When touring our guide told us this lore. Churchill didn't want "birds shitting on him for all eternity" so they have a small electric current that runs through the statue so birds don't land on it.
It’s kind of funny if you go to a country where the tour guide is required to be trained by the government (especially in a communist or authoritarian/dictator country). You get told quite the tall tale about their nation’s history
"Our Dear Leader fought off an entire battalion of the enemy aggressors, single-handedly! He did it single-handedly because he tied one arm behind his back! He did this when he was just 12 years old! 40 years before his own birthday!"
It is grounded already. There are a number of problems with the idea. the first being that the statue isn't insulated from ground. It would only work if it the statue had no path to ground. The second problem is that if it was working that way and charged with current, the birds are not touching the ground either.
I’ll admit I’m not an electrician. But a current running through the statue wouldn’t affect the birds I don’t believe because they’re not touching any ground when they land on the statue. Same reason they can land on electrical wires.
I have an electrical engineering degree, and that makes no sense.
Current has no real path to flow that will do anything to the birds. Voltage won't do anything because the birds aren't grounded...
Birds perch on bare power lines.
The only electrical things I could imagine the birds caring about would either be a STUPENDOUS voltage (hundreds of thousands of volts) which would be dangerous to everyone nearby... or maybe a tesla coil. The tesla coil would be dangerous and also put out crazy amounts of interference.
Here is a higher-quality and less-cropped version of this image. Here is the source. Per there:
The Churchill statue in Parliament square is vandalised in the early hours of the morning with red paint and pro-Palestine slogans including "Zionist war criminal", "Stop the Genocide", "Never again is Now", "Globalise the Intifada", and what appears to be "Greetings from the Hague" in Dutch on February 27, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Guy Smallman/Getty Images)
A Met Police spokesperson said: “Shortly after 4am on Friday 27 February a man was seen spraying graffiti on the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. The first officers were on the scene within two minutes. The man – who is 38 – was arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage. He remains in custody.”
Chris Morris has said in interviews that the Jewish spark plug bit was inspired by real life covert recordings of a Jihadi cell where they were recorded mocking one of their members for pissing loudly in the toilet. To which the loud pisser blamed the bathroom door for being Jewish.
A decade or more ago, I played this movie to my former college mates, most of which were Muslim, and to my surprise, nobody laughed at any of the jokes. For a long time I wasn't sure if it was me being not funny/having dumb humor, or them not thinking it's fun to depict their religion in such a way. Now I know it was not me, the movie still makes me lol today.
Yes, that's why I love the film, but also haven't rewatched. Felt that sadness for the characters long after watching. A film that can make you laugh out loud, cover a deeply serious issue, and make you think.
On the other hand, I was introduced to that film by an ex-girlfriend who was a British-Pakistani Muslim from a few towns away from where 4 Lions was set. She thought it was fucking hilarious, especially the Urdu bits (which I’m led to believe are incredibly harsh insults).
The person who directed me towards movies like this & Eddie Izzard was a Pakistani Muslim, who would often make the crassest jokes towards a veiled colleague.
Context was incredibly different at the time. The Ottomans (which includes what we know today as Palestine and Israel) literally went to war with England.
If they had just stayed out of the war we wouldn't be where we are but they decided to go to war and lost which resulted in their empire crumbling. At the time the idea of colonisation was still normalised, as it had be for all of human history amongst all nations and tribes before that.
WW2 is what essentially stopped that because of nuclear weapons and everyone was like 'we should all chill' which created the most amount of peace the world had ever seen.
My point is trying to look back with the lens of today and make morale judgements isn't the right way to look at history because if you were born during that time you would have incredibly different opinions. At the time if you went to war and lost that's you being a big old moron so blame the Ottomans for risking it's people with the understanding if they lost they would no longer have the right to rule.
People conflate the British acquisition of Palestine with the colonial shenanigans they got up to, but as you pointed out it was a pretty different situation overall. It's hard for people to understand that level of nuance I guess.
Yea for sure, I think people forget that the Ottoman empire even existed or was even part of the WW1. They're the OG colonialists. Well probably not but they did it for a long time...
Churchill rejected antisemitism for virtually all of his life
Churchill wrote; "Some people like the Jews and some do not, but no thoughtful man can doubt the fact that they are beyond all question the most formidable and the most remarkable race that has ever appeared in the world".
Churchill described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation" than the Jews, whom he viewed as a "higher grade race" compared to the "great hordes of Islam".
Churchill expressed to Hitler's confidante Ernst Hanfstaengl, "Why is your chief so violent about the Jews?... what is the sense of being against a man simply because of his birth? How can any man help how he is born?
Churchill openly wept when recounting to him the humiliations inflicted upon Jews by the SA during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933
It’s not quite as black and white as what you or the rebuttals are claiming.
Churchill was a British upper class aristocrat in a time when antisemitic attitudes and belief in ‘race science’ were the norm. He espoused casual stereotypes about Jews and expressed multiple times the belief that they distinctly possessed amongst them significant unassimilable and subversive elements.
At the same time, he also espoused a genuine sympathy to the broader plight of the Jewish diaspora and rejected the social exclusionary antisemitism espoused by the large majority, especially amongst those of his class. In fact, it’s unambiguously so that he was remarkably inclusive of Jews for the time.
People today try to see past leaders from today’s perspectives, it really doesn’t work. Taken out of the context of their times, some of the most progressive leaders of the past seem quite horrible.
Funny, but if we’re being precise, not really. That’s what some of his political opponents accused him of, that he was ‘in’ on ‘the global Judeo-Masonic conspiracy’ though. In reality though, his views were often colored with tinges of paternalism, race ‘science’, and stereotype in a way that would be incompatible of a cultural fetishist.
It is however undeniable that he was remarkably and very genuinely philosemitic, especially by the standards of his time.
There's good evidence that some Europeans supported a Jewish/Jewish majority state in the Levant for that reason. However, as with any ethnic group, Europeans are a diverse people and even amongst patriarchs/elites, there are diverse opinions and rationales for supporting policy.
Yeah I don't know about Churchill in particular but I do know that the modern far-right loves Israel not because they love Jews, but because they like the idea of brown people + Jews being somewhere far away and locked in an endless war with each other.
The part that they forget about that prophecy is no one will know when it happens. So if they're trying to force it to happen, that wont' be it since the prophecy says it will be unexpected and NO ONE will know
Not to mention Jewish control over the Holy Lands is a big component of Apocalyptic Evangelicalism, or Zionism, or whatever you want to call it. They believe Israel's conquest of the region will bring us swiftly to Judgement Day and bring about Jesus' second coming and the rapture - which are things they wholly believe will be to their benefit somehow, despite their own holy book spelling out in no uncertain terms that this will not go well for them.
I'm British - I was taught that he was a hero in WWII but that he was a contentious figure afterwards, and that his second premiership was unpopular and we briefly touched on the fact that his foreign policy was aggressive and motivated by racism.
His views are pretty much par with most aristocrats born in the late 19th century. At least he was an anti-fascist where a significant portion of his peers were not like Mosley and Edward VIII
Yeah, I learned history in Switzerland, were his efforts vs Nazi Germany were definitely taught as heroic deeds, but at the same time we also learned about everything else he's done, giving me a nuanced opinion on him that a lot of people arguing with me seem to be lacking. They keep accusing me of downplaying his war efforts for daring to critisize him outside of it. Ridiculous
I'll never claim Churchill to have made every correct decision or was indeed overly moral. But his decision and leadership to keep his country fighting the Nazis saved Europe. You fight Nazis, you'll be on the right side of history.
Also, UK voted against the UN partition plan. This ended the British Madate in Palestine which was followed by the multiple revolutions to create the Israel we have today.
It's a pretty simple Wikipedia read.
Edit: wow I had no idea this would blow up. I'm not exactly excited to defend Churchill but here we are. Yes many people in India starved in the Bengal Famine of 1941. This was a many factored issue due to wartime shortages, Burma being taken by the Japanese, etc. Britain's exploitation of India didn't start in 1941 folks. Yes he was racist. Yes he was a zionist; I think Zionism at the time might have been different. Jews were being killed all over the world and "having their homeland where they could live freely" might have sounded like a nice idea. No, Stalin was not on the right side of history. Stalin allowed Germany to flourish during their peace treaty and only fought the Nazis once he got invaded.
Edit2: he got his country to fight HITLER. Think of the world if there was still HITLER. Like, come on people.
The Labour government of Clement Attlee voted to abstain on the partition plan, and did so mostly because they relied on the Arabs for oil and didn’t want to alienate them, nor did they want to oppose the Arab monarchies that they were propping up (Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq), and they also didn’t think the proposed Israeli state would survive, and therefore saw no point in formalising its creation.
The main reason they abstained instead of outright voting against is because the United States under Truman was pushing for the passage of the partition plan, and Britain was heavily reliant on America at this point in time financially and economically (a dependency they would fully come to terms with and learn about the hard way in the Suez Crisis just under a decade after the partition vote), and had to be cautious about publicly going against American foreign policy positions.
He could’ve chosen not to take vital American food aid out of pride. He even genuinely thanked Roosevelt instead of saying something dickish. Now that I think about it this is actually the nicest thing I can say about him.
A large reason Russia beat the Nazis because of America lend lease. I used to not think this but the more I learn about WW2 I truly don’t think they would have won without American lend lease. How do you think they got so much steel and materials to make so many T-34’s?? Stalin was willing to sacrifice every Russian to defeat the Nazis, even going as far as shooting anyone surrendering, and sending anyone who surrendered to the gulag. He even disowned his own son because he wound up getting captured.
Lend Lease was a juggernaut.There were Jeeps in Russia at the start of the Battle of Stalingrad. That's seven months after Pearl Harbor. Never underestimate the power and pace of American production in WW2. The war really was won with British intelligence, American steel and Soviet blood.
it's sort of a bell curve thing... when you're really getting into world war two history, you're unlearning a lot of historical myth and propaganda that treats the eastern front like a sideshow and portray america as having saved the day singlehandedly. you say, "lend lease didn't matter, and russia won the war by itself!" and then you learn more, and realize that victory over fascism genuinely was a team effort in every sense of the phrase.
Churchill wasn't the prime minister during that vote, his opposition was the one in power. Churchill was extremely Zionist, he believed that Jews are superior to Palestinians so they have the right to steal Palestine lands.
I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it.
The previous sentences to that quote are more damning and very clearly spell it out,
"I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia."
Yep and the British were actually putting a lot of pressure on him to submit and make peace with Hitler. Will always have my respect for standing up to the Nazis and the turncoat Brits trying to pressure him to fold
Labour (and much of the general population) was staunchly anti-Hitler and Churchill would have been deposed without their support and the forming of "The Grand Coalition"
It is also worth noting Churchill wasn't particularly anti-facist he was anti-German power.
Ask the Filipinos and Indians if he’s on the right side of history. He stole their food to feed his army lol. I’m all for fighting the Nazi’s I’m glad the allied powers did it but mercilessly allowing millions to die before and after is wicked.
Edit: mistakenly conflated Filipino atrocity at the hands of the US with Churchill.
I've never heard that either. I've always understood that the US had trouble providing supplies and training to the Philippine army, but not that anyone was ever stealing our food.
I'm Filipino and have never heard another Filipino complain about Churchill. If this is about his "Europe First" policy...well that's a big pile of nothing, of course any country is going to prioritize their own when faced with an enemy on their doorstep.
The majority of our grievances are towards Japan and them not admitting the numerous war crimes they committed in the Philippines and across the rest of Asia.
I seriously got called something similar, by someone I’ve known for 25 years. Just for saying maybe we shouldn’t celebrate Biden having cancer. It’s insane. I’ve been vocally pro Palestine for decades.
Also any nuance is totally out the window. Supporting any understanding about why the Jews ended up in Israel, and why a one state solution is untenable - genocide supporter!
It annoys me to no end that there isn't any nuance anymore. This whole debate (can't even call it a debate, it's a straight up argument now) is more complicated than adamant supporters of either side make it out to be.
The only correct stance should be that the leaders of both side committing the atrocities are fuckers and should all be removed.
EDIT: And the comments below mine prove my point exactly, no nuance whatsoever. The sooner you fuckers realise that there have been fucked up things committed by BOTH sides of this stupid war, the sooner we can actually have a genuine discussion. And no, you can't go around saying, "weeellll, one side has done more murder than the other". No, both sides have done horrible things, both to the other side and in some circumstances, their own people. There are no good guys here, your side is not better than the other. Fuck, it frustrates me to no end. This war will never end. I'm just thankful I have a personal stake in this, hence why I can actually be objective about it. But watching people kill each other over dumb historical shit, especially in the current political climate, it's depressing.
As usual, the losers here are always the citizens. Stop supporting your fucked up leaders. Who am I kidding, I'm shouting at a wall here....
They'll just take whatever position is anti-west. They are radicals that hurt actual progress. Many, many of the loud pro-palestine people are authoritarian marxist-leninists or far-right muslims.
Its hilarious that we're still expecting people who lived 100 years ago, pre civil rights, pre Bamber Bridge, pre many many things, to live up to our expectations.
Just don't ask about his opinions or actions against the Irish, Indians, Africans or any people of colour.
"In 1937, he told the Palestine Royal Commission, external: "I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." Source
The full quote is even worse, equating indigenous people to dogs.
"I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger, though he may have lain there for a very long time I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race or at any rate a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place. I do not admit it. I do not think the Red Indians had any right to say, 'American continent belongs to us and we are not going to have any of these European settlers coming in here'. They had not the right, nor had they the power."
He was a bastard (and that was well discussed and well known at the time) but he was our bastard, and that was necessary at the time because of that other even bigger bastard
I know the focus of this post is Churchill's anti-semitism, but I recently learned he said, "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits" in response to the Bengal Famine starving 3 million Indians to death in 1943. This was due to England causing rice prices to skyrocket, food import restrictions, stockpile seizures, and prioritizing food for admin instead of the rural poor. Again, 3 million died.
Love how every historical figure must no be perfect.
We can’t both want history to be told truthfully but expect every historical figure to be perfect.
Being able to know these people were a product of their time and were wrong in their thinking/decisions, but still incredible and ahead of their times.
The internet, bots, and hive mindedness had truly washed away the nuisances of what being human is about.
Only those who have never been to war or never served their country in uniform could do this.
To those who think this is ok…
Churchill is long dead, but a lot of us are alive today because our great grandparents survived the horrors of WWII… whatever his views were (and especially in context with the views of the time) we should remember that he rallied and led Britain to Victory. For that alone he deserves to be remembered.
Defacing his statue will get you coverage, but it will never earn you any respect from those of us who have stepped up in defense of Britain and her interests, and we’ll be the type people saving your ass the next time war threatens Great Britain.
Put your efforts into something more meaningful. Help your community, volunteer, do something less destructive with your time and money.
History isn’t pretty; and it isn’t politically correct. Get over it.
I'm sure there's an analogous example recently, but "zionist" has become a word where everyone using it doesn't know it's meaning, is using it to be edgy, and just treating it as a generic insult.
Similarly, it's possible to be anti-Israel with being anti-Zionist - i.e. Saying that the Israeli government is bad but a Jewish state is fine; or anti-Zionist but not antisemitic - e.g. opposing religious or ethnic states in general rather than just for Jews.
Whenever I get into debates about this with people online I always ask what they think Zionist means. They usually say something like "you support slaughtering Palestinians" which shows the amount of knowledge most of that side has.
Or they call it a 'nazi ideology' which is nuts because the father of Palestinian nationalism trained Arab SS units in the Balkans to fight against 'zionists' and Personally met with Hitler and Himmler.
So the OG anti-zionist was himself an Ardent Nazi supporter
There's an issue I've been seeing since protests started after the 10/7 attack and it's been hard to discuss with some people. It's the co-opting by and rise of antisemitism within many groups but also others using that to dismiss anyone critical of Israel.
On one hand, anti-Semitism gets used disingenuously to shout down any criticism of Israel.
On the other, there is also actual real anti-Semitism happening under the guise of "anti-zionism". If you bring that up though many accuse you of using it in bad faith.
I just keep seeing more and more dog whistles though with some groups and it's worrying.
I also see some people stating things like "well enemy of my enemy". That's not great either.
I think Israel is way beyond out of line. They have a valid reason to defend themselves but what they are doing is so far beyond that and only ensures an endless cycle of violence.
At the same time, I'm not going to welcome people who actually support Hamas or intentionally equate Israel with representing all Jewish people. Yet I see more than I like being okay with it.
But then other groups use that to try and equate everyone critical of Israel as being antisemites/Hamas supporters. Which is disingenuous as well.
Then I see stuff like this and know it doesn't help their cause because it just makes more people critical and less sympathetic. It certainly reminds me that some of these protestors are just being performative... But they also don't even come close to representing everyone.
I have been shocked since Oct 7 to see this insane amount of anti-semitism burst out of the closet from nowhere and to discover how stupid Westerners are to become useful idiots for those that are stirring this up. Maybe it was there and I just never saw it but I honestly thought it was largely a thing from the past.
There is a lot of violence across the globe but only one conflict where there are marches in the streets in the UK calling for the genocide of Israel with genocidal chants of from the river to the sea. That it's an excuse to attack Israel and not about a disproportionate response to the attack on them not just by Hamas, but also by Palestinian citizens is so obvious but so many people seem to have lost their ability to reason.
And it's been supercharged by social media. Lot of folks on the left bashed right wingers for being easily manipulated and falling for it but this has shown they are just as vulnerable to it.
I am seeing people I thought were extremely progressive and accepting of all cultures suddenly start spewing some really anti semitic shit. It's surprising since I only saw that shit from right wingers before. You hit the nail on the head. This conflict has brainrotted everyone.
I have a good friend, an atheist, who comes from a Jewish family, who lives near Seattle. He has features that are easily associated with his Jewish heritage, and he still celebrates Hannaukah. The amount of anti-Semitism he has experienced since 10/7 has been shocking and eye opening. As in, he doesn't go out much anymore if he doesn't just need to, and switched to working from home. He loves the area, but is planning to move away when he can because it's so intolerable.
He went from the most socialist, deep blue guy I ever met to a non-voting centrist who refuses to support the Left until it gets it's anti-Semitism under control. It's shocking, this guy worked with the Obama and Hillary campaigns.
Me as well. Jewish Social dem and voted blue my whole life. I’m not abandoning my values but I’m not going to support these people who welcome the anti-semites into the tent just because they agree on Israel.
Any time I try to explain there’s large swaths of slightly more moderate dems that are questioning the messaging from the left flank, I get insulted.
Another passive aggressive post that enables this sort of discussion. I’m starting to think the IRGC troll farms are in freak out mode. Maybe they’re trying their damndest to sway public opinion on stopping the US involvement of their removal.
Same people couldn't give a fuck about 35,000 gunned down in Iran, because "internal matter" and "Mossad". I take them about as seriously as I take aggressive squirrels and pigeons.
Agreed. You see crazy amounts of cognitive dissonance. I've seen plenty of LGBT actively supporting regimes that outlaw homosexuality and think they shouldn't exist
The historical revisionists would like to pretend there were no Jews in the region before 1948 — and that Jews were never victims, but always the aggressors.
Its truly insane. By all the assumptions that hamas supporters operate by they would be absolutely cheering at the idea of Native Americans raping and pillaging small towns in the US out of pure retribution. And even that is an unfair equivalence for the Jews as they have historical ties to their region whereas white Americans don't.
Its like all nuance is lost when it comes to anything to do with Jews. The context surrounding the situation that they as a people find themselves in is completely ignored because these people don't care about history or geopolitics. They just want something to be outraged at, something to direct their rage towards. Hamas propaganda reveals how gullible the average American.
This is shameful. This man was a beacon of light in the darkest of times and a key reason democracy survived in Europe. Now people deface his statue based on shit that happened after his time and through a lense of 70 years of progress.
Next they'll be defacing Lincoln statues because he lived in a city built by slaves. Fucking moronic.
Just makes me hate the pro Palestine crowd even more. Here’s a tip, maybe if you want people to believe in your cause, you don’t do things that piss a lot of people off?
As a student of WW2 Churchill did what he could with what he had to work with. If it wasn't for him we would all be speaking German and worshipping the Nazi flag.
Idiots. How soon their collective memories collapse, leaving only single-issue angst. They don’t remember the bomb raids, the fascist attack on England, and the people who stood up to Hitler and saved them from oppression. Idiots
It would also be single-issue to only remember Churchill for his part in World War II. I would love to see more criticism of the man because he deserves it, but reducing it to Palestine as these people are doing aggravates me because all it does is further insulate him from the criticism he is actually deserving of.
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u/Elbeeb 11h ago
Funny how he didn't want a statue because he knew what pigeons did to them. No way he thought about this.