Raphaël Glucksmann, a center-left member of the European Parliament, has strongly criticized President Donald Trump's radical change of US policy on the war in Ukraine.
  • humanspiral@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    51 minutes ago

    “Welcoming huddled masses” is no longer US policy. Statue of Liberty is “woke propaganda”, and US should now welcome getting rid of it. No horribly inappropriate/misplaced Ukraine warmongering justification needed.

  • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    711·
    11 hours ago

    I could legitimately see this happening, by now. Fox News builds it up for a week, then Trump/Musk make a big spectacle of sending it back and replacing it with a giant statue of Trump.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      292·
      11 hours ago

      Depends on what you think it represents.

      It’s traditionally a symbol of opportunity, or new start style liberty.

      America has, for a long time, been a place of hope or opportunity for immigrants. Not necessarily welcome, kindness, or prosperity, but hope.

      With the visibly growing xenophobia this has tragically waned, but even still we have some of the highest immigration rates in the world.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
        182·
        9 hours ago

        The poem at the base of the statue, The New Colossus, makes its meaning pretty clear.

        Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
        With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
        Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
        A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
        Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
        Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
        Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
        The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
        “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
        With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
        Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
        The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
        Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
        I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

        The US never lived up to the promise the statue made.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 hour ago

          Meh, she wasn’t actually made for us. The artist that made her was commissions jed by the Sultan of The Ottoman Empire, and he paid up front, so the artist got to work in the mid 1800s. The Sultan wanted her standing at the entrance to the Suez Canal, which was due to open soon. That’s why she’s Egyptian/ Middle Eastern. She originally carried a torch and a bouquet of spices and herbs. Unfortunately for the Sultan, he died before the artist, or the canal, was completed. When the artist contacted the new Sultan to let him know he was ready to construct her, the new Sultan told him to go ahead and melt her down for all he cared. He graciously said that the artist didn’t owe him any money back, and that he was certain that the artist did good work, but he believed that statues were graven images, and therefore they no longer wanted the statue.

          Fast forward to 1871.

          The artist has a meeting with The French Ambassador to America, The President of the French-American Friendship Society, and himself. Turns out the US centennial is coming up. The ambassador suggested that the artist remove the bouquet, and replace it with a book that contains the most American sounding thing ever, and they’ll never notice she isn’t European. So the ambassador and president gathered up the funding, and sent the newly dubbed “Lady Liberty,” from the Parisian warehouse she had been gathering dust in, to New York in time to be fully erected by July 4, 1876.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.mlEnglish
    742·
    9 hours ago

    Give it back to you? How about you pay repairations to Haiti or Algeria or any of your other former colonies before you act like you’re worthy of the Mother of Exiles?