Nationalism, immigration and racism in the EU

[0bleak]

What do you think of this take?

The Aristocratic Ineptitude of Ursula Von Der Leyen

How the EU president’s family connections explain her rise to power—and failures using it during the pandemic.

foreignpolicy.com

"Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most significant Nazis but also some of Britain’s largest slave traders and, through marriage, some of the United States’ largest slave owners. Von der Leyen is descended directly from James Ladson, who owned more than 200 slaves when the Civil War broke out.


It might seem petty to condemn someone for their ancestry: The sins of the father, after all, shall not be visited on the son—or, in this case, the daughter. But von der Leyen herself has invoked these forefathers unapologetically, if unthinkingly. When von der Leyen was in college and a group of radical, left-wing terrorists called the Red Army Faction (RAF) went on a violent crime spree, Albrecht, concerned his family would become a target of the RAF, implored his beloved Röschen to study abroad. She enrolled at the London School of Economics under the name Rose Ladson. Few people at the time were as conscious of the lingering legacies of slavery as we have now become, but her choice to assume the name of her slave-holding ancestors was an indication nevertheless about her comfort with unchallenged and inherited privilege."

 

[mixed_biscuits]

She enrolled at the London School of Economics under the name Rose Ladson. Few people at the time were as conscious of the lingering legacies of slavery as we have now become, but her choice to assume the name of her slave-holding ancestors was an indication nevertheless about her comfort with unchallenged and inherited privilege.

That's a bit tenuous. If she hadn't done that she'd be accused of whitewashing and being ashamed of the name.

 

[0bleak]

hmm, I dunno
I would like to think she feels some shame if her family got their wealth through things like that.
I would feel kind of ashamed. I remember feeling ashamed in elementary school when we were talking about slavery just because I'm white and I'm sure that we benefited from it in some ways even if people in my family weren't slave owners.
I mean, she could have picked any number of names, it seems.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

hmm, I dunno
I would like to think she feels some shame if her family got their wealth through things like that.
I would feel kind of ashamed. I remember feeling ashamed in elementary school when we were talking about slavery just because I'm white and I'm sure that we benefited from it in some ways even if people in my family weren't slave owners.
I mean, she could have picked any number of names, it seems.

Presumably she chose it because it was the nearest available American name in her history, but until the Wokeist institutions not only pull down the odd statue but sell themselves up and give the money to the slaves' descendants no-one is really taking this beyond the pose that it is.

 

[0bleak]

but wouldn't a person still feel some shame like I wrote above?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

but wouldn't a person still feel some shame like I wrote above?

I don't think it was trending back then, and the name was used by people other than the slave-owner.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If your great great grandfather stole an acorn from a neighbour and it grew into a magnificent oak tree should you give it back? Yes. Every institution built on slavery should be render itself to the corresponding descendants in the most useful form.

Should slave-owners' descendants feel ashamed? Yes, but only for hanging on to this stuff because it deprives the rightful recipients of the benefit. The original crime has nothing to do with the descendants otherwise.

From the descendants' point of view it's easy come easy go. At least von der Leyen could rely on her own EU benefits scheme.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

The ostentatious shame/toppling statues thing looks like it's a step in the right direction but it's actually a limited hangout: the people who should know better point out the problem but, through the shame and the toppling, pay a kind of symbolic reparation and absolve themselves of any responsibility for what is directly required of them, that is to give the loot back.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

What should happen is that the slave-owner statues should be multiplied to remind the current generation of the unpaid debt on which they continue to accumulate interest.

 

[0bleak]

Now that's a fresh take!

 

[mixed_biscuits]

In a parallel universe not too far from ours the statues have been removed by high-ups as whitewash and SJWs are demanding that they be reinstated as witnesses at a crime scene in progress.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

There is a difference in the attitude to statues between historically healthy societies in which the populace have not been oppressed and the opposite: in the UK and US people consider meaning to be generally faithfully echoed by power and symbols in the urban landscape are to be taken at face value, whereas in Eastern Europe for instance people tolerate the widespread presence of old stuff from Communism because Communism itself inculcated the view that meaning is held privately and it is to be expected that what power is saying would not reflect it. On the one hand the former society's preferable but, on the other, it seems psychologically less healthy to rely on prevailing power to reflect what one is thinking. In the former, meaning moves en masse (fascist style); in the latter, since it is private and individual, it is diverse and agile and holds an ironic relationship to the world around it.

When people deface a statue they undermine power but in a way that confirms power's hold over meaning. The right thing to do is to deface it in your mind and leave it as incriminating evidence.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Eyebrows were raised at the Ministry of Defence when French immigration and customs insisted on checking the paperwork of 400 British paratroopers immediately after they dropped into fields near Saneville, Normandy on Wednesday.


Some felt the French were trying to make a point in response to the UK’s decision to leave the EU and, while immigration checks for British troops on exercise abroad are routine, doing so at a public commemoration is deemed exceptional.

🤣

 

[Murphy]

When people deface a statue they undermine power but in a way that confirms power's hold over meaning. The right thing to do is to deface it in your mind and leave it as incriminating evidence.

damnatio memoriae was effective in Rome just as it is now

 

[0bleak]

yeah, kinda feel like it just enables some of the backwards thinkers as much as "those who forget their past (...)" - hmm

 

[luka]

mr tea is awful

 

[Mr. Tea]

mr tea is awful

You mean "great."

 

[Mr. Tea]

Hello, it's me, noted leftist, luka.

east europeans are what caused brexit. total scum with no redeeming features. terrible music, terrible food, physically repulsive.

 

[luka]

if you had your eyes open and lived in the world you would know this but you live at second hand and other peoples opinions

 

[Mr. Tea]

if you had your eyes open and lived in the world you would know this but you live at second hand and other peoples opinions

Yeah well your mum smells.