Transcript
Speaker: It was our delight to dash those proud faces to the ground, to smite them with the sword and savage them with the act, as if blood and agony could follow from every blow.
Speaker: Our transports of joy so long deferred were unrestrained, all sought a form of vengeance in beholding those bodies mutilated, limbs hacked in pieces, and finally that baleful, fearsome visage cast into fire
Speaker: to be melted down so that from such menacing terror, something for man's use and enjoyment should light out.
Speaker: Thank you all so much for joining us.
Speaker: My name is Jennifer Kohane.
Speaker: I'm one of the co-founders of CARP and an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore.
Speaker: I just wanted to introduce us quickly to our topic and to tell you a little bit about CARP for those of you who may be unfamiliar.
Speaker: So, CARP is a loose collection of international and interdisciplinary scholars who study character and character assassination throughout politics, science, entertainment,
Speaker: all sorts of realms of society.
Speaker: So we host conferences dedicated to the subject, we publish scholarship on character assassination, and teach courses, workshops, and seminars.
Speaker: We recently, in January of this year, published the Rutledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management.
Speaker: It's a hefty volume.
Speaker: My hard copy is unfortunately locked in an office I'm not allowed to go to.
Speaker: The last thing I wanted to say is that we're really
Speaker: Excited to have two more CARP co-founders, Martin Ix and Eric Schraib, with us today to talk about the historical approach to statues and toppling statues, defacing statues, vandalizing statues throughout history.
Speaker: They literally wrote the book on character assassination, and our work on the topic sort of stems from their original story.
Speaker: work and publication of this edited collection, Character Assassination, Throughout the Ages.
Speaker: So I'm going to turn it over to them and stop sharing my screen with you all.
Speaker: But again, thanks for joining us and give your attention to our speakers.
Speaker: Thanks very much, Jenny.
Speaker: So, Eric, are you ready?
Speaker: Yeah, let me see if the share screen works because I want to share with you an image that undoubtedly is familiar to everyone here.
Speaker: because this is one of the most famous episodes from the Iraq War, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in further square Baghdad in 2003, where Iraqi citizens helped by the US Army toppled one of the prominent statues of the Iraqi dictator.
Speaker: Interestingly, one of the people who helped to topple this statue
Speaker: later came out and told the BBC that he actually regretted doing so because he thought the situation in Iraq had deteriorated since then.
Speaker: So here you see Kadem Sharif, as the man is called, taking a sledgehammer to the statue.
Speaker: But later he says, when I go past that statue or where it used to stand, I feel pain and shame.
Speaker: And I ask myself, why did I topple this statue?
Speaker: I'd like to put it back up to rebuild it.
Speaker: I'd put it back up, but I'm afraid I would be killed.
Speaker: So it interestingly goes to show how people's perspective can change over time.
Speaker: But it's particularly that why question that we'll be focusing on today.
Speaker: Why did people and do people topple or deface statues?
Speaker: politicians and other public figures, what's the history behind that and how has that changed over time?
Speaker: Let me add just a few seconds and then we start from there.
Speaker: Why us?
Speaker: Martin and I, we think that we can share our humble opinion on this subject because we have written in these fields, as Jenny said.
Speaker: Martin is a historian, also writes about the lives of Roman embers and not only about them.
Speaker: I do write in the fields of international relations and publish, and also I write in the fields of cross-cultural psychology.
Speaker: and publish a lot in this field.
Speaker: So we humbly believe that we can provide our expertise in this field of defacing, toppling statues and other works of art.
Speaker: We are not giving political assessments today.
Speaker: We're not giving legal assessments because there is a due process.
Speaker: We are giving a historical perspective which inevitably includes studies in rhetoric, studies in political communication, studies in history, studies in psychology.
Speaker: And this is again a question why?
Speaker: What motivates people to do that?
Speaker: What ideas they have when they attack statues and other objects of art?
Speaker: And also consequences and certainly assessments.
Speaker: But my first question probably will be right away.
Speaker: Martin, we talked about events of today, but when did this all start?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I mean, we can go practically as far back as you'd like, I suppose.
Speaker: One of the earliest examples that I'm aware of at least is this one.
Speaker: This is a pharaoh from ancient Egypt, Pharaoh Hatshepsut.
Speaker: Interestingly, she was a female pharaoh.
Speaker: She was originally installed as regent of her nephew who was a minor, but she actually decided that she would make a good ruler herself.
Speaker: So she occupied the throne.
Speaker: and then reigned as Pharaoh over Egypt for over 20 years.
Speaker: Now this was in the 15th century BCE, so that's three and a half thousand years ago.
Speaker: After Hatshepsut died and she was finally succeeded by her nephew, and in fact only 20 years after that, so not immediately, there seems to have been some sort of campaign going on in Egypt and many of her statues were destroyed.
Speaker: One example of that can be seen here on the walls of the famous Karnak temple, where the image of Pharaoh Hatshepsut has been removed.
Speaker: But there's also a very conspicuous gap, as you can see.
Speaker: They could have painted something else over it.
Speaker: They didn't do that.
Speaker: They very conspicuously left that gap there.
Speaker: The question, of course, is why did this happen?
Speaker: And we're not entirely sure.
Speaker: You could speculate that perhaps the nephew was frustrated that he had to wait for his time so long because his own occupied the throne for 20 years.
Speaker: But then why did he wait 20 years until after she was dead to finally attack her memory?
Speaker: It may have had something to do with the fact that she was a woman and that people were very uncomfortable with the legacy of a woman who ruled and in fact ruled quite successfully as far as we're aware.
Speaker: and wanted to send out a very strong signal that this wouldn't do, that this wasn't good.
Speaker: About 100 years after that, this is probably the sarcophagus of the pharaoh Akhenaten, famous for, well, famous for being the father of King Tut, Tutankhamun, but also for introducing a monotheistic sun cult into ancient Egypt, which, as you can imagine, was very controversial.
Speaker: So he
Speaker: more or less disbanded the old Egyptian pantheon, or at the very least neglected them completely, at the expense of this solar deity.
Speaker: So that caused a huge backlash after his death.
Speaker: His name was scratched from the list of kings.
Speaker: His statues were destroyed and probably his sarcophagus was also defaced to signal that this pharaoh was no longer considered a legitimate king and that his name would live on in infamy forever.
Speaker: The Romans had something we call Domnatio Memoriae, literally the damnation of memory, where sometimes Roman emperors, after their death, posthumously, would be cursed, sometimes by an official decree by the Roman Senate.
Speaker: Sometimes the actions were more spontaneous, but it meant that, once again, their name was chiseled out of inscriptions, their statues were destroyed, or as you can see here,
Speaker: In the case of the emperor, the mission defaced.
Speaker: And a very nice example, I think, is this one.
Speaker: This is not an emperor.
Speaker: This is an empress, Aquilia Severa, who used to be a vestal virgin before she married the Roman emperor.
Speaker: Now, the name vestal virgin implies that you're not supposed to marry.
Speaker: So she also became quite a controversial figure.
Speaker: And you can see here, this is a bronze statue that someone took a hammer and smashed her face in.
Speaker: So to put it briefly, this goes back a long way.
Speaker: This goes back all the way to the ancient world.
Speaker: We see it in ancient Egypt.
Speaker: You see it in the time of the Roman emperor.
Speaker: So long time ago.
Speaker: And we talk about statues, right?
Speaker: And then talk about the destruction, the facing.
Speaker: But the people who did this, just a faceless bunch
Speaker: specific individuals who can be identified, as we say, some say mob.
Speaker: Who did this?
Speaker: Is it one just answer for this or there's different categories for that?
Speaker: Yeah, it's, the answers can vary actually.
Speaker: And sometimes we don't even know.
Speaker: I already mentioned Pharaoh had Shepsut, the female Pharaoh.
Speaker: They were not even sure whose initiative it was.
Speaker: Often it was a government initiative.
Speaker: So for instance, in the Roman Republic and later in the Roman Empire,
Speaker: It was often the Senate or a new emperor who decided that the memory of a predecessor would be condemned or that the memory of a public figure would be condemned.
Speaker: So then it was an official decision and the Senate would have an official decree stating that now, for instance, the birthday of someone would be seen as a day of bad luck.
Speaker: and that they were no longer considered an honorable person.
Speaker: But sometimes these things happened quite spontaneously as well.
Speaker: And people might hate a certain public figure so much that they would just attack their statues and destroy them or deface them in some way.
Speaker: So, for instance, when the Emperor Nero had murdered his mother or had condemned her to death,
Speaker: His statues were smudged with graffiti and they were vandalized by anonymous people who didn't agree with what the emperor was doing.
Speaker: Sometimes it could also be anonymous protesters, sometimes it could be an angry mob, it could be the soldiers, or it could be an official decision by a government.
Speaker: In this context, Martin, I'm glad you mentioned about a variety of different sources of violence.
Speaker: If you could show the slide in which we depict three cases from recent history, referring to the Soviet Union and referring to Ukraine and then Czech Republic.
Speaker: History, and correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my humble opinion, history is something that has been accomplished, settled.
Speaker: The events of yesterday is not history because yesterday continues with today.
Speaker: I talk about literally yesterday.
Speaker: So that's why I think there are still historic events because they took place some time ago in this sort of sense of accomplishment.
Speaker: Correct me if I'm wrong and we'll talk about it later, I guess.
Speaker: But you see, you talk about different type of people who were engaged in violence.
Speaker: The picture to your left, it's a statue which is in downtown Moscow, has been there.
Speaker: And so the statue has been dedicated to one of the most iconic leaders of a communist state, Felix Dzerzhinsky.
Speaker: Polish-Russian individual who has been associated with the Russian security services, known under the belt of KGB.
Speaker: So it's a police power, not necessarily police, but secret police power.
Speaker: And in 1991, this statue was just simply just knocked down.
Speaker: By whom?
Speaker: I can say, I just studied this, and documents are available.
Speaker: Essentially, yes, A, it was a spontaneous reaction of people,
Speaker: The supporters say, the demonstrators, the Abonians in Russia today says a mob, violent mob of thugs, but that was spontaneous expression of opinions.
Speaker: And then the city council, the government of Moscow, not only didn't they mind, they helped with equipment to remove the statue.
Speaker: And I look at the signs right there, there's almost profanities, but just sort of profanities, being saying that's end of the government, literally speaking.
Speaker: and to the government, very colorful Russian slang right there.
Speaker: So there was a combination of public will and public incentive, mass demonstration and then the government.
Speaker: On your right hand side you see the most recent developments this year was done relatively quietly in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.
Speaker: Government did this sponsor.
Speaker: There was no demonstration around there.
Speaker: Maybe some reporters, some photographers, no cheering crowd, right?
Speaker: There are a few individuals, as far as I know, maybe wrong, but a few dozen people came just to look at this.
Speaker: Well, it's a removal of a statue of a Russian field marshal, who was, whose name is associated with the liberation of Prague.
Speaker: We can discuss this, was it liberation or reoccupation of a country by the Soviet powers?
Speaker: A very complicated question.
Speaker: But anyway, that was a government decision, and in fact, there was a national consensus about this.
Speaker: saying that in fact, yes, thousands of Soviet soldiers lost their lives fighting against Nazi Germany in Prague in 1945, and yet still there's a symbol that vibrates years of Soviet dominance.
Speaker: And on the bottom, right-hand side, Ukraine,
Speaker: statues of Lenin been removed almost all over Ukraine.
Speaker: Pure political action just done by people.
Speaker: The governments just suddenly stood there, just didn't do anything substantial, but the people removed Lenin.
Speaker: Not because they were against, I would say some of them were against communist ideology, but essentially as a political act of a defiance, statements in the face of Russia, essentially.
Speaker: Russia as a country which Ukrainians believe occupied substantial portion of their territory, right?
Speaker: in the contemporary times truth, government sponsoring movables, people and the governments and people themselves without the government.
Speaker: Yeah, so shall I move on to the next slide?
Speaker: Certainly, but my question is, we talk about statues, but statues represent something, but are there only the statues that were attacked, defaced and somehow removed, or maybe this was something else?
Speaker: No, in fact, if I return to the ancient world, many, many different things could be attacked.
Speaker: We've seen in the case of Hatshepsut that it was actually a relief or an image on a wall that was removed.
Speaker: We've seen that sarcophagi and sometimes also graves can be vandalized.
Speaker: It could be statues.
Speaker: In the Roman Empire, it could also be coins because, of course, coins had the portrait of the Roman emperor on them.
Speaker: And if an emperor fell into disgrace for whatever reason, then sometimes people try to destroy or mutilate their coins.
Speaker: So here is a very nice example of the emperor Nero.
Speaker: where someone has taken the trouble to pry out his eyes, which is something that you often see happening also to portrait busts, by the way, that the eyes are attacked.
Speaker: Also, interestingly, the eyes of the goddess that is depicted on the other side have been removed.
Speaker: This is probably connected to a curse on Nero's memory.
Speaker: Inscriptions as well.
Speaker: Here we have an inscription of the imperial family where one of the...
Speaker: minor emperors, the emperor Geta is removed and you see here once again that his name is very conspicuously left out.
Speaker: They didn't try to repair this in any way and try to gloss over the fact that his name had been removed.
Speaker: No, they leave a very conspicuous gap so that everyone is reminded that this emperor's name used to be here and now it's not.
Speaker: And perhaps you can see that even
Speaker: Better here, this is a tondo, a painted portrait of the imperial family.
Speaker: These are the Severin family at about 200 CE.
Speaker: The younger son, Geta, falls into disgrace.
Speaker: His memory is cursed by the Senate not long after he's become emperor.
Speaker: And he is then very obviously removed from this tondo and where Geta's face used to be.
Speaker: we now have this gap that shows that there's daddy Septimius Severus, mama Julia Domna, Caracalla, the older brother who reigned for several years and then Geta has simply been removed.
Speaker: Geta is in fact a very interesting example because there's no other Roman emperor for whom there's been such an organized campaign of defacing statues, removing him from inscriptions,
Speaker: even scratching his name out of papyrus texts in Egypt.
Speaker: So a real effort was made in this case, and the initiative must have come from the top.
Speaker: Have you thought about a difference between removing, toppling, and defacing?
Speaker: Is there a difference?
Speaker: I think there can be.
Speaker: I mean, we're, of course, drawing all sorts of historical parallels here.
Speaker: We're going back and forth between communist times and the Roman Empire and Egypt and whatever.
Speaker: I think we should also be careful that sometimes things look the same, but they may not have always the same reasons.
Speaker: For instance, in ancient Egypt, there is this notion that if you are removed from memory, so if your name and your images are removed everywhere, then you can no longer live on in the afterlife.
Speaker: So there's also definitely a religious context to that that is missing when we're looking at removals of statues of Stalin or Lenin, for instance.
Speaker: People do not think that they are depriving Stalin of a place in the afterlife.
Speaker: So some things are the same.
Speaker: Some things are also different.
Speaker: But I think in general, we can say that if you leave these very conspicuous gaps, like in the imperial family or here, where this is still recognizably
Speaker: the emperor, the mission, but you can see that his face has been mutilated.
Speaker: And as I mentioned, often the eyes are also mutilated.
Speaker: That can also serve as a sort of permanent reminder that someone is in this place.
Speaker: So when you just quietly remove a statue, you know, on a Sunday morning when no one's paying attention and you put it in storage somewhere and you simply don't mention it anymore,
Speaker: then you're trying to quietly remove this person from an honorable position in history.
Speaker: But if you leave a conspicuous gap or in its defaced form, I think then you're trying to send a different signal.
Speaker: Then you're trying to signal that this person is in disgrace.
Speaker: Once we thought he was honorable or we were forced perhaps to honor him, but now we know better and we can reveal him for what he really is, namely a monster, a villain, et cetera.
Speaker: I think, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no, actually, I was going to ask you a question, namely, from the perspective of political psychology, looking at the individuals who attack these statues, can you say anything about the sort of motivations that they would have for doing so?
Speaker: Well, certainly I will talk about this, I'd love to, if you just help me just to start with photographs I want to show.
Speaker: Stalin, first of all, it's a well-known and there'll be less, there you go, thank you, thank you, wonderful.
Speaker: About why people do these things, defacing, attacking, removing, and speaking about removing and motivations.
Speaker: There are fewer political motivations exist about politics, power.
Speaker: the ability to dominate, to impose your will, the ability to introduce your will.
Speaker: There you go.
Speaker: It's a famous or infamous picture, a big one.
Speaker: See, it's on the background.
Speaker: Vladimir Lenin, he's the head of the Russian Soviet Revolution.
Speaker: In 1917, near him, second in command, second in charge, was Leo Trotsky.
Speaker: And he became a persona non grata, essentially, in the Soviet Union, just Lenin and Trotsky, and Stalin and Trotsky.
Speaker: Later they disagreed in many terms, in fact, Trotsky became the person who portrayed as a villain in Soviet textbooks.
Speaker: And here the picture on the bottom, see it's a picture, identical picture, but the face of Trotsky being removed, removed.
Speaker: And for generations in the Soviet Union, in newspapers and other sources when the picture was used, there was an empty spot right there.
Speaker: So the Photoshop didn't exist then, but there was an initial attempt at photoshopping the pictures, removing the image of an individual who was a right-hand man of Lenin and Stalin essentially, but it was removed for political purposes.
Speaker: And next slide, please, if you can show.
Speaker: Now I'll be quick right there.
Speaker: So this again, Trotsky.
Speaker: It's a remarkable picture.
Speaker: You see, I highlighted it right there.
Speaker: To your left, you see Trotsky standing there near Lenin during Lenin famous speech in Moscow on the bottom.
Speaker: Well, this Trotsky is not there.
Speaker: Picture was photoshopped.
Speaker: The next slide, please.
Speaker: I just must say it's not contemporary developments.
Speaker: Something has been done back in 1920s, 1930s.
Speaker: There you go, this is on the top picture right there.
Speaker: It's a head of security service in the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin near him in Moscow on a sunny day in the summer.
Speaker: And on the bottom, the guy disappeared.
Speaker: He was tried by the secret trial and executed.
Speaker: but pictures removed, so disappearance.
Speaker: There's a political motivation.
Speaker: We debate in political science, and Jen can add to this, it's true, political communication, that the debate is what's more efficient, most important thing.
Speaker: Is it just forgetting about transgressions of the person or continue naming and shaming?
Speaker: It's a psychological feature, just whether this is a family.
Speaker: Should we remind our children about some member of a family who conducted something shameful or should we just forget about it?
Speaker: this individual and just never mentioned his or her name in our family.
Speaker: And there's no clear question, of course, of this.
Speaker: But next slide, please, and then we'll summarize.
Speaker: This is maybe less known picture.
Speaker: This is a picture, a famous picture, and every person in China, I'm supposed to know this picture,
Speaker: on the top.
Speaker: Mao Zedong in 1949 declares the creation of a first communist state in China.
Speaker: So it's definitely, it's a very, very, just a made up picture.
Speaker: It's just, everything is colorful.
Speaker: Everything is great there.
Speaker: But notice there's a face of a comrade Gao right there, just who was there.
Speaker: He was a,
Speaker: not the second, maybe top five or top three individuals in Mao Zedong encirclement among his top advisors, top followers of the government.
Speaker: After just falling out of favor somehow, being accused and arrested for being an enemy of the state, his painting, his picture, his face was removed.
Speaker: There's a seed of flowers standing right there.
Speaker: And the three or four generations of people in China saw that picture on the top.
Speaker: Gao was not even mentioned anywhere.
Speaker: So this is a form of political death.
Speaker: Again, so you are not there, your name is even erased, you don't exist.
Speaker: So it's a form of character attack, character removal.
Speaker: I mentioned political motivations.
Speaker: Yes, you get rid of your political opponents.
Speaker: You get rid of former comrades or associates.
Speaker: And it's one of the ultimate forms of disgrace.
Speaker: There are reasons which are ideological.
Speaker: So it's a deep-seated values in us.
Speaker: And so what kind of values?
Speaker: Could be religious values.
Speaker: There are religiously based removals, you know, Taliban, just removal of, just destruction of statues there.
Speaker: Well, idea of injustice.
Speaker: In fact, conflict theories in political science, Marxism is one of the examples, and post-colonialism studies and movements suggest that the history of the world has been based on very unjust foundations, either as a class, problems with social class, or as a race, or imperialism, and therefore, any symbol that represents all systems,
Speaker: liberal, conservative, doesn't matter, but it's an old system based on pressure, it must be somehow dealt with, so ideological.
Speaker: And also quickly psychological.
Speaker: And in no way I suggest that, well, there are people who are mindless and brainless.
Speaker: No, people do have motivations.
Speaker: But psychologists have established the fact that many people, especially younger individuals,
Speaker: prone to this form of self-expression when you want to do something meaningful or meaningless but memorable.
Speaker: And that's why we do have trolls, that's why we have vandals on the web, that's why we have people, and I remember my childhood, we did, I hope the statute of limitations passed, but we did terrible things to our neighbors, I'm ashamed of them.
Speaker: spray painting and damaging property because we were just wanted to do something.
Speaker: And I believe that a person may commit a violent act out of ideological reasons, plus political reasons.
Speaker: You act against incumbent government, you just want to send a message to the government.
Speaker: It also could be out of a psychological state of mind and behavior.
Speaker: You want to do something.
Speaker: But instead of writing a pamphlet or publishing a paper or conducting webinar, you do something meaningful outside.
Speaker: Spray and paint your neighbor's fence because, well, you don't like this, your neighbor.
Speaker: Or simply, simply because you want to do something for that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Thanks.
Speaker: Thanks very much.
Speaker: So, but you and I mentioned mostly, mostly of statues and paintings and material items.
Speaker: But do you think there's a difference between attacking, destroying something material and attacking an actual person, physical body and mind of an actual person?
Speaker: Yeah, that's a very good question.
Speaker: I find that one of the most intriguing things about...
Speaker: this whole process of defacing and destroying and toppling the parallels that there are with actually attacking the physical body, often the corpse of the leader.
Speaker: So a leader, a tyrant maybe, who has been deposed.
Speaker: And then you see that people go to work on his or her body.
Speaker: And these parallels are often drawn.
Speaker: So there's this very interesting quotation
Speaker: This is from Pliny the Younger talking once again about the Emperor Domitian.
Speaker: So Domitian had been murdered in a palace coup and then his statues are destroyed and attacked by people.
Speaker: And Pliny describes this and he says, it was our delight to dash those proud faces to the ground, to smite them with the sword and savage them with the axe, as if blood and agony could follow from every blow.
Speaker: Our transports of joy
Speaker: so long deferred were unrestrained, all sought a form of vengeance in beholding those bodies mutilated, limbs hacked in pieces, and finally that baleful, fearsome visage cast into fire to be melted down so that from such menacing terror, something for man's use and enjoyment should light out flames.
Speaker: I mean, there's a whole lot in this quotation, I think, and you could spend a lot of time talking about it, but what I wanted to point out here
Speaker: is that it almost seems to be, you know, describing a physical attack on the emperor himself.
Speaker: And we know that in some cases such attacks did indeed happen.
Speaker: For instance, the emperor Elagabalus, after he has been murdered, they chop the head off his corpse and then they sling him on a hook and they drag him through the streets of Rome to show his disgrace.
Speaker: Much as you would do with a statue perhaps.
Speaker: And finally,
Speaker: He is chopped into pieces and cast into the river Tiber.
Speaker: We can take us all the way back to Homer, even in the Iliad, who describes Achilles with the corpse of Hector drawn behind his chariot, circling the city of Troy every day to shame the corpse of Hector and to shame his memory.
Speaker: So what's being done to statues can also be done to corpses or to graves,
Speaker: that are being desecrated in the French Revolution.
Speaker: What do people do?
Speaker: They desecrate the graves of the French kings, for instance.
Speaker: And perhaps the most gruesome example is one, Eric, that you and I talked about before and that we both very much like.
Speaker: This is a medieval example of what's called the Cadaver Synod, where a deceased pope, Pope Formosus in the 9th century CE, so early Middle Ages,
Speaker: is put on trial by his successor.
Speaker: The popes were very much political figures in the Middle Ages.
Speaker: They had their own territories, they had their own armies, they got engaged in political factions.
Speaker: Now this pope happened to be succeeded by a pope from a different political faction.
Speaker: And what he did is he dug up the corpse of his predecessor and then put him on trial.
Speaker: So as you can see here in the painting, there is the pope.
Speaker: Rest in all his regalia, in his splendid ropes.
Speaker: He even got a defender, someone to defend his case.
Speaker: But of course, it was a show trial.
Speaker: It was already known in advance that he would be condemned.
Speaker: So in the end, his corpse, after it has been condemned, is dragged out of the church.
Speaker: And it's once again plunged into the River Tiber, just as some of the Roman emperors were.
Speaker: And the story continues that he then washes up ashore somewhere and is found by some fishermen.
Speaker: who bring him back and finally he is reburied.
Speaker: But why did people go to the trouble?
Speaker: Why put a corpse on trial?
Speaker: Why mutilate the corpse of a leader once he's dead?
Speaker: I think the mechanisms at work there are actually very comparable to what's going on when enraged people attack a statue.
Speaker: And these parallels are often explicitly drawn in descriptions.
Speaker: Right away, the opposite example, contemporary Russian politics, when on the one hand, they removed the statue of Stalin from the mausoleum, the mummy, and just, he's buried there.
Speaker: However, Lenin is still there, one can go there and just stay in line for a little bit.
Speaker: and go and see, well, Lenin right there, just right there, display, the body display.
Speaker: And the reasons why the government didn't want to remove this was quite logical.
Speaker: They didn't want to spark public outrage.
Speaker: At least maybe 20% of people, according to opinion polls, 25, 30, who say, well, let the body be there.
Speaker: Let's pay respect and maybe it's not really, as I said, a Christian tradition to keep a body there, not unburied, but assuming Lenin actually was not Christian, so, and then there were no in this historic artifact and they just stood for the sake of public order, let's keep the body there.
Speaker: It's quite interesting.
Speaker: Yeah, so, Eric, of course, it's no coincidence that we are doing this topic right now with everything
Speaker: going on with the protests in the United States and in fact across the world where this has been picked up as well.
Speaker: So people really seem to make a big deal out of removing statues, keeping statues in their place.
Speaker: They go to fights over it quite literally.
Speaker: Do you think in the end it makes much of a difference whether a statue is removed or whether it's kept in place?
Speaker: Martin, it makes a difference in some individuals and doesn't make any difference in other type of individuals.
Speaker: Those of us who are motivated by immediate concerns, name of a high school or representation of your ancestral roots in a certain way that you find derogatory or inappropriate,
Speaker: It's one thing and one and done painting or statues removed and you're happy.
Speaker: Well, just mission accomplished.
Speaker: But if I had deeper values, if I'm motivated ideologically, if I believe those statues represent the system
Speaker: against which i want to fight that's of course it will be appeasement because that's just basically small step uh to satisfy my aspirations will be nothing because i have a bigger and i have a more a more a complex and complex and complicated agenda in this sense and so therefore the question is how many of individuals are motivated by specific uh
Speaker: ideas or concerns or grievances and how many people really motivated by deep-seated ideological values.
Speaker: And this is what we don't know.
Speaker: What's there for?
Speaker: Many, and opinion polls show this, suggest that, well, that's true.
Speaker: Let's just agree with removal and just move on because this is what people want.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: Let's move on and discuss something else.
Speaker: Others suggest no.
Speaker: It's something deeper within this and just simple removal.
Speaker: It will not stop anything.
Speaker: President of France, Macron, just declared that history is complicated and history has many sides and therefore he said statues will stand right there, suggesting that's a good or bad, this is what he decided.
Speaker: I guess that brings us to the most complicated question of them all, which is why we saved it for last.
Speaker: So there's a big debate about all sorts of historical figures, but to what extent can we judge historical figures by the standards of the present?
Speaker: Is that fair?
Speaker: Is that realistic?
Speaker: Can we rewrite history and does it mean that history changes all the time?
Speaker: As a political psychologist, I think that, yes, many things happened, but the way they happened based on our personal opinion and of course historical perspective,
Speaker: perspective is something which we all learned from our parents, schools, from the web, from webinars, and just reform our opinions.
Speaker: So yes, history can be, people say, well, we can, you can rewrite history.
Speaker: certain things happen, true, but the way we see them completely different, the way we touch meanings to them.
Speaker: Therefore, there are different interpretations.
Speaker: And the way we see evil side of history and good side of history, I would say it's a very flexible, it's a very dynamic process.
Speaker: Yeah, I think history is being rewritten.
Speaker: History keeps changing.
Speaker: On the other hand, I mean, if you're going to look at people from the past, then I would guess that
Speaker: Everyone who lived, let's say more than 50 years ago, would not live up to current day standards probably.
Speaker: And we were joking once among each other that perhaps in a hundred years time, everyone will have become a vegetarian and we'll have to say, well, all those statues of carnivores that we've put up, like, I don't know, Nelson Mandela, they have to go.
Speaker: This is a caricature, of course, but it is a very tricky discussion where you're going to draw the line.
Speaker: What do you still think is acceptable?
Speaker: In some cases, I think it's pretty clear.
Speaker: If someone is involved in slave trade, for instance, then I wouldn't advocate keeping that statue up.
Speaker: But what about a character like Winston Churchill, who has also come under discussion?
Speaker: Yes, he probably held racist views, and he wasn't the greatest feminist in the world, to put it mildly.
Speaker: but also he achieved great things.
Speaker: So does one outweigh the other?
Speaker: That's a very tricky discussion to have.
Speaker: It is, but still it's surprising that I'm mentioning Russian politics, because 99% of my comments are critical.
Speaker: However, they in Russia were able somehow to settle on the history, at least in 20th century, in many ways.
Speaker: During the bloodiest event in Russian history, it's a civil war between 1917 and 1921, 22.
Speaker: Definitely mass casualties and destruction and suffering.
Speaker: And yet today they settled and remains of former generals who were condemned, damned and just forgotten during Soviet times, their remains reburied with honor.
Speaker: There are no monuments, of course.
Speaker: There are no just new statues erected for them.
Speaker: But at least it has been history.
Speaker: It was painful, it was bloodiest part of Russian history.
Speaker: But let's settle this as a part of our history.
Speaker: So this is maybe just an example that can be followed.
Speaker: Yes, we're not certainly condoning what happened there.
Speaker: However, let's remember and remind everybody else what happened.
Speaker: Yeah, well, this is certainly not a discussion that we can solve right here and now, I think.
Speaker: But I see that there are already some people in the chat.
Speaker: So do you think it's a good idea if we get more people involved and let them make comments or ask questions if they want?
Speaker: One of the questions is one that I think is really interesting about the nature of public space.
Speaker: So these statues appeared and existed in public space, and certainly thinking about statues that are removed also requires us to think about what is public space and what is public space for?
Speaker: So what is the nature of, for instance, the Agora, and what values should we put on display in that public space?
Speaker: And so can we see some shifts in how we approach statues based on how we think about public space?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, that's a very good question.
Speaker: I mean, for instance, the Greek Agora or the Roman Forum was also a place where people celebrate certain values.
Speaker: So the Emperor Augustus, for instance, he built a new forum, a new big public space, a square with a temple.
Speaker: And there he put up statues of all the great Romans from the past.
Speaker: And he put them opposite all members of his own family, who also got a row of statues.
Speaker: So that, of course, is also appropriating what's supposed to be public space, which is celebrating these public heroes, but also makes a very personal statement about his own place in history.
Speaker: So one thing I think you can see happening in the Roman Empire, for instance, is that emperors appropriate what used to be public space, meaning the space of the Senate and people of Rome, and they make it into imperial spaces.
Speaker: When I was in Washington, DC, and I visited the capital, and I did the tour, I was very struck by this custom that each American state got to donate two statues of local heroes that are then put on display
Speaker: And that's also a way of celebrating national values, state values, perhaps even.
Speaker: And you had astronauts, but you also had Rosa Parks there.
Speaker: So, yeah, that tells you a lot about the symbolism of that public space as well.
Speaker: What you put on this play there defines the space in a way.
Speaker: And what is a public space, Martin, I think, and Jenny, I think it's also defined by politics.
Speaker: And I mean politics not in a bad way, just politicking, but politics is a will of the people.
Speaker: And so debate which is developing about what's supposed to be public space.
Speaker: And maybe just my personal opinion, and maybe it is silly, but of course that we can express our opinions fairly,
Speaker: Maybe just if we disagree with public space is, maybe this will be a good idea to erect a second statue near the one which is disputed, to show that it may be a different version of events that took place right there.
Speaker: So, and you use both statues to indicate that's just a different point of view, at least two points of view about that event.
Speaker: Of course, the idea is silly, but at least in a psychological way, it would represent that there are points of view and there are
Speaker: disagreements, have been disagreements about certain political issues.
Speaker: But I think public space is defined by culture, by ideology, and definitely by political process.
Speaker: Yeah, that's interesting, Eric, because certainly having sort of dialogic statues would be a way of kind of reclaiming public space as a space for public interaction and debate.
Speaker: But yeah, the statues in the basement of the US Capitol are certainly one of the key sort of touchstones of the debate over statues in the US right now.
Speaker: Alex is wondering if there's a psychological difference between destroying or modifying a monument and creating a parody monument.
Speaker: And he gives the example of Putin gravestones.
Speaker: I'm not familiar with parody monuments, Eric, but if you are, is there a difference?
Speaker: Mockery.
Speaker: Mockery is offensive to some, funny to others way of depicting reality.
Speaker: Sarcasm, exaggeration of certain features, something like caricature.
Speaker: We are familiar with the examples, there are plenty of them in the contemporary world.
Speaker: The difference is that quite often this political mockery is often conducted within legal realm.
Speaker: Therefore, the authorities cannot prosecute or at least somehow limit the expression of this type of activities.
Speaker: And those who support First Amendment in our country, Martin knows one of the points, the freedom of speech right there.
Speaker: Supporters of First Amendment suggest, yes, it's our right to portray individuals in that particular way.
Speaker: However, there is of course limit, the political and religious, how far you go and how far you can mock these images.
Speaker: But psychologically, mockery is affordable, is available.
Speaker: Children can do it.
Speaker: You can draw a picture, you can create a sculpture at home, you can share with others on social network.
Speaker: And this is stimulating, this is invigorating, this is interesting.
Speaker: And this is also in certain ways allows you to express yourself politically.
Speaker: In many ways it's supposed to be supported, unless it violates, clearly violates legal rules of our country.
Speaker: Martin, are there examples of parody monuments in the ancient world?
Speaker: I can't immediately think of any because almost all the visual material is affirmative.
Speaker: It's celebrating someone.
Speaker: So usually when it's mocking someone, that means that it's defaced or destroyed.
Speaker: We do have one graffiti of the Emperor Nero from the basement of the Imperial Palace, I think.
Speaker: But it's very, very rare.
Speaker: I think caricatures and mocking images, I won't exclude that.
Speaker: know that there were some in the ancient world, but they're really mostly associated with the modern world.
Speaker: And I think they really came up in a big way with the art of printing.
Speaker: In the Protestant Reformation, you get these caricatures, mocking popes, for instance, and then it becomes a big thing.
Speaker: Tonya's wondering, have you come across any instances, either you, Martin or Eric, of individuals that were defaced or removed and then later on restored in some ways, perhaps represented with footnotes?
Speaker: Stalin perhaps is an example there, but are there other examples you can think of?
Speaker: Or Stalin's enemies, I guess I should say.
Speaker: Yeah, there is a very intriguing example from the Roman Empire of the Emperor Commodus, who people may know from the movie Gladiator.
Speaker: He didn't have the best reputation.
Speaker: He was on very bad terms with the Roman Senate.
Speaker: So after he was murdered, many emperors were murdered, the Senate issued a decree condemning his memory and they proceeded to destroy his statutes.
Speaker: But then a certain general seized power.
Speaker: This was Septimius Severus, and he proclaimed that he was actually the divine brother of Commodus.
Speaker: So he tried to legitimize his new dynasty by making a fictional connection to the old dynasty.
Speaker: And he forced the Roman Senate to restore Commodus' memory because Commodus was in fact quite popular with the Roman soldiers.
Speaker: The Senate hated him.
Speaker: They condemned his memory.
Speaker: And then actually the Senate was forced to issue a new decree, claiming that he was now among the gods.
Speaker: He was divinized.
Speaker: So he was condemned first.
Speaker: And just a few years later, he was turned into a god and he was honored with temples and everything.
Speaker: I can use an example, not necessarily about statues, but the meaning people attach, political meaning, attached to symbols, like a famous infamous example of a car train used in the conflict in France and Germany.
Speaker: So the car train in which capitulation was signed by one side, and then this was used as a symbol of defeat for other country, and then back,
Speaker: So the French lost to Germans, to Prussians in 19th century, and then 1914, and then again, again, beginning of World War II.
Speaker: So the same symbol, same card frame, 401, was used to humiliate others.
Speaker: Just put it on pedestal and say, look, this is a district here, you sign your capitulation agreement.
Speaker: It was used and reused by each other side.
Speaker: But fortunately, we put an end, hopefully.
Speaker: Hopefully it's not there anymore.
Speaker: So the next question is sort of, in my mind, the million dollar question when it comes to thinking about toppling or defacing statues.
Speaker: And this is sort of the question of what do you do, which is the hardest question.
Speaker: So Holly's wondering, is there a way to put a monument in context to demonstrate that social values have changed
Speaker: and that perhaps this person is no longer revered?
Speaker: Or will there always kind of be a knee-jerk emotional reaction to, you know, the way that social values change throughout history?
Speaker: Yeah, currently in the Netherlands where I live, have a big discussion as well about our colonial past and about statues from colonial days which are still there, what should be done with them.
Speaker: Some people think they should be left in place, they represent our former greatness.
Speaker: Others think, no, these were slave traders, racists, their statues should just be removed completely.
Speaker: But there are all sorts of compromises that are being tried out, like putting up a plaque for instance, explaining why this statue was put up and that nowadays we have to put this into perspective.
Speaker: Perhaps this person did some great things, but he also did some pretty terrible things by today's standards.
Speaker: What I thought was a very charming solution was when I was in Budapest once,
Speaker: They have removed all the statues from the communist age, but rather than just destroying them, they put them all in a big park, in a public park, and you can still visit it, and then you can see these statues of 10-meter-high workmen waving red flags and whatever.
Speaker: They're still preserved, so the past isn't gone.
Speaker: It's relocated in public space, it's no longer in the public square, so it's no longer celebrated in the central place.
Speaker: It's not forgotten, it's still there, it's just recontextualized.
Speaker: I believe so, it's idea of having a park, it's probably somewhere in the middle between both sides, and both sides may consider it as they're not caving.
Speaker: And I'm talking about both sides, and there are many sides of the debate, of discussion, of course.
Speaker: and returning to those of us, people who are devout and who are believers,
Speaker: As far as I know of the religion in Christianity and Islam and other religions, there is a warning about paying too much attention to symbols.
Speaker: Symbols are important, but the most important thing is your heart and soul.
Speaker: Of course, it's easier said than done to say, let's educate and suggest that the piece of granite, piece of wood is not a value, it's just what you assign to this value is important.
Speaker: It takes a long time, but definitely must be a due process.
Speaker: In a contemporary global world, when we travel, I can say this will probably sound more and more strange and ridiculous.
Speaker: You visit Paris, for instance, and you see the portraits of Napoleon right there.
Speaker: As a Russian person, do you have to attack them and just ask for the removal because they offend you as a person?
Speaker: If I travel to Mongolia, should I remember the 300 years Russians just living under occupation, as historians say, of tribes from the east?
Speaker: So therefore, yeah, public spaces in which debate can start, due process for statues and paintings and other symbols today, and of course education, education, education, which takes a long time, but it should be done.
Speaker: Thank you, Eric.
Speaker: I'm not sure whether you were looking ahead in the chat, but if you were, I'll just share one more comment and then we'll wrap up, which is Vladimir noting, which I think is a really astute point, that most of our conversation revolved around the pagan Christian tradition, but there are traditions that forbid creating these images as a way, perhaps, of avoiding the question of idols that are going to topple or be taken or fallen down.
Speaker: But thank you so much for your insights, Martin and Eric.
Speaker: I think you've identified some important ideas, which is that these types of decisions of how we understand and memorialize history have been with us for forever, and that they're fraught, and they're political, and that people who are motivated to get engaged in defacing, toppling,
Speaker: or even putting up new plaques or new context for statues are motivated by a variety of reasons that are all deeply influenced by changing social values.
Speaker: So thank you for an insightful and interesting conversation.
Speaker: We will be back with some more conversations about character and character assassination.
Speaker: So thank you for joining us today.
Speaker: Thank you.
