MAGA Kids and Progressive Scapegoating's Religious Undercurrent

This is a little bit of a ramble, but I figured that I'd throw this out there.

It’s been a few days since the now-infamous confrontation between a group of MAGA hat-bedecked Catholic school boys and a Native American elder in Washington, D.C. Since that day, news media, pundits, celebrities, and average folks alike had jumped upon a frenzied bandwagon suggesting that the kids were engaging in hateful and intolerant behaviour towards an Indigenous man, only to have the facts set more-or-less straight and forcing them to either abandon ship or double-down – depending on how committed to facts one is.

Well, Niigaan Sinclair certainly isn’t burdened by the desire to find and assess the facts, and has come out with a pithy little piece in the Globe and Mail dumping on the kids, and by overt expression, on North American society.

Just to give a quick rundown: a group students from an all-boys Catholic high school in Kentucky went to the US capital for a Pro-Life march. There they were met with protest by a small group of Black Hebrew Israelites who believe that they're descendants of ancient Israelites. The Black Israelites taunted the students, calling them 'child molesters', stating that Trump is a 'fa**ot', and that the black students should depart from the group because 'ni**a, they're gonna steal your organs'. 

In an attempt to drown out the Black Israelites' taunts, or rather to taunt right back, the students began to engage in their high school cheers. During this, Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder, was observing the commotion and decided to intervene in an attempt to 'diffuse the situation'. 

He walked up to the students whilst drumming and singing the American Indian Movement (AIM) song. The cadence of his drumming matched the cadence of the students' chants and they, apparently, thought that he was drumming to their chants. In accordance, they continued to chant in the cadence of his drumming. 

As Phillips walked into the crowd of students, they parted, and he continued to walk until he met Nick Sandmann, a student who stood in Phillips' way. Sandmann said he did so in order to demonstrate that he didn't want any trouble - figuring that if he stood still, he wouldn't be doing anything wrong. Sadly for Sandmann, he was wearing a MAGA hat, and as soon as the video hit social media, the shit hit the fan.

That's the scenario. That's what happened. 

Now, reading through Sinclair's terse and punchy piece, one gets the impression that he didn't engage in any due diligence in attempting to understand the event, instead relying on Nathan Phillips' narrative as fact. It reads as though Sinclair listened to a CNN segment wherein Phillips shared his take on the occurrence, and that was enough for Sinclair to consider this an open-and-shut case. Racist white boys versus noble Indigenous man. Bang the gavel: the kids are done. However, there is roughly two hours of audio-video footage detailing the somewhat chaotic event, and it is precisely this evidence that debunks Sinclair's claims.

Instead of investigating the issue, as a good scholar would, Sinclair engaged in the same lazy practice as his cohorts in the media: look at some footage that has been given to you, see if it suits you ideological positions, listen, believe, and pontificate. Oh, and scapegoated the kids. 

Sinclair quotes Phillips' description of the encounter with the students as 'hate unbridled... a storm', and 'dangerous'. And yet Phillips lives to tell the tale... Sinclair also strongly suggests that the kids were 'mocking', 'belittling', and 'demeaning', and that they displayed 'blatant racism, hatred and disrespect'.

Blatant racism? Hatred? Disrespect? Really? At worst I see irreverence. I see young boys being young boys who have found themselves in a bizarre and aggressive scenario that they don't fully grasp, and being immature in the process. I saw no malice - aside from the Black Israelites yelling profanities and insults at the kids, and there was an Indigenous man with Phillips who accosted the kids saying 'Go back to Europe! This isn't your land.' 

Now, folks will say that we're guilty of carrying our biases, and that these colour our perceptions, but if that is the case, then Sinclair et al. are seeing what they want to see, and what they see isn't a child, but an enemy.

Sinclair states that:

'The video of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Sandmann went viral. Some called it a 'face-off.'
I call it America.
North America'. 

Calling Nick Sandmann 'Mr. Sandmann' enables him to speak of Sandmann not as a child, but as an adult - with all of the expectations and lack of leniency for immaturity that comes with it. (Could this be because of editorial standards? Perhaps 'Mr.' and 'Ms.' are used to refer to subjects... If so, it's inconsistently applied by the Globe and Mail).

Nonetheless, Sinclair is able to say such things because he's not seeing the MAGA kids as children. He is seeing them as representatives of an ideology he hates. Or perhaps he sees them as repositories of ideas and ideologies he hates. He's seeing this event between individuals as a microcosmic representation of the macrocosmic battle that's occurring at large.

That's Sinclair's take, but where is the undercurrent of religiosity in Progressivism?

Aside from the overt scapegoating, there is another element that I think is in play, here.

Now, I do take Niigaan Sinclair's piece to be in lockstep with many Left-wing and Progressive folks on this issue. Having read several articles, I do think that they align. Sinclair has a particularly interesting vantage point since he is an Indigenous man in Canada, but that aside, there is a remarkable amount of similarity between him and his non-Indigenous fellow travelers.

I've tried to put my finger on why this event exploded, and why the reaction was so visceral. My view, for what it is worth, is that one can see here, possibly, is a confrontation between two worlds: the ancient and resilient Indigenous world coming face-to-face with the new Era of Trump/Whiteness. To the folks who are so upset, the Indigenous people have suffered for hundreds of years at the hands of Europeans and their descendants in North America, and this is true, also these MAGA hat-wearing kids are viewed as the latest instantiation of a new generation of oppressors. They are a continuation of that hateful past they hope to get rid of. 

I interpret the event thusly: 

Nathan Phillips is the representative of his people, and the moral and spiritual weight of his traditions - the drumming and singing giving a sense of spiritual formalism to the whole thing. In his approach to the boys, drumming and singing in an attempt to diffuse the situation between the students and Black Israelites, he was bringing that weight, that profundity, to the boys. He was hoping to approach them, and pass through them with stoic reverence and song, and leave a lasting impression that would calm the situation. However, he was met by Sandmann who did not move. They met and stood, locking eyes with one another, unwilling to budge. Sandmann's unwillingness to move, and his smirk/grin (though from nervousness, perhaps, or maybe due to the ridiculousness of the whole scenario) was a sign of an abject repudiation of the moral and spiritual weight of Phillips' actions.

Now, I don't think this is what happened in the minds of the people involved. I think Sandmann was confused and nervous, but well-meaning. In fact, footage shows that he was, indeed, trying to diffuse the tension that was beginning to arise. I think Phillips was also trying to diffuse the tension between the students and the Black Israelites. What has happened is that this event occurred and people who were not there are foisting their political, racial, and social baggage onto it thereby making Phillips a hero and the kids the scapegoats.

All of this reminds me of something Richard Dawkins said in his book, The God Delusion.

A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents. This latter nomenclature, by the way, would be an excellent piece of consciousness-raising for the children themselves. A child who is told she is a 'child of Muslim parents' will immediately realize that religion is something for her to choose -or reject- when she becomes old enough to do so.

In, this our Current Year, children are not just children. They are Christians, Muslims, Trump supporters, racists, xenophobes, drag queens, et cetera. Children are being viewed as representatives of things that they don't understand, and certainly as responsible for things they had no part in making.

The worst people in this whole scenario have been the adults: the Black Israelites who have somehow gotten off scot free despite them being the 'blatant racists': calling the black kids in the groups (yes, they were present) n***gas, as well as calling Phillips an 'Uncle Tomahawk';  Nathan Phillips who has insinuated malice to the kids in subsequent interviews; the chaperones of the students for letting things get out of control; the 'Blue Checkmarks' on Twitter calling for these kids and their families to be harassed, doxxed or even attacked; and commentators such as Sinclair who are riding the crest of the wave in an opportunistic fashion trying to soak in the rays of attention.

We'd like to think that these kids, as well as others, would behave better, and be respectful instead of irreverent, calm instead of rambunctious, courteous instead of uncivil. But they're kids, and we can expect that. However, alongside the kids, what we have are adults who are criticising these kids whilst being all the things they're criticising the kids for being: hateful, bigoted, disrespectful, and, I think, racist. They've taken on the worst characteristics of their perceived enemies, and have even stooped to the level of taking children to be their enemies.

The APA's Flaccid Masculinity

One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge... If those arrangements were to disappear as they appeared... then one can certainly wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

The onslaught continues.

Like waves crashing on the edge of the sea.

Or perhaps more like the perpetual buzzing of insects.

Masculinity has been in the sights of radical feminist culture critics since the 1970's, and now their nonsense has seeped into the wider culture; being peddled as dogma by mainstream media outlets, scientific and technological organisations, as well as massive corporations. So much for the 'radical critique' - their heuristic has been fully adopted by the zeitgeist.

Having gorged themselves on the mistaken notion that masculinity is 'hegemonic' and socially constructed within their ivory tower, these self-anointed ushers of a new Era are regurgitating it into the public, and we're witnessing the fruits of their labour.

According to a recently published American Psychological Association (APA) document on the 'Guidelines for Psychological Practice for Men and Boys', masculinity is an ideology that forms and perpetuates a '...particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.'

The idea is that such masculinity then fosters attitudes that are aimed at the domination of women by men, and of men by superior men. It is inculcated in boys throughout their lives by societal pressures and interpersonal relationships, and unjustifiably constrains male behaviour into the narrow band of aforementioned tropes. This, in turn, leads to myriad mental, biological, and psychological health disparities.

There numerous issues, here, and below I will go through a few. Here are some following reasons for rejecting the APA's Guidelines. 

Circularity

The APA tumbled over the first hurdle when it adopted the concept of 'hegemonic masculinity' (HM) which begins by accepting as proven that which has yet to be investigated. This can be shown by using one of the APA's own examples: men delaying seeking medical care.

For instances wherein men delay seeking medical care, the Hegemon thinkers state that such delays are performed because visiting a doctor would (a) indicate weakness on the one hand, (b) constitute seeking help on the other, and these are no-no's when it comes to any attempt to embody the hegemonic male ideal.

From the APA, '[t]raditional masculinity ideology can be viewed as the dominant (referred to as "hegemonic") form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative.' Hegemonic Masculinity (HM) is defined, in part, as the eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and going to the doctor is an example of the appearance of weakness. So a hegemonically masculine man would be expected to delay going to the doctor, if at all. But, where does this eschewal of the appearance of weakness come from? It comes from men's preoccupations with hegemonic masculinity.

So, HM is offered as the explanation as to why men delay in seeking help, but also  it is suggested that such behaviour provides the evidence that men are attempting to align with the expectations of HM. Such an alignment becomes both the claimed explanation for the delay in consulting a doctor and the proposed outcome of the delay. 

Duplicity 

Throughout the APA's document, the authors make use of 'masculinities' insisting that 'the various conceptions of masculine gender roles associated with an intersection of multiple identities (e.g., rural, working-class, adult, White masculinities may take a different form than urban, teenage, Mexican American masculinities'. However this multiplicity of masculine identities seems to quickly coagulate into one hegemonic form since even though what 'counts' as masculine ebbs and flows over history and across cultures, there is a 'privileged' form that persists and predominates. The privileged form is associated with 'success, power and competition... restrictive emotionality... and restrictive affectionate behavior between men.'  Effectively, despite the gestures at the multiplicity of masculinity in particular, but gender more generally, what emerges from the discussion is a rather fixed and stable set of characteristics that are superficially augmented by socio-cultural inflections.

Hegemonic masculinity, it seems, is a way for the authors to speak substantively about masculinity, whilst preserving their fashionable reluctance (read: cowardice) to speak of gender identities as fixed or tied to sex. Unfortunately for the authors the use of HM does not allow them to perform the latter as the behaviours and characteristics they index with the term are very similar to the simplistic stereotypes that they'd caution us from using.

What we're left with an oscillation between two conflicting positions: (i) that masculinity is entirely contingent, and (ii) that there is one identifiable and dominant masculine identity. 

Arbitrariness & Bad Faith 

The use of the word 'constellation' is somewhat humourous since a constellation is 'a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or pattern...' These arbitrary symbols are made up of stars that are nowhere near one another, and have no effect on anything on earth. So, how much of the APA's definition is imaginary, arbitrary, or real?

This constellation could have been otherwise. It certainly could have been less bloated by moralism. We could have: Duty, Honour, Courage, Strength, Competence, and Industriousness instead of Anti-femininity, Achievement, Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness, Adventure, Risk, and Violence. This is a difference that makes a difference since the former stresses the productive, whereas the latter stresses the prohibitive. Even though 'achievement', 'adventure', and 'risk' are not, in-and-of themselves bad according to most folks, and 'violence' and 'emotional control' are also appropriate in cases, these characteristics are seen as being employed at the expense of something else - at the expense of one's physical and/or emotional health.

The APA also describes masculinity as a 'set of descriptive, prescriptive, and proscriptive of cognitions about boys and men [sic]', but it never tells us what elements are descriptive, prescriptive, and/or proscriptive. Is 'Violence' descriptive or prescriptive? Likewise with the 'Eschewal of the appearance of Weakness'. This sloppiness enables the APA to move goal-posts and be rather sloppy in its categorisations of masculine traits and their subsequent 'treatment'.

There is a tendency for hegemonic masculinity to be associated solely with negative characteristics that depict men as unemotional, self-reliant, aggressive, and dispassionate which are seen as causes of criminal behavior. Given this tendency, all the objectionable things done by men such as: assault, rape, environmental degradation, cut-throat business behaviour, hell, let's throw in dick pics, cat-calling, mansplaining, manspreading, using Axe body spray, et cetera - can be lumped into the bag of  'hegemonic masculinity'. And the more extreme this image becomes, the less accurately it portrays the majority of men.

One can look at men with good will or bad will. Given the emphasis on the negative aspects of masculinity as a system of dominance rather than as a code of conduct focused on developing and improving that which is regarded as appropriate and valuable for men to be, the APA and their ilk appear to be engaging in the latter. If one chooses to look at men with bad will, then one chooses to hate men. 

Ambiguity 

If hegemonic masculinity (HM) is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and it is also 'the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative', then how are we to assess forms of masculinity that are culturally dominant, and yet lack some characteristic or other of HM?

If:

1) HM is the constellation of anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence, and;

2) HM is the dominant form of masculinity that strongly influences what members of a culture take to be normative, then;

3) HM influences members of its culture to take anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence as normative.

Given this, how is one to identify a hegemonically masculine man? Is it the well-dressed aristocratic lawmaker or is the rough-around-the-edges dock worker who bare-knuckle boxes to make ends meet? Say a man is his family's breadwinner, his wife stays at home to look after the kids, he is a rock-climber for a hobby, and his career is that of a pediatrician: how masculine is he according to HM?

Is a man who is complicit in HM more or less masculine than one who resists HM?

I think these are bothersome questions for the HM idea because its theorists have taken effects and made them causes - but since their argument is circular anyway, they can just play around with it until it makes them feel better. 

Impotence 

Lastly, hegemonic masculinity is impotent in its attempts to explain the behaviours of individual men.

Related to the previous concern, though HM is what men are socialised into, '... [for] some men, this dominant ideology of masculinity has inherent conflicts', and that 'dominant masculinity is generally unattainable for most men'. This focus on the unachievable leads to the neglect of what men actually are doing, and how they 'navigate' and 'negotiate' the world around them.

The disconnect between the theory and practice illustrates the abstract nature of the intellectual pursuit. Theorists are imposing their constructions of masculinity on their male subjects, rather than attempting to understand them. At best, HM is a new theoretical framework for feminist-minded theorists to talk about men.

It is stated by '[the] endorsement of sexist male roles is related to men’s fear of intimacy and discomfort with physical affection with other men'. Intimacy is seen as feminine, and HM is anti-feminine. But is this really the case?

Male bonding surely exists but it takes on forms different from female bonding. Men bond through sports, the gym, barbershops, being in bands, playing video games, as well as hunting and fishing trips, to name a few. These are cases wherein masculinity finds its expression of intimacy, and yet HM theorists fail to recognise this. In fact, some HM theorists argue that such expressions of intimacy are 'simulated' since these practices are not really about intimacy but rather about 'control', 'dominance' and 'achievement'. After all, intimacy is feminine, and masculinity is anti-feminine. The very essentialism they purport to reject is operating in full force.

This is but another attempt by the elite to impose their manners on the masses. It's about re-educating, reshaping, and reforming conduct that they, at worst, disdain or, at best, don't understand.

Don't believe me? Well the APA argues that, 'awareness of privilege and the harmful impacts of beliefs and behaviors that maintain patriarchal power have been shown to reduce sexist attitudes in men... and have been linked to participation in social justice activities.'

                   Convenient.

Standpoint Epistemology's Cul-de-sac

Standpoint Epistemology (SE) is an increasingly popular feminist epistemological framework that argues that one's position in a social system, and it's resultant hierarchy, determines one's knowledge of the world. Additionally,  this claim is accompanied by the notion of 'strong objectivity' with states that marginalised people possess a standpoint that is more objective than those who possess the dominant standpoint because the marginalised can observe the dominant standpoint without possessing it themselves. They are said to have 'double-vision' that enables them to both see the world from their perspective whilst also seeing truths that the dominant standpoint holders are unable or unwilling to see. For example, bell hooks, an African-American feminist thinker writes: 

Living as we did—on the edge—we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out...we understood both. 

This provides a challenge to the traditional account of knowledge (TAK) that attempts to provide 

abstract and universal descriptions of knowledge that are applicable to all.

TAK states that in order for one to have knowledge of a particular proposition three conditions must be satisfied: the proposition must be true, one must believe the proposition, and one must have justification for believing the proposition. In short, knowledge is justified true belief, and who you are, what era you are in, or where you are situated in the social hierarchy are all irrelevant to truth-value of one's knowledge claims.

SE rejects the claim that social and historical factors are irrelevant to questions of knowledge, and emphasise the empiricist commitments to experience and observation in the pursuit of knowledge. In addition, following Quine and his criticisms of analytic/synthetic distinction, they also stress that observation is theory-laden and that those theories themselves are artifacts of our making.

According to SE, there is no neutral vantage point from which one can 'get at' the world in an unbaised way. Given that bias is inherent to epistemology, the marginalised are said to be epistemically privileged since they are equipped with the aforementioned 'double-vision', and this privilege is said to accrue to those who exist at the margins of society - becoming something akin to 'expert testimony'. For instance, a middle-class Black man would see the world from a different standpoint than a middle-class White man, and a middle-class Black woman would see the world differently, still. Given that the Black woman is Black and a woman, and that black people and women are marginalised, the Black woman would be equipped with a more objective standpoint than her counterparts.

There are numerous criticisms of SE. First, it is claimed that it results in relativism of the worst sort since the political commitment to feminism, or femininity itself, is incompatible with scientific objectivity because the scientific enterprise is defined as masculine, rational, and unemotional. Relatedly, though SE attempts to thwart claims of essentialism, it, in fact, traffics in essentialism as it automatically groups women together under the rubric of 'strong objectivity' just because they are women. Finally, that the notions of non-neutral standpoints and epistemic privilege are in tension with one another. If there is no neutral standpoint, then one is left with a mish-mash of 'multiple and incompatible knowledge positions'.

There is another issue: ontological subjectivity.

SE makes the mistake of asserting that particular epistemological values accrue to particular ontological subjectivities. However, ontological subjectivity does not necessarily entail any particular epistemological value. This demarcation is illustrated in the following quote from John Searle in 'The Construction of Social Reality':

"I now have a pain in my lower back." That statement is completely objective in the sense that it is made true by the existence of an actual fact and is not dependent on any stance, attitudes, or opinions of observers. However, the phenomenon itself, the actual pain itself, has a subjective mode of existence, and it is in that sense which I am saying that consciousness is subjective.

In order for pain to exist, it must be someone's pain. This is because pain is a state of consciousness, and consciousness, by virtue of being ontologically subjective, is always a consciousness of something to someone.

The problem with SE's insistence on experience is that it has been known for centuries how experience, and our interpretations of it, can lead us astray and can be a rather unreliable vehicle in the search for truth. Just as one’s experiences with pain do not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the physiological, let alone the political or cultural aspects of the pain, one’s experiences of acting with a sort of 'double-vision' within an oppressive society does not necessarily entail that one can provide epistemically objective propositions about the political or cultural arrangements of that society. What it can provide is ontologically subjective knowledge with political import: identifying and making explicit the essence of a group's shared experience can raise consciousness, and validate one's socio-political project, however, this would rely on some form of essentialism (strategic or otherwise), and that bullet may just have to be bitten for the SE theorist or activist. 

At best, SE points out that myriad points of view ought to be considered in social and political analysis, but it is wrong when it mistakes such points of view as 'expert testimony' and holds that they're anything more than data points that must be further evaluated.

Statues, Legacy, and Sanitising the Public Square

In the summer of 2018, city councilors in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada voted 7-1 to remove a statue of John A. MacDonald -  Canada's first Prime Minister - from its city hall entrance. This has stirred up a certain amount controversy with progressives applauding the move towards full acknowledgment of plight and violence suffered by Indigenous peoples, and conservatives decrying 'political correctness run amok' and iconoclasm.

There is a growing list of controversial figures that ought to be removed from the public square, but not many arguments backed by principled stances. 

Below I'll outline two opposing positions. The position that argues for tearing down statues I'll deem the 'Removalist' (I'm sure there is a catchier name), and the contraposition, 'Preservationist'.

In both positions, statues are visible and tangible realities that are used to embody/represent some important figure/event/period or other. They serve as visible reminders of who/what is considered important by the community/society/country. 

There is a quality to the statue as it is [[[matter+shape]=statue]=memorial].

This is gives statues an ‘incarnational value’. Incarnation is a religious term - Christ was God incarnate, for instance - and though statues do not necessarily represent deities, they appear to represent the spirit of an age, and it’s the attitudes towards that representation that divides Removalists and Preservationists. 

The Case for Taking Down Statues

There are three common criticisms that are mobilised by the Removalist:

a) such statues lionise immoral and despicable behaviour by the dominant culture's ancestors,

b) such statues can sanitise past injustices committed against minority cultures, and;

c) such statues are painful reminders of past violence and injustice

These positions are utilised in the pursuit of some form of reparations for some past injustice or other, and by removing statues, one can express: 

a) a condemnation of the past injustice,

b) a repudiation of the past's underlying harmful rationale, and;

c) a commitment to preventing continuing harms in connection to the legacy represented by the statue

And we ought to be in the game of such reparations because the symbolic and material gains would significantly aid in the leveling of the playing field for the hitherto disadvantaged and marginalised peoples, as well as righting the wrongs of the past.

The Case Against Taking Down Statues

For the Preservationist, statues do represent people who may or may not have committed wrong acts or believed and expounded upon wrong beliefs, but the people of today interpret the statue via their own lights and the morals of the age.

The statues therefore provide:

a) a recognition of a community's/nation's shared history,

b) a recognition  of that lineage and tradition, and;
c) a possible challenge to a society's conception of (a) and (b)

One should be wary about removing controversial statues because:

a) The removal acts as a wiping out of history and the lessons that can be learnt from it,

b) It sets a dangerous precedent for removal, and;

c) It sanitises the public square.

On the Preservationist account, statues of historical figures act not only as an object of commemoration, and that commemoration is important, but they also act as a mechanism against the sanitising the public square.

Assessment

In all of the above cases, statues 'do' something. They are not merely objects; they are symbols, and they represent or express certain dominant ideas that are intended to be passed on from generation to generation. As such, individuals in society will often internalise the dominant discourse in the construction their own identity, and this process brings into existence an individual's 'subjectivity': how one experiences one's self in the larger scheme of society and its rules, stories, history, and destiny. This can give one a sense of superiority as one sees one's self as connected to the dominant culture and its ideas, or one can feel alienated from it.

It is crucial to note that a fundamental element in this issue is mental intermediation:  the process of psychological assessment that occurs in an audience member to an expression - be it speech or art works, which act as 'symbolic speech' - and that which leads to the mental element(s) of understanding, belief, attitude or intention which, in turn, can lead to further action.

This process can produce a harm if the mental element produced through it also produces harmful conduct. However, statues are seen as harmful in and of themselves, and so we see that as harms become less emotive, the scrutiny becomes more intense, and now harm can be produced through offense alone.

What the Removalist - as well as any censor - wants to do is erase the distinction between mental intermediation and the mental element, and draw a straight line from the 'message' of an expression to some harmful act or other. Which is why such people wish to emphasise the negative or harmful aspects of the object in question.

On this account, statues of immoral people impress upon the audience their immorality, and this can take the form of reviving the negative attitudes of the past, as well as causing trauma in others.

The former is unlikely since the operation of such a dynamic is only possible if people are convinced of the views expressed. How statues convince present-day people to adopt and exert the discriminatory views of the past goes unexplained, though it is stated that statues can function as 'reminders' of genocide, violence, and oppression. 

Such 'reminders', however, are not enough to promote racist or degrading attitudes, and to suggest that they can, even when the statues do not explicitly do so, is to say that such statues are being experienced in racist or degrading ways, and this suggestion comes from a view of how people are: racist. Such attitudes are hinted at in the contemporary moniker: 'Settler Canadian' or 'colonial' -  which attempts to reach back to the past and imbue today's European Canadians with the stain of generations long past. 

The latter seems more likely, and one should be aware of the trauma that gets passed from generation to generation (though this runs the risk of pathologising people), however, it is also said by the same people that 'we' need to learn the 'uncomfortable truths' about our history, and to learn 'what it really is'. Indeed, so why, then, should the statues come down? If 'we' are to learn of our complicated history, then having memorials of it better serves that purpose than not.

Related to this are two final issues: first if the public sphere becomes anti-sceptic, if it becomes parched, and barren of challenge, controversy, and confrontation, then one - let alone society - could lose touch with history in a generation or two.

Secondly, efforts to cleanse the public square of controversial or racist memorials can become unacceptably damaging to social cohesion and could ultimately frustrate the Removalist goals. Why? Because widespread removalism could draw attention to hitherto 'forgotten' monuments, confirm the suspicions of white separatists/nationalists that their history is being erased, and lend credence to the belief that national identity is inextricably based on white Europeans and their conquests. None of these are in the Removalist agenda, and if these are the unintended consequences of their actions, then they should really re-think their approach.

In closing, every people has its heroes, and these heroes are memorialised by any people who has developed material culture. Instead of removing controversial cultural heroes of the dominant culture, nations with racist histories could make efforts to memorialise cultural heroes of the historically oppressed groups - some of whom may be looked upon with spite much similar to that John A. MacDonald. After all, very few heroes are heroes to all.