As we’ve been reporting yesterday, statue removal hysteria keeps spreading.
After the UK’s leftist newspaper editors of the Guardian asked for a removal of Admiral Nelson’s column in London’s Trafalgar square, today the attention turns to Australia.
In a copycat move, an editorial in a newspaper, written following protests in the US about statues of Confederate generals, called for the removal or at least adaptation of a 19th century statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney central Hyde Park.
What exactly is the criticism this time? Well, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's indigenous affairs editor, Stan Grant, wrote the article on arguing that, and we quote "surely we need no longer maintain the fiction that Captain Cook discovered' this country". We bet you can see the Colombus reference staring right back at you here.
He further argued that some other people favored removing the statue altogether. Referring to a comment made by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about honoring Australians, Grant wrote: "If he is serious then what could be more apt than to correct a monument that tells us, still, that in 1770 we did not exist?"
“The inscription that Cook “Discovered this territory 1770” maintains a damaging myth, a belief in the superiority of white Christendom that devastated indigenous peoples everywhere.”
The argument has provoked a national discussion and is receiving support, particularly on social media.
For those of you who didn’t sit this one out in the history lesson, allow us to remind you. Captain James Cook was the British explorer of the Royal Navy who in 1770 achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands.
Just as with the Christopher Columbus statue in the US which the Goldwater also reported on, they are aiming for the European discoverer of their own island. Rewriting history seems to be one of the summer fads of 2017.
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Lets just take down every statue