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If it's a free for all on tearing down racist statues, I still have a bone to pick with Ferdinand and Isabella.
King Edward I, of course. https://twitter.com/EylonALevy/status/1269710443200815113?s=19
Then there's Karl Lueger, the antisemitic mayor of Vienna.
(Whose picture I saw on the wall in the first Viennese cafe I walked into.)
Obviously Richard the Lionheart outside Parliament has to come down. His coronation sparked a really nasty pogrom. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1189-long-live-the-king-death-to-jews-1.5329011
The statues of William the Conqueror have to go, his apartheid regime banned Jews from owning land.
Down comes King Henry III from King's College London. He passed the 1253 Statute of Jewry, which banned the construction of synagogues and forced Jews to wear a badge. How can Jewish students at KCL walk under this??
Good riddance to Karl Marx, who wrote "What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel."
Auf Wiedersehen, Martin Luther! He called Jews a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth...
full of the devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine."
full of the devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine."
Ok, who should we do next?
The Emperor Hadrian was utterly beastly to the Jews. The wall must be renamed. http://www.thetower.org/article/remembering-hadrian-destroyer-of-the-jews/
Clement Attlee's imperial government stopped boats full of Holocaust refugees reaching the Promised Land. I don't care if he built the NHS, off with his head.
Let's go stateside. The Ulysses S. Grant Memorial has to go. He issued the only edict of expulsion against Jews on U.S. soil in American history. https://www.history.com/news/ulysses-grant-expulsion-jews-civil-war
So please, don't "what if there were Hitler statues" me. There are enough statues of the villains of Jewish history all around Western capitals that I can still consistently argue they should stay, with plaques to teach the public some history and remind it of its past.
Catherine "the Great" confined Jews to the Pale of Settlement, banning them from living anywhere else in Russia. To the guillotine. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1791-russian-jews-told-where-to-live-1.5302808
Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa expelled 20,000 Jews from Prague in 1744. Still there in Vienna. "I know of no greater plague than this race, which on account of its deceit, usury and avarice is driving my subjects into beggary."
Down with Norway's first king, Christian Frederik. Norway's original 1814 constitution said: "Jews are still prohibited from entry to the Realm." Yet this is outside the Norwegian Parliament.
I'm not going to bore you with a list of basically every pope in history till very recently. Pope Pius VI passed a decree *reimposing* all previously lifted anti-Jewish measures.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pope-pius-vi-ldquo-edict-over-the-hebrew-rdquo
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pope-pius-vi-ldquo-edict-over-the-hebrew-rdquo
Anyway, lots of antisemitic statues in Western capitals to tear down, but hands off my Cromwell. <3
To the guillotine! King Louis IX (in Louisiana and Paris), who burned 24 wagonloads of Jewish manuscripts, including all known copies of the Talmud in the realm. #KingLouisIXMustFall
Down comes antisemitic ideologue Richard Wagner in Berlin! #WagnerMustFall
Obviously De Monfort University in Leicester has to be renamed. Simon de Montfort, its namesake, expelled the Jews of Leicester.
My goodness, who knew coming up with a list of antisemites feted in Western statues and honours would be so exhausting? It's almost like racism is an endemic part of human history.
St Aldate's in Oxford, and Christ Church, are built on the ruins of the old Jewish quarter (so is Sainsbury's in Cambridge). Let's rename the street "Great Jewry"?
OK, tell me if I'm being paranoid, but it definitely looks like in this statue at the entrance to St John's College Chapel in Cambridge Lady Margaret Beaufort (King Henry VII's mother) is stepping on a Jew.
@simon_schama, perhaps you might know?
