[quickthrowman]

I see no reason to keep around statues of a man that is responsible for countless atrocities in the Belgian Congo. A statue is an honor, not history. Removing a statue does not change history, despite what some people may try and tell you.

Leopold II isn’t far down the list from Hitler and Stalin.

[irthomasthomas]

One reason is to understand how such a man could come to rule. And how the people can be so easily fooled to revere such evil. Lest we forget and allow it to happen again.

[p_j_w]

I find it both interesting and highly telling that people like yourself (not you personally) were nowhere to be found when statues of people like Felix Dzerzhinsky were coming down.

[quickthrowman]

Ok why aren’t there Hitler statues in Germany then? Are they going to forget Hitler was bad and have another Holocaust?

P.S. Leopold II came to power because he was the heir in a hereditary monarchy, we don’t need a statue of a genocidal aristocrat to know hereditary monarchy with actual governing power is bad.

[irthomasthomas]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34927442

Edit: I didn't want to litter the thread with copypaste, but my reply to a similar comment was:

  In 1960s Germany, students where so outraged by the absence of Nazism from their history curriculum that they turned violent. They rioted, bombed, and killed because they felt they where being denied their right to learn their recent history. And they blamed this on the fact that their teachers and parents had been Nazis and thought they where trying to erase their crimes. In a flash of cruel irony, the state's desire to shelter the students from political violence ignited it again in the streets and in the hearts of their students.

[lostlogin]

In the absence of a reply, I’m assuming that you are saying that hiding history is bad.

That’s fine, but putting up a statue of someone is usually seen as celebrating them. We aren’t hiding from what Hitler or Stalin did, so why don’t we have statues of them?

[hellojesus]

Seattle has a giant statue of Lenin. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Lenin_(Seattle)

[cld8483]

I like it; it often has the hands symbolically painted red.

[cld8483]

> Ok why aren’t there Hitler statues in Germany then? Are they going to forget Hitler was bad and have another Holocaust?

Perhaps it is the reason why the Reichstag still today has a mailbox with Hitler's name on it.

[irthomasthomas]

Rather than censor in a thread about censorship, I think it best to counter uncomfortable comments with more information.

  Another really cool feature is the this hall of mailboxes which was designed by a french artist and includes a mailbox for every democratically elected official in German history. The hall also contains officials such as Hitler and Goebbels because they were democratically elected but they often have to repair the box because people visiting will often punch and kick their boxes

https://cice.blog.gustavus.edu/2015/01/21/visiting-the-reich...