Why they desecrated Marx’s grave
Posted on Friday 30 September, 2011
Filed Under The left
I’M NOT quite sure why I find pictures of swastikas crudely sprayed on Jewish or Muslim graves more shocking than the sight of, say, similar racist graffiti on the shutters of ethnic minority-owned corner shops. In our culture, disrespect for the dead remains perhaps the ultimate statement of visceral hatred.
Reports that the tomb of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery was desecrated yesterday do not make the motivation immediately apparent. Although the Evening Standard reveals simply that it was daubed with paint, my presumption is that some sort of sloganeering was involved.
This action will have been undertaken for a reason, and the obvious suspects are the political right. Maybe this was the work of hardcore facists, maybe this was some sort of prank on the part of tipsy Tory student activists. We may never know.
An attack on what is basically an oversized bust of one of the people who shaped the modern world is something that Marx’s admirers – a category in which I include myself – can live with. The paint will scrub off soon enough, I guess.
But just as vandalism perpetrated in Jewish and Muslim graveyards is designed to hurt not the individual families of the deceased but entire communities, there is little doubt that this was meant as a symbolic assault on the left in its entirety.
Whoever is responsible would like to do to us exactly the same things they would like to do with the other human beings that they despise. We should consider it a warning.
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55 Responses to “Why they desecrated Marx’s grave”
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Your summary is confusing. Please clairfy.
Do you mean to say that a tipsy Tory student would wish to duab people from “the left in its entirety” with paint? Or do you mean this action is somehow related to genocide?
Very recently the ex-head of the semi-fictious EDL Jewish Division (Roberta Moore) insisted that socialism/communism =nazism, and to support her argument she used an article from the rightwing Mises Institute (of revisionist history) to do so. It’s .’. entirely possible that it was someone from among the EDL London cohort, since this myth has been doing the rounds amongst EDL and they now equate (wrongly) communism with nazism.
When I first heard about this, along with the obvious disgust, I did feel a slight glimmer of excitement. If the right are vandalising Marx’s grave again, as they did in the 1960s and 70s, I thought, then surely it shows that in some sense Marxism is a threat again.
A more depressing though for me was that it could have been done by mindless nihilists with no idea who the man even was. The sort who go around destroying everything that happens to look a bit “antique”.
“doing the rounds amongst EDL and they now equate (wrongly) communism with nazism.”
Lots of Harry’s Place commenters do this. Then again, lots of them also sympathise with the EDL.
not just the commenters at Sauce BloodwertH. The above the line posters as well. get yer facts right , BTW – why do you continue to scab by having shit posted at saucer shitjerb place? don’t answer – i know why anyway – it’s because you are a careerist wannabepseudojourno cuernT.
“Whoever is responsible would like to do to us exactly the same things they would like to do with the other human beings that they despise. We should consider it a warning.”
No. we should consider it a wake-up call. After all – the norwegian mad tosser showed what they are capable of – these pieces of shit need to be hunted down and killed themselves. That is what they want to do to us – we shud do it to them more forcefully and more effectively. that does not of course mean political shit is pushsed to the side – both can be played out in tandem. either way – killing and defeating nazi scum would be a uniting instrument for communists of all persuasions.
At least the people who steal the metal memorial plaques from English Gardens of Rememberances do it for the scrapmetal value. Dave, it’s a fuck of a world out there nowadays, everyone takes a hit.
Our local cemetery (where jelly would like to bury me after some serious torture) gets infrequent vandalism. It happens in most large cities. Having visited Highgate twice I would reckon it was deliberately targeted. It is a large graveyerd. Why Marx.
It could be it was a fluke by wandering working class drunks that would never have heard of Marx.
Please correct to say it is the memorial – not the grave. The memorial dates back to the 1950s – when the grave was moved – not far – but it was moved.
It must have been a deliberate act as Highgate is a private cemetry and members of the general public are not allowed in. I have visited it with my friend as her husband is buried there, but you have to tell the gatekeepers who you are going to see. I suppose who ever did this could have climbed over the fence at night, but there are so many graves in the grave yard, why would they pick on this one, Jimmy? The graves are literally piled up on top of one another.
“In our culture, disrespect for the dead remains perhaps the ultimate statement of visceral hatred.”
What, like attacking the Cenotaph or another war memorial ?
http://www.burtonmail.co.uk/News/War-memorial-the-final-insult.htm
“the rightwing Mises Institute (of revisionist history)”
Does “Luther Blisset” have any idea who Ludwig von Mises was ? Indeed, does he have any idea who Martin Luther was ?
“Whoever is responsible would like to do to us exactly the same things they would like to do with the other human beings that they despise”
Dave, I think you’re going a bit OTT here. Calm down. What would you have said about a Tory writer who chose to interpret the vandalism of Churchill’s statue (a few May Days back) as a sign that the Gulags would soon be operational in the UK ?
SueR. There is a large tombstone/monument and is easily identified. I have a photo from a visit. There was a small entrance fee for the maintenance of the cemetery I seem to recall.
To be frank, I’m offended, but I’m comforted by the faith that in the end we’ll win.
“What, like attacking the Cenotaph or another war memorial ?”
What on Earth has that got to do with anything?
Sorry Laban
Don’t get thee analogy?
To be honest, attacking war graves or the Cenotaph has a lot to do with it. Round my way thieves have stolen metal plaques from war memorials and also community cemetetries. Dave (in his article)talks as if it is only when minorities are attacked that it is disrespectful or shocking. Wasn’t there a student who pissed on a local war memorial last year. He was most remorseful when he appeared before the beak.
I blame the Victorians or at least the late Georgians. Prior to about 1832 rural cemeteries meant the deceased were buried in a clockwise fashion around the graveyard and when the original point had been reached the wooden marker had rotted away , just like the individual who lay beneath, so another body went in from the parish coffin. Only presumably when ‘commerce’ raised its ugly head and stone markers and urns were used to mark grave sites did that slow or stop the process of reusing the ground.
The ostentatious Victorians became grand in the remembrances hence in the Western Cemetery at Highgate is the Lebanon Circle Vaults (complete with a majestic 300-year old Cedar of Lebanon tree); the Egyptian Avenue, which seems to have come straight out of film set; the Terrace Catacombs; and the Julius Beer Mausoleum — an enormous mausoleum built by businessman Beer at a cost of £5000 (the equivalent of £3 million today). Beer had never been accepted by Victorian society, having committed the cardinal sins of being foreign and having made his money commercially. With the largest mausoleum in the entire cemetery, he clearly had the last word.
Marx’ monument is surely an anathema to working class principles in that its impossible to use the area again with that great hulking monument. Ben Jonson had it right. He reposes in an upright position (standing on his feet). One of the explanations given for this is that, dying in great poverty, Jonson begged King Charles I for “18 inches of square ground in Westminster Abbey”. Another says that one day the Dean of Westminster spoke to him about being buried in Poets’ Corner, and Jonson is said to have told him: “six feet long by two feet wide is too much for me. Two feet by two is all I want” … Obviously a socialist thinker…
Mark Clark. Marx was not responsible for his hulking monument it was others. Marx was dead! Marx will be remembered for what he had said and written. Maybe some day in the future more people will read his writings than do the bible. That could be a step forward for the human race, maybe.
It really doesn’t matter. It’s absolutely meaningless unless you treat Marxism as a religion. If that is what you do then you may as well become a Scientologist. Forget the monument, take what you can from his writings, after all there are enough of them. Probability is that there are some mistakes in them because we have no right to expect perfection in others, so make your own minds up.
I find it hard to get angry about this. Want to see me angry? Wait until they try and give Thatcher a state funeral and Ed Miliband agrees to it.
As well as growing prosperity and urbanisation being responsible for the introduction of great, heavy monuments, there was the influence of the Resurrectionists or Bodysnatchers. A very real fear in Victorian England was that one’s corpse would be stolen and sold to anatomists. Some enterprising fellows took it upon themselves to provide fresh cadavers ie Burke and Hare in Edinburgh and the case of the Italian Boy in Bethnal Green. If your body was cut up and its remains disposed of haphazardly, you would lose any chance of eternal life, as well as it not being very nice.
Marx’s monument was only erected in the 1950s or 60s. I had a boyfriend years ago who worked with a man whose father-in-law had been the sculptor. I think it was something to do with teh fact that the Russian Trade Delagation was/is based in Highgate.
Do we know the nature of the graffito? Was it squiggles or swastikas or a Star of David?
Thinking about it, it’s like the arguments against Lenin’s enbalmed body being on show. Less yucky maybe. But, given that in our culture it is considered respectful to make the grave, I don’t see why we should ignore our own cultural evolution. I personally will be like Keats and consider my name as writ on water once I am pushing up the daisies. I have been thinking about the most appropriate place to put a memorial bench, but then some days I just think ‘why should I do other people a good turn and which place do I really love?.
The point, however
James Bloodworth is on the right track.
If it’s worth attacking….
Amongst the theories about who’s behind it, perhaps Atzmon has found another Zionist to hate.
I’ll say it slowly.
Dave Osler : “In our culture, disrespect for the dead remains perhaps the ultimate statement of visceral hatred.”
Laban – “like attacking the Cenotaph or a war memorial ?”
“Don’t get thee analogy?”
Well, you see, the Cenotaph and other war memorials are monuments to the “dead” – that is, people who have died. In fact, people who have died in the service of their country (Britain – you know, where you live).
Thee point be that when some trustafarian uses the Cenotaph as an adventure playground, or a chappie sprays “Islam will dominate the world — Osama is on his way” over the monument in Burton, Dave doesn’t start having conniptions about our ruling class’s inhumanity or the coming slaughter of the kaffir. Nor, as far as I know, did he foresee a vegan dictatorship when various loons dug up the graves of John Peel (huntsman not DJ) and the grandmother of someone who bred animals for labs).
Dave seems to be a tad selective when it comes to deciding which desecrations mean the knock on the door in the night and a long railway journey. He should calm down.
“First they desecrated the war memorials, but I had not been killed in the war …”
people who have died in the service of their country
The Cenotaph glorifies most of all the deaths in the First World War that were in the service of nobody’s country.
I think attacking a grave site is wrong period. I don’t care whose grave site it is, Margaret Thatcher’s or Karl Marx.
Attacking a statue or some over-sized bust that isn’t at a grave site is perfectly reasonable if you ask me. Pissing on Winston Churchill or shitting on an over sized picture of Kim Jong-il gets the thumbs up from me.
Marx is news again, he’s talked about in the media, in the corridors of power, the tea party call everyone to the left of George Bush a Marxist, the Melanie Phillips right blame Marx (and foreigners) for every single problem the system they apologise for creates and now they are attacking his memorial/grave or whatever. Positive stuff if you ask me.
One doesn’t have to be jingoistic about it, Skidmarks. Would you piss on the mass graves in Russia to mark their war dead? I agree it was an imperialist war, but let’s face it the cannon-fodder were farmboys and factory hands. It still hurts a lot of people and it won’t win Socialist Worker any recruits slagging off people’s great-grandfathers.
Off thread but it made me laugh. The BBC has an item about the first rock concert in Kabul for thirty years. Fottage of mainly men waving their arms in the air and lapping it up. The young women stand on the sidelines wearing hijabs, so I guess that’s pretty modern. Women also appeared on stage, racking in their hijabs. As it was strictly Islamic, they had prayer breaks. It’s not ‘sex and drugs and rock and roll’ in Afghanistan, but ‘god, and drugs and rock and roll’. Still, the young people enjoyed themselves.
‘rocking in their hijabs’.
Sewer Rat, your question is offensive. I am precisely making the point that the dead of WWI died for nothing, a war that the Cenotaph – with its talk of “The Glorious Dead”, and its place in an official ideology that has always claimed the war as a just one – celebrates.
Engage your brain for once before you make such stupid accusations. Read what I’ve said before you make out that I’ve said the opposite.
I visited the grave about 10 years ago with a friend of my family. Whatever one thinks about Marx, vandalising his grave is a shoddy thing to do.
On women rockin,
Watched the X factor last night (had no choice!) and one of the young women talked about how she was breaking boundaries with her raunchy outfits, showing lots of flesh, staring a bit intensely and other such superficial shit that passes for being radical among the young. I thought you’re not breaking any boundaries; virtually every bloody woman pop star in the world takes to the stage showing as much flesh as possible. If you want to break boundaries trying covering up you pretentious annoying fuckwit.
Had to get that off my chest!
Getting away from the original subject a bit more…I actually thought that that farmer in Ballymena who told Rihanna to cover up was good for standing by his principles. The American pop industry is just a branch of the soft-porn industry. If you watch their videos, it’s so obvious the way the girls writhe around. It’s like that here too, especially wdi th the manufactured bands. Cheryl Cole may have a good voice but she has very long legs. All thees female, studio-produced bands wouldn’t get anywhere if their singers were short and fat. I was raised in the feminist movement of the 70s, so I find it hard to watch the younger women acting like this. These days of course, they insist it is ‘empowering’.
I haven’t read this thread in detail so I apologise if I am repeating anyone else’s point, but I couldn’t help wondering how our esteemed host would feel, in the hypothetical situation of Adolph Hitler having a grave with headstone, if vandals desecrated that?
Duff how playful, how naughty, how cheeky, wot a shit you are
If, say, the intellectual inspiration for Hitler, say Nietzsche, had his grave vandalised then I would say that is a disgrace. Even if Hitler’s far right bedfellow Thather had her grave vandalised I would be disgusted. And even if that posion gas loving war mongering shit Churchill had his grave desecrated I would be up in arms. No really.
Deviation. It was a German Army officer that started the gas thing. Not Churchill. Mr Duff. You have to stop winding up the leftys!
The timely analogies on this from stuff written here are legion.
So we have to pay or check in to Highgate Cemetery now do we? Why should I be surprised?
When the day is fast bloody dawning when the employee/State subsidies, have to pay the employer to keep them in a job. As a public sector worker I joke already what I do is sodding voluntary work now.
Three year pay freeze, pension put beyond reach for many, sickness not allowed (people even taking time out to attend chemo sacked), HR bullying and intimidation the norm, redundancy a weekly threat.
No fear for the spirit of old Karl David. I should think a bit of old concrete above him defaced is but another excuse for one of his ever more frequent all night ‘I told you so’ parties these days. He did arrive at a very healthy atheism after all. Such stuff when he was alive counted for nothing to him. Unlike ideas. Christ he could be, and was, a bleedin vandal on those. Still is. He still frightens people as much as when he was alive. Good.
Last and only time I went to highgate cemetery it was a particularly freezing January day. We just meandered across the common and walked in totally free. Unchecked. Utterly deserted. Blink and you would miss the bearded bust anyway.
Watch out for when the state starts burning his and Engels writings again. By then it will be too late. Again. Let’s not leave it till that this time, eh?
Martin. I doubt the state will worry about Marx. The problem about Marx is with the left. Marx is not the problem the left are.
Warning! Glesga 3000 comment detected. The threat has been moved to the virus vault.
Please visit AlertAlert.com for your free Glesga 3000 removal software.
Laban Tall: “Does “Luther Blisset” have any idea who Ludwig von Mises was ? Indeed, does he have any idea who Martin Luther was ?”
Yes to both. But your second character is irrelevant in the moment.
Does Laban Tall have any idea who Luther Blissett is?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bRuTkmTIjg
Usual renta-a-rant boilerplate stuff from Martin. Highgate’s always been a PRIVATE Cemetry, for the nobs, keep them away from the likes of you. I doubt that Marx would have approved of havnig his monument defaced, I think he was fairly staid and conventional in his personal life. Remember, Engels had to finance balls for his daughters and accept responsibility for Marx’s illigitimate child. Highgate has a history of grave descration. Back in the 1970s there was a big scandal about black magic practitioners digging up the graves, part of the reason why they introduced tighter security. Nowadays they would claim that they are entitled to freedom of religion.
AlertLaert. Good bit of humour is good for the jaw muscles. You simply cannot be a lefty. You could fit leftys with a sense of humour into a British telephone booth.
It said in teh news this afternoon that the Stephen Lawrence memorial plaque had been attacked for the third time. Do those people who are saying that it is the good that men do that is important and not sticks and stones set up as memorials, think this is yet another thing to shrug our shoulders aover? Incidentally, regarding the question about Hitler’s tomb, does the old bastard actually have one? What did the Russians do with the burnt offerings they found? Did they carry them back to Stalin who locked them away in a vault? Seriously, does anyone know what happened to them.
Sue R. The main thing is the old fucker snuffed it. The Nazi mob Jew haters are still around though in various disguises including socialists. Hence National Socialism.
SR, Hitlers remains. ‘Seriously, does anyone know what happened to them’……this stunning absence of a question mark from the person who once berated me for my English is most gratifying. Ooops sorry, sinking to your silly level now.
Yes as it happens I maybe do. No doubt others will have their own take and version on it. God knows there has been so much boring wall to wall stuff on it for the past decades. Much of it scientific and well researched. I am stunned anyone missed it. But then again that would require lifting your attention away from your next high. Some would call that snorting ‘put downs’ up your nose like Cocain. Just as filthy a habit. But I of course would not want to comment.
The view fom the ‘boiler plate’ is obviously vastly more well informed, and more felt, than you could handle. I am not wasting my time now looking up links on it for the likes of you. (Addictive what?)
So Highgate has always been private? Ok fine. Did I say it was not? It’s just my memory of just walking in without being charged is just that. Fact. Your response a petty and purile diversion as ever from the whole bloody point of the post.
Are you and Glesga the same person? If not you would not have to work at it for too long.
In Glesga’s world left is right, up is down, outside is in. Marx is good but Socialism is not. So let’s have concrete shrines to Henry Kissinger then. Give me the boiler plate and a fecking good pair of lungs any day
Martin. Marx is a good idea especially Karl and Groucho. Get a good nights sleep Martin.
Martin: You say you knowd what happened to Hitler’s cremated remains, but then you fail to inform us. If you knowd, speak now or forever hold your peace. Have you thought about seeking help with your anger management problems?
Martin. The last time I visited Highgate the cemetery was very busy with vistors to the Marx Tomb. The fee for entry is for the upkeep of the cemetery. Someone has to cut the grass and maintain the place.
Marx did want socialism. I do not think he had Adolf, Stalin, Pol Pot or Mao etc etc in mind.
Re Hitler’s remains Ian Kershaw who is IMO the definitive biographer states that: ‘there are compelling reasons for utmost scepticism towards the Soviet claims to have recovered the remains of Hitler’s body’ which the SS seem to have made a very job indeed of cremating.
If the Soviets did find anything they reburied the remains in a small mass grave outside of Berlin with other bunker corpses in 1945, then secretly dug up, re-burnt them and and re-scattered the ashes in April 1970 (barring a couple of skull fragments kept in the security services Moscow archives) because the East Germans wanted to build something on the burial site and Brezhnev didn’t want to risk anything being found.
By one account they may have flushed them all into the Magdeburg sewer system – which certainly would have been my preferred option for disposal.
If they didn’t find the corpse then it is probably still under a children’s playground and car park surrounded by East German era workers flats which is now on the site of the former bunker entrance and garden – an equally appropriate resting place IMO.
(you can see it on google maps and streetview if you put in Wilhelmstraße Berlin and look for the angle between the Wilhelmstraße and Voßstraße).