#historical memory

Her marriage to a foreign land was not devotion but state policy. Her fate began with a simple misjudgment about her appearance, and later admiration for her beauty turned coercion into romance. A man in the same position would be remembered as courageous; a woman is remembered as selfless. The narrative rebrands compliance as virtue while erasing the reality of coercion.

Penobscot medic. Silver Star. Omaha Beach survivor.

One of the last Native American witnesses to D-Day.

He ran into the surf at 19 with nothing but bandages and the will to keep strangers alive.

He spent the next 80 years fighting against erasure.

Of his people, of their service, of the truth.

A living bridge between history and memory is gone.

Notes: Transcribed to accompany Return Fire vol.6 chap.4 (summer 2022) — PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by visiting returnfire.noblogs.org or emailing [email protected]

Note from Return Fire

This interview was conducted in 2021, but a frequently cutting-out internet connection heavily marred the audio version it was first released as, leading to much frustration and repetition during the conversation, which has here been edited out. Doubtless much richness was lost in the parts that were untranscribable from the original, but we hope this version will extend the reach and audience for this perennial conversation.

As the interviewing host stated, “I think it’s really important that we have these discussions, especially now when I think a lot of environmental movements that have limited themselves to this type of non-violence are starting to show their limitations and their failings, so it’s really important that we push a better alternative; both in words, but also in actions, in showing these things in practice.”

With recent groups such as This Is Not a Drill[1] emerging in the UK – yet still with a code of non-violence, albeit having discarded the idiotic categorisation of property damage as violence – we think it’s as necessary as ever to promote a vision of struggle which (no matter what tactics we use) ties us back into our histories, and forms a bridge to our comrades and allies fighting in other lands. We want such groups to continue, gain experiences and perspectives to share, and also that they can benefit from the collective knowledge built up over generations and generations of struggles, which the newest iteration of the ‘climate justice movement’ has often failed to heed or integrate.

To this end we present this transcription; additionally, as any movement which forgets the prisoners in the end forgets the struggle itself, this is now released to coincide with the annual International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners.[2] Let’s not forget jailed eco-defence fighters like Marius Mason, whose participation in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) of two decades past reveals much wisdom to absorb from that cycle of action, reaction and repression. (Regarding the topic of this interview, a recommended resource for how that conversation played out during those years can be found in the article ‘The Telescope or the Kaleidoscope: A Critique of the ELF’, specifically regarding the non-violence code of the latter.)

Lastly, please refer to the end of the text for the details of prisoners from last year’s Kill the Bill riot in Bristol:[3] people who were on the streets and often fighting back to defend the conditions for even ‘non-violent’ action.

– R.F., August 2022

"Confederate monuments bear what the anthropological theorist Michael Taussig would call a public secret: something that is privately known but collectively denied. It does no good to simply reveal the secret — in this case, to tell people that most of the Confederate monuments were erected not at the end of the Civil War, to honor those who fought, but at the height of Jim Crow, to entrench a system of racial hierarchy. That’s already part of their appeal. Dr. Taussig has argued that public secrets don’t lose their power unless they are transformed in a manner that does justice to the scale of the secret. He compares the process to desecration. How can you expect people to stop believing in their gods without providing some other way of making sense of this world and our future?

Swords Into Plowshares might have been the first to propose melting, but other communities are working out their own creative visions for Lee’s afterlife. One of the biggest changes so far has been at Arlington House, the historic plantation mansion at the center of Arlington National Cemetery, which is the official national Robert E. Lee Memorial. In 2021, Arlington House reopened with displays not only about Lee’s family, who lived there after they inherited it from Lee’s father-in-law, but also about the lives of the families enslaved there. Even Lee’s burial site at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va. — where he served as president after the war — has changed. The university decided to focus on Lee the civilian rather than Lee the general, for example by moving a prominent portrait of him in uniform. And it constructed a wall to enclose the large sculpture of Lee that once claimed an insistent place in the university’s chapel.

Covering this story over the past few years, I’ve come to realize two things. First, when a monument disappears without a ceremony to mark why it is coming down, a community has no chance to recognize that it has itself changed. (Ideally the ceremony is public, but because of safety concerns, the melting I attended was not.) Second, if you are outraged that something’s happening to your community’s heroic statue of Lee, you’re not going to be any less outraged if the statue is moved to some hidden storeroom than if it’s thrown into a landfill. So if all changes, large or small, will be resisted, why not go for the ones with the most symbolic resonance?

That’s why the idea to melt Lee down, as violent as it might initially seem, struck me as so apt. Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities.

...

When the remaining legal barriers were cleared (including a last-minute lawsuit that sought to have the statue reassembled), Lee was finally ready to surrender to the furnace. The foundryman turned on the propane supply and laid Lee’s sword across the hole in the lid. He told the spectators that the metal had to get hot enough to release any moisture before he maneuvered it down through the hole into the crucible.

When he did, its blade stuck up out of the furnace for a moment, then melted down “like a stick of butter,” as Dr. Schmidt put it.

Lee’s face was the last piece to go into the crucible. Given how often the monument and its ideals were celebrated with flames — from Klansmen’s torches to the tiki torches of white nationalists in 2017 — it seemed fitting for flames to close over the monument.

...

Dr. Douglas, Swords Into Plowshares’ other co-founder, apologized that the ceremony could not be public. She thanked those in attendance, telling us we were witnessing it on behalf of Charlottesville’s residents, including those long gone who lived under slavery. Someday, she said, when we think of Civil War heroes, we will imagine not Lee but, instead, those who fought for their freedom against him.

The man in the protective visor dropped the red-hot piece of metal that once represented Lee on the ground. It fell to pieces, which he fed into the crucible. A line of cameras faced him, making new images of history as the old image finally disappeared in flames.

“For shouting ‘I want the Statute!’, Miquel was murdered.”

This is the first line of the song that Al Tall dedicated to Miquel Grau, a 22-year-old boy who was murdered by a fascist on October 6th 1977, when he was posting a poster calling for a demonstration of October 9th (the national day of the Valencian people) to ask for a Statue of Autonomy (a greater degree of autonomy for the Valencian Country instead of centralism from Spain’s capital city).

Even though the murderer -a fascist man member of the Spanish supremacist organization Fuerza Nueva- confessed to killing Miquel because he couldn’t stand seeing posters for the Valencian national day, this was not treated as a hate crime. He was originally sentenced to 12 years of prison for murder, but the Minister of Justice of the Spanish Government granted him a partial pardon and reduced his sentence to only 4 years. Then, he studied law and went on to become an attorney for big firms, as well inheriting the ownership of gas stations and insurance companies.

You can read more about Miquel’s murder in this previous post.

Immediately, all the people who were pro-independence protested against this new attack of fascist violence. They were days of silent homages. But the governor was worried that Miquel’s funeral would incite further protest. For this reason, the police kidnapped Miquel’s 3 friends who were with him posting the posters and who had taken him to the hospital.

8,000 people showed up to the funeral. During the coffin’s procession, the anti-riot police showed up and didn’t let the funeral procession continue. They made the coffin tumble and knocked off the flower crown that Miquel’s girlfriend had placed on it. Then, the police took the coffin and put it in the police car, as the funeral attendees tried to stop it. Miquel’s coffin was taken to the cemetery alone, escorted by a car of the municipal police and another car of the Spanish military police.

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Al Tall is a Valencian folk music band who played traditional Valencian/Mediterranean music and their own compositions based on traditional music. Very soon after Miquel’s murder, Al Tall had taken a traditional Valencian song and given it this new lyrics:

Per cridar "vull l'Estatut!" ai, ai, ai, ai... Per cridar "vull l'Estatut!" a Miquel l'assassinaren.

For shouting ‘I want the Statute!’ For shouting ‘I want the Statute!’ Miquel was murdered.

Açò passà en Alacant, soledat de l'ai, ai, ai... Açò passà en Alacant, en Alacant el mataren

This happened in Alacant, [Alacant was Miquel’s city] loneliness of oh, oh, oh... This happened in Alacant, in Alacant they killed him.

Per cridar "vull l'Estatut!" a Miquel l'assassinaren.

For shouting ‘I want the Statute!’ Miquel was murdered.

Ja el porten a soterrar, ai, ai, ai, ai... Ja el porten a soterrar, l'acompanya tot lo poble.

They’re taking him to be buried, They’re taking him to be buried, the whole town accompanies him.

No poguerem dir-li adéu, soledat de l'ai, ai, ai... No poguerem dir-li adéu, perquè el taüt ens furtaren.

We couldn’t say goodbye to him, We couldn’t say goodbye to him, because they stole the coffin.

Ja el porten a soterrar, l'acompanya tot lo poble.

They’re taking him to be buried, the whole town accompanies him.

Per guanyar la llibertat, ai, ai, ai, ai... Per guanyar la llibertat, quants germans tenen de caure.

To win our freedom, To win our freedom, how many brothers must fall?

Miquel Grau ja no està ací, soledat de l'ai, ai, ai... Miquel Grau ja no està ací, quan avui tots l'esperàvem.

Miquel Grau isn’t here anymore, Miquel Grau isn’t here anymore, when we all expected him today.

Per guanyar la llibertat, quants germans tenen de caure.