabbit hole on this organization and like they have
00:33:10
Speaker
They're incredible posters. Their blog goes back and takes every criticism of Churchill that has ever been made and they're like, nah, it's not real. It didn't happen. The fun fact about the Winston Churchill Society is that Mark Milk
00:33:29
Speaker
The one of the head honchos of the war room is also the president of the Winston Churchill Society. So just a fun little Alberta politics crossover with with that. I know you had a run in with the Winston Churchill Society of Edmonton in the past. What happened there?
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah, you know, I can't say for sure that it was the Churchill Society that sent me hate mail, but I did get a very nasty email from a woman who cited only their website as proof that Churchill was a great man, who applauded the fact that my term was coming to an end as poet laureate, that I was soapboxing because apparently having an opinion on an untouchable war hero is soapboxing, but her sending this hateful email is not.
00:34:17
Speaker
And honestly, like, this is kind of par for the course. Every time I do a poem where I speak out about something, you know, people have an opinion on what poetry is supposed to be, as if they didn't turn to art during their entire pandemic, right? And rely on artists to keep them satisfied, happy, from depression and entertained, right? Like women like Brenda from the Churchill Society, if you're listening, like, I can't believe you don't have better things to do than defend racists in your spare time.
00:34:48
Speaker
It's important to note that there's a Churchill Society in both Edmonton and in Calgary, and Calgary still plans on putting up a Churchill statue, I think next year, I think is their plan to put it up. I think they were planning earlier, but then because of the protests, they decided to push it until 2022. Ah, Calgary's next gender neutral, universally available public bathroom then. Fantastic.
00:35:15
Speaker
I know you pay attention to the media as part of your job a lot. What kind of jumped out at you about the media coverage of this event, Najib? Well, it was one-sided at the beginning, which I find stupefying actually, like how we can only go out and quickly go to print with only one side of the conversation. I mean, even if you couldn't find people to speak on the other side, you can do your own research.
00:35:39
Speaker
You know, as to your comment, right, it was the CBC article that first mentioned any atrocities committed by Churchill. Otherwise, there were only, you know, things quoted from the Churchill Society, which, of course, they're going to they're going to only say only say good things and defend, you know, these kinds of as as Nisha mentioned, strawman arguments are just, you know, to me, like just hilarious. Right. Like, you know, the same arguments you and I've seen all over social media whenever we post anything. Duncan is like, oh, well, what about Gandhi? You know, Gandhi was a racist. Come on.
00:36:10
Speaker
How many people did Gandhi kill? How many soldiers and troops did Gandhi command? You know what I mean? Like the biggest weapon that guy had was to stop eating.
00:36:19
Speaker
You know, it's ridiculous the kinds of things that people grasp at when their heroes are threatened as arguments, right? What we are trying to argue is that people, men in power, people in power that have these kinds of views, we should take a more critical look at them if we don't want this to continue. If we don't want to continue in putting men and women in power that have these racist, colonist, white supremacist views.
00:36:48
Speaker
I think it's also important to note that that argument that somehow we as South Asian people have our own representative heroes automatically assumes there is positionality and power imbalance between us and white people, that there is this line that they very clearly believe in and draw that defies complexity, that defies an understanding of holistically what a person did and what they knew and what they were bad for.
00:37:16
Speaker
people like Gandhi also shouldn't be made into statues, right? They had a different ethos than people today. And, you know, we there's fair criticism of both of these individuals, right? If we're going to do it on a balance of like who was more evil, I feel like that automatically assumes that there is a person who is perfect, that there is someone who can be, you know,
00:37:39
Speaker
untouchable that that should be the paragon of this kind of kindness or anti war mentality or anything like that. And I just think that's wrong. I think we shouldn't treat anyone without that complexity that we should, you know, look into histories, we should assume that everyone has committed harm. And for us as individuals who are still alive today to actively unlearn those behaviors and what we do, and to actively make sure we're not harming within our ability to do so.
00:38:07
Speaker
Absolutely. I've joked before on social media that we'll trade one of ours for one of theirs. We just do a big trade across the world, one of our statues for one of theirs. Well, that's the thing about this statue. And I like, I just think it's so funny. Our statue is not even original. It's actually a replica of a statue somewhere else. Like the city bought a replica. It's like, and I mentioned it, it's like going to the MoMA, getting a print of a Warhol.
00:38:33
Speaker
and putting it up on your wall. That's what we did with this statue. We didn't even commission an original statue. So in terms of artists and stuff, I would have felt pretty snubbed if I was a sculptor in Edmonton and I was denied the opportunity to contribute to public art. So even that from the artist perspective, the statue shouldn't have gone up. It went through the entirely wrong process of going up and what it represents is wrong and it should be taken down.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when somebody mentioned this, oh, it's art, we have to remember that this is art. Well, you know, if it is art, then let's put it in an art gallery. And second of all, you know, someone commented, which I thought was hilarious, and one of my posts that, you know, it's not art, it's a glorified garden ornament, which is hilarious, because how many people even look at this statue, right, or know the history that Nisha just just mentioned?
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of weirdly off to the side and in this kind of grove of trees. Like it's not like Winston Churchill statue is in the middle of the square. You know what I mean? Like it's it is kind of this weird afterthought. And I think you make a good point, Nisha, about like one statues are
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah, you're always going to run into trouble, like no more statues, right? But I think that leads into the next question is like, well, what do we do about the statue? And I'll put that to you, Nisha, like, what do we do about the statue? What do we do about the square and all of the things that are named after this guy?
Rethinking Monuments & Memorials
00:40:00
Speaker
You know, it was so funny because someone mentioned Tommy Banks and how Tommy Banks had said something along the lines of like, don't make me into a monument, like I don't want to be celebrated that way. And then we went and we named the street after him, you know, Tommy Banks Way, which is like also a really hard to get to street, but it exists and people use it.
00:40:20
Speaker
And I just think maybe we shouldn't build statues after people, maybe we shouldn't name squares after people. I'm a big fan of the grid system in city planning with numbers because I go to Ontario and I don't know anywhere where I'm going. There's streets named after things all the time.
00:40:42
Speaker
In Sherwood Park, they name things after birds and plants and entire sections of community. And so there are options that we have here to honor things that don't necessarily exist in controversy. And I'm not saying that that's the easy way out or that we should do that. I'm just saying we knew that Churchill was this complicated,
00:41:04
Speaker
figure who committed crimes and renamed the square after him anyway. So if we're making choices, why not make new choices to counter white supremacy and acknowledge mistakes from the past?
00:41:17
Speaker
Absolutely. Even if we didn't know at the time, we know now. As is being done around the world, let's rectify our mistake. If it is a replica, I think it probably should just be scrapped. But if it's so important, then maybe let's put it in the museum, put a real accounting.
00:41:34
Speaker
of his history and his words next to it. At the end of the day, these statues and these memorials, they aren't historical artifacts. They don't teach history. Our schools should be teaching history where proper accounting has to be done in those textbooks as well.
00:41:50
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, holding on to these things like somehow, you know, the representative history and we're rewriting or revising history because we take them down is ridiculous. You know, like I said, you know, we've just taken down a John A. McDonald statue. This isn't the first time that Churchill, you know, this has happened with Churchill statue either. I mean, it happened during the summer last year in Britain where somebody wrote, is a racist or was a racist on his statue in Halifax in our own country. We had a protest.
00:42:17
Speaker
But on their Winston Churchill statue they posted little post it notes about with with all of his quotes on it right so you know this is a controversy that's continuing and hasn't just begun here in Edmonton, but I think what we're seeing.
00:42:33
Speaker
around the world is like people are having these difficult conversations and really asking the question as Nisha said is do we need this you know at the end of the day do we need streets and buildings named after these types of historical figures or any historical figures at all and maybe we should be using you know things that make more sense just like we did with renaming our wards right which is how I got into the conversation with
00:42:53
Speaker
with Michael Walters last year in the first place I said okay great we're renaming our war to recognize indigenous people and indigenous culture like why do we still have this statue sitting in the in the middle of our of our city you know of a man who said that he doesn't think that indigenous people have a right to their land if more powerful worthy people come along you know it's it doesn't make any sense at all
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah. Let's bring the statue down. I think it's a very reasonable action, given everything that we've discussed. I'm glad we made the case for it. And Nisha, I think you make a great argument about names. I mean, I think it was named like...
00:43:32
Speaker
market square or something before. I mean, that's a perfectly acceptable name for it. And it was one of the original markets in the city. The city market actually has its history in Churchill Square. And that's what people knew it as. And when they tried to move market square and the market into another building, people protested by not attending. So there was like clearly a history there. But if we're going to go 100 years back, why not go 500 years back? These are traditional meeting grounds of
00:44:01
Speaker
Many people who have been erased, who have been forgotten, who have been subjects of ongoing colonial violence, we don't own this land. I don't own this land. The city certainly doesn't own this land. Give it back. Let the people who are the descendants of those original landkeepers decide, just like we did with the wards.
00:44:24
Speaker
Yeah, you know, and to those people, you know, who keep commenting, oh, you know, so you threw some paint on a statue. What have you accomplished? Well, we've accomplished exactly this is this conversation and and actually bringing some light and discussion and some meaningful dialogue and hopefully at the end we make the right decision.
00:44:40
Speaker
and mothball the statue, but that is what it accomplishes. You know, it isn't about the paint which was, you know, removed the same day within hours, which I think, you know, that's a disservice as well because we could have continued that dialogue. But these kinds of, these conversations need to happen and we need to understand, you know, what the effect of these memorials have on the people that were oppressed and marginalized during that time and the people that live today.
Closing Remarks & Call to Action
00:45:10
Speaker
I think it's a fantastic place to leave it. Just my last words on this is direct action gets the goods. It's why we're having this conversation. And it's not that hard to bring down a statue, apparently, according to a popular mechanics article that I will be linking to in the show notes. Great. Wonderful. Thanks so much, Anisha and Digi, for coming on. How can people follow along your work? How can people find you on the internet?
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah, you can go through my website like my haters do, nishapetal.ca, or you can follow me on Instagram where I post photos of my loving fiance, myself, and my shows, and other work that I do at another Nisha.
00:45:55
Speaker
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Najeebjut, N-A-J-I-B-J-U-T-T. I've done a little bit of writing. I'm often quoted in media on different political events. So it's not hard to find me.
00:46:10
Speaker
Awesome. Yes. Thanks so much for you two for coming on. And for all the folks out there listening to the podcast, thanks for listening all the way to the end. There's a few things that you can do to keep us going. One of which is rate, review, subscribe, however you found us, you know, make sure we end up in your podcatcher of choice and leaving reviews on Apple podcasts actually does really help.
00:46:29
Speaker
And the ultimate way to keep helping us out is to become one of our patrons. Join around the 500 other folks who make a small monthly contribution to this little independent media project. It's very easy. There's a link in the show notes. You can go to theprogressreport.ca slash patrons.
00:46:45
Speaker
You can put in your credit card, five, 10, $15 a month. It really does go a long way to helping us out and helping keeping this project going. Also, if you have any notes or thoughts, comments, things you think I need to hear, things you think I screwed up on, I'm very easy to get a hold of. I am also on Twitter, far too much, at, at Duncan Kinney. And you can reach me by email at DuncanKatprogressAlberta.ca. Thanks again to Nisha and Nijib for coming on. Thanks to Cosmic Family Communist for our amazing theme. Thank you for listening and goodbye.