Celebrating Violence
| 13:10 UK time, Friday, 14 April 2006
One of my favourite places in the world, Ljubljana the capital of the Alpine nation of Slovenia, has no statues to soldiers.
Poets and writers get the stone monument treatment there.
It's not that the Slovenes don't have wars in their history. The most recent was just fifteen years ago when they fought (briefly) for their independence from Yugoslavia.
It's just they don't go on about it.
Most of us, though, live in countries where statues of fighters are more common.
This weekend, the Irish government is leading celebrations of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916, part of the struggle for Irish independence.
Not all Irishmen want to celebrate.
One of our guests today, Kevin Myers of the Irish Times, was uncompromising in his criticism of the glorification of those he called the men of violence behind the Uprising 90 years ago.
Trying to portray the uprising as a noble act of national resurrection is false history, said Kevin Myers.
Irish people died, not British, when Sinn Fein rose up against British rule.
And the rebels had allied themselves with the German Kaiser, and were hoping for rifles and ammunition from a German ship that was intercepted by the Royal Navy.
They were willing to accept German control in exchange for British, he says.
I can't link to his Irish Times articles, because they are subscription only. But here's part of a column he wrote on the 10th March this year.
"I feel absolutely no sympathy with the people who started the mayhem and butchery of Easter 1916. That they might have been brave and honourable, by their own lights, is something I freely concede, as I also might for a Prussian guardsman in 1914 or a Waffen-SS Obergruppenführer in Normandy 1944. Would I stand in a minute's silence for the insurgents killed in 1916? Absolutely, if only out of respect for the passionately held feelings of my fellow countrymen. But do I sympathise with their cause or their methods? Absolutely not. I oppose them both."
And this affects modern Ireland badly, by his judgement, because it enables Sinn Fein to pursue a romantic liberation myth through force and brutality.
I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say about that!
Comments
Hello!
I know this is an old post but I'd just like to congratulate you on your blog - especially this particular entry, as I live in Ljubljana and feel some pride in the fact that you hold my home city in such hihg regard :)
Alas, the post is not entirely true to facts. Rather unfortunately in the past couple of years Ljubljana was "blessed" with a statue of a soldier. Two statues in fact. But (staying true to quarrelsome nature of Slovenes) both statues are dedicated to the same general Rudolf Maister who led Slovene militia at the end of WWI. One statue is situated just accross the street of the main railway station and the other in front of Ministry of Defence. And why two statues? Apparently the government liked one and the city authorities the other and then public funds were spent on both statues :)
But - truth be said - general Maister was also a poet, so don't let his statues stop you from visiting Ljubljana.
Best regards, Aljaz