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For many, Winston Churchill is a celebrated wartime hero, and his resistance to Nazism, and World War II leadership, make him a historical giant in their eyes.

His quotes fill books and websites, and are often used to inspire and illustrate the triumph of good over evil.

In 2002, Churchill bested names like Shakespeare and Darwin to be voted the greatest ever Briton.

That’s just one of the reasons why so many were up in arms last week, when a protester defaced an iconic Churchill statue outside the Palace of Westminster in London, calling the former British leader a racist.

Fact check – correct. Whilst some have exaggerated his quotes over the years, and others attributed false quotes to him, reports CNN, there are more than enough to drive home that point:

He said that he hated people with “slit eyes and pig tails.” To him, people from India were “the beastliest people in the world next to the Germans.”

He admitted that he “did not really think that black people were as capable or as efficient as white people.”

Churchill was educated at Harrow School and then Sandhurst, both of which taught the idea that the ‘superior white man’ was conquering the ‘primitive, dark-skinned native’.

Via the Independent, he certainly took on that role with vigour:

He gladly took part in raids that laid waste to whole valleys, destroying houses and burning crops. He then sped off to help reconquer the Sudan, where he bragged that he personally shot at least three “savages”.

The young Churchill charged through imperial atrocities, defending each in turn. When concentration camps were built in South Africa, for white Boers, he said they produced “the minimum of suffering”.

The death toll was almost 28,000, and when at least 115,000 black Africans were likewise swept into British camps, where 14,000 died, he wrote only of his “irritation that K*ffirs should be allowed to fire on white men”. Later, he boasted of his experiences there: “That was before war degenerated. It was great fun galloping about.”

Then as an MP he demanded a rolling programme of more conquests, based on his belief that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph”…

Even his startled doctor, Lord Moran, said of other races: “Winston thinks only of the colour of their skin.”

In 1937, when talking about the treatment of “the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia”, he denied any injustice had been done, saying “a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place”.

In one infamous memo, he stated “I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”.

One could go on, and on, and on, but you get the point.

Churchill clearly held racist views.

In the CNN article quoted earlier, the fact that Churchill’s worldview and political ideologies shifted during his career is pointed out, saying “his expressions of imperialism and racism were partly self-conscious attempts at image-making”.

The article finishes as follows:

Portraying Churchill as the root of all wickedness, as some of the more extreme social media comments appear to do, is as problematic as viewing him as the single-handed savior of freedom and democracy.

By elevating him to a place of supreme importance — albeit by presenting him as uniquely wicked rather than splendidly virtuous — it reinforces Churchill’s own theory of history as driven by great white men. That is a vision from which, surely, we urgently need to break free.

Make of that what you will.

Following the defacing of the statue, it was boarded up, and even his own granddaughter now admits that the statue may have to be moved to a museum.

Emma Soames spoke with the BBC:

Ms Soames said it was “extraordinarily sad that my grandfather, who was such a unifying figure in this country, appears to have become a sort of icon through being controversial.”

“We’ve come to this place where history is viewed only entirely through the prism of the present,” she [said]…

Ms Soames acknowledged her grandfather had often held views which “particularly now are regarded as unacceptable but weren’t necessarily then”.

However she added: “He was a powerful, complex man, with infinitely more good than bad in the ledger of his life.”

She said if people were “so infuriated” by seeing the statue it may be “safer” in a museum.

“But I think Parliament Square would be a poorer place without him,” she added.

On the other side of the argument, Black Lives Matter activist Imarn Ayton stated that statues of people who had spoken so negatively towards black people were “extremely offensive” and should be moved to museums.

This past weekend, clashes between police and protesters at the Cenotaph war memorial, as well as the boarded-up statue of Churchill, turned violent.

You can read more on those here.

[sources:cnn&independent&bbc]