Well I do see it as a boycott...but those are good examples.
Why are they wanting to cancel napoleon? There is a move to be more accurate in how we view history, I support that. We stopped saying native Americans were savages for instance. Similarly, Columbus stopped being celebrated as he discovered a country full of people some other dude found 1000 years earlier.
I dont back book burning, in all fairness though, that's always been a one sided issue in America...and the side burning books (or demanding they be removed from public institutions) are the conservatives.
They wanted to shut down all statues of him, stop any celebration related to the napoleonic era, this kind of shit. Basically because he was a "white male promoting slavery and discrimination".
It's only one point of view, that's seriously questionable historically speaking. I think it's also completely irrelevant to make a moral stance about things that happened two centuries ago, when morale was something completely different. Just teach it the way it was with no ideology, and let people make their own opinions about it. No reason to cancel every thing that's related to what you think is bad.
I totally agree with you about that, actually i think it's how history works, you always find new things to update what you already know about.
About US conservatives pushing censorship, really don't know nothing about it i let it to you.
Both Canada and the US did genocide the hell out of the native populations. I am not at all on board with teaching that was noble. For a very long time it was portrayed as some sort of war or struggle, that is how it was taught up till at least 1980s. It wasn't, we killed them off and took their shit. People don't want to admit or accept that. Similar to European countries going in to Africa, it was portrayed as some noble conquest and all sorts of weird explanations...they just machine gunned dudes trying to defend themselves with spears and took their resources.
It's wrong to teach people that version of history written by the victors. It isnt true or accurate.
I'm ready to accept anything that happened during the past, glorious or not. But yeah, accuracy is really important.
And your vision of european colonization is not that clear indeed. Of course we did awful shits to africans and asians. but that was not a systematic thing first, then it was only after centuries of slave trade being done honestly with african countries from this time. Portuguese slave traders during the 17th century were not hunting and abducting people. African countries that let them install commercial counters were also trading slaves with them, that's how european dudes got their slaves.
Also, beside the bad shit they did, europeans brought billions of money to construct infrastructures, hospitals, roads, schools, accessible electricity etc etc.. So yeah, as we said, accuracy is important, colonization had really bad consequences but also really good ones.
One of the myths of colonization that's clearly proven wrong now, is that european countries earned from it. that's false. Only speaking of France, we lost billions and billions, it was a massive money hole that never went beneficial. Of course, some individuals went rich as fuck with it, but state and overall european population didn't gain anything from it.
en.wikipedia.org
en.m.wikipedia.org
