The Evil That Men Do...

History can be a fickle judge.
Yesterday's hero can so easily become today's villain.  
The "great and good" of bygone centuries are now having their statues toppled and defaced.
The 2020 prism through which we view their actions changes constantly and the tragic death of George Floyd on 25 May has dramatically shifted our perspective on many notables.
Cecil Rhodes is among those who have come under renewed scrutiny in recent days.
To some he is a statesman, scholar, politician, magnificent benefactor and entrepreneur who established the De Beers empire in 1888, founded the diamond industry we know it today, gave his name to the territory that was once Rhodesia and endowed the Rhodes scholarships that have been paying for 8,000 students (including Bill Clinton) to attend Oxford University.
To others he is a racist, a colonialist, a supporter of apartheid, a white supremacist who craved a secret society that would bring the whole world under British rule, and a lawless land grabber who used gangs of mercenaries to butcher his opponents. The monument at his almer mater, Oxford University, must go, they say.
Rhodes was on the "hit list" long before recent events, but interest in his stone likeness has suddenly been reignited.
The Rhodes Must Fall campaign successfully fought for the removal of his statue at University of Cape Town, South Africa, back in 2015, and has had the monument at Oxford in its sights ever since.
Now Rhodes is on a national list of 60 prime targets in Britain who "no longer deserve recognition".
The frenzy that started with a crowd in Bristol tearing down the statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston and dumping it in the city's harbour is gathering pace. And legality.
Within days another statue, this one of Robert Milligan who had more than 500 slaves at his Jamaica plantation. was officially removed from London's West India Quay, with the blessing of the city's mayor.
There have been calls to dismantle Nelson's Column, in London, by protestors who say the celebrated Vice-Admiral opposed the abolition of slavery. And more are bound to follow.
Every city is now examining not just its monuments, but road names, parks, galleries, civic buildings, hospitals anything that honors anyone who was anyone.
We are quick to judge, maybe too quick. What was OK a generation is no longer OK. Drink-driving, smoking, polluting the atmosphere, discriminating against women, hunting foxes, telling racist jokes, the list goes on.
And what was once not OK now is. Men who had sex with other men in Britain faced jail until little over half a century ago.  Now they can marry.  Unmarried were stigmatised and risked having their babies forcibly adopted. They no longer do.
Netflix and other streaming services this week ruled that "blackface" scenes from the Little Britain TV comedy show, that were deemed acceptable to broadcast from 2003 to 2005, were no longer acceptable.  And HBO Max ditched the 1939 iconic movie Gone With the Wind for its "painful stereotypes of people of color".
The line the divides OK and not OK moves at lightning speed. The rush to make an instant and binary judgement does not allow us a moment to pause and consider.
Marc Antony famously buried Julius Caesar with words: "The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones."
And it was Nelson Mandela who paid tribute to Rhodes in 2003, saying he was "part of shaping what present day South Africa turned out to be".
He legacy was "controversial," he said, but he should still be "remembered by posterity" for his philanthropy. Mandela was lamenting the fact that the good may have been interred. Maybe we should slow down in our own judgments and make space for a little more nuance.

Have a fabulous weekend.