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    Streets or Roads with Right-Wing Names

    This seems to be a speciality in Alabama and Georgia, which in the last two days have given me:

    War On Terror Memorial Highway

    https://www.clantonadvertiser.com/20...war-on-terror/

    Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway

    https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/jdavis.cfm

    Lee Highway

    https://www.americanroads.us/autotrails/leehighway.html

    Some of these namings come from 1910-1930, when there was a concerted effort to rehabilitate the confederacy and KKK, as in Stone Mountain and The Birth Of A Nation. Others reflect an obsession with militarism, with highways dedicated to veterans of every war from 1776 through to Iraq. It's particularly insulting when you see "Korean Memorial Highway" and it's only memorializing Americans, not the far higher number of Koreans who died (see also Vietnam).

    Recall also that Memorial Day was Confederate Memorial Day in the south. Seven states still have a Confederate History Month

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conf..._History_Month

    The birthdays of Jefferson Davis and Robert E Lee are still a state holiday in Alabama (Lee's is switched to January to replace MLK Day) and Confederate Memorial Day is still held on April 26

    https://www.al.com/news/2019/06/jeff...sed-today.html
    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 26-07-2020, 00:19.

    #2
    A main thoroughfare in the area where I live is named after a South African pro-Nazi activist during WW2. A short while back I mentioned it on our neighbourhood Facebook page, in the context of noting that in 25 years, the name has remained... Big mistake. The reaction from outraged people who were offended that one might raise the notion of changing street names was incredible. The first made pre-emotive strikes by raising BLM and Antifa and the tearing down of statues. Two right-wing fucks appropriated the "Karen" trope and applied it to me (it's a horrible trope when applied by the left, and idiotic when stolen by the right).

    So streets named after Nazis is OK with white South Africans, it seems.

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      #3
      We've got Derek Dooley Way in Sheffield, some of his opinions could have been regarded as "Right of Centre" traditional

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        #4
        The inexhaustible creativity of Tory councils in Portsmouth gave us Winston Churchill Avenue – a bloated, smelly, unnecessary thoroughfare cutting a previous working-class district in half, now flanked by deprived estates and the ex-homes of Britain's first recruits to Isis – and The Princess Royal Way, a road to nowhere offering charming views of Morrisons hypermarket. There's a load of Spitfire nomenclature in the region too, to satisfy those grandads reliving the thrill of setting Hanover aflame every afternoon on the History Channel.

        i can't find it now, but there's a blog by a French guy who takes eerily flat, grey photos of public amenities named after De Gaulle – given the era, mostly airports, car parks, flyovers, and other concrete glories – and tags them with unsuitably grandiose citations from the great man. i could never work out if the blogger was or was not a fan of De Gaulle and/or 1970s infrastructure. i suspected he wasn't, but there's a small messianic cult of De Gaulle, and just as christians are supposed to detect the beauty of God in, like, a wasp, so perhaps he sees the tender gaze of tonton (no, not that one) in the facade of a municipal sports centre.

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          #5
          We were in Fussbudget's dad's car in, I think, Arcachon, and there was a street named after D'Annunzio. I thought that was a bit much.

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            #6
            Not particuarly right-wing (and certainly not objectionable in any way), but I was very struck (and pretty pleased I supposed) with the fact that my address in Berlin for my gap year in 1982 was on Manfred-von-Richthofenstrasse. It was near Tempelhof aerodrome, and quite a few of the local streets were named after aviators.

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              #7
              Presumably not Goering?

              There are Charles Lindbergh Boulevards in Hempstead and Uniondale. I can only assume that the namers had political amnesia or were crypto-fascists.
              Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 30-07-2020, 17:18.

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                #8
                ha ha, indeed not!

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                  #9
                  I feel like I have posted about this before, but as if that's going to stop me.

                  I have a memory of reading in Private Eye about thirty-five years ago that a private estate was being built in Bolton or another one of those Lancashire B towns. The council was against it, but the developer forced it through. However, the council had street-naming rights, and so was insisting on some variant of Goebbels Avenue, Goering Crescent, Doenitz Walk etc.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by sw2borshch View Post
                    I feel like I have posted about this before, but as if that's going to stop me.

                    I have a memory of reading in Private Eye about thirty-five years ago that a private estate was being built in Bolton or another one of those Lancashire B towns. The council was against it, but the developer forced it through. However, the council had street-naming rights, and so was insisting on some variant of Goebbels Avenue, Goering Crescent, Doenitz Walk etc.
                    True story and I remember it well.

                    It was an exasperated councillor sounding off after the local authority were overruled by the Government and a development on greenbelt was allowed. He suggested only half seriously I think, that since the authority had the street naming rights they'd make it as unattractive as possible for potential new buyers. Hitler and Goering Avenues were certainly mentioned. I'm sure poor Doenitz was overlooked. Again.

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                      #11
                      Poor old Doenitz. Always the bridesmaid, hung for being the bride for a week.

                      Anyway, you don't know how pleased I am to have this confirmed as basically as I remember it.

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                        #12
                        It's only a shame that it doesn't really work for this thread as of course on the modern internet the Nazis were left wing.

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                          #13
                          My parents open their mail using what my grandad claimed was Donitz's letter opener.

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                            #14
                            That's fabulous.

                            Wrong war, but when I was doing my History GCSE my Gran borrowed an Uhlan officer's sword off her friend for me to have a go of. I have a very distinct memory of swinging it round my head, unsheathed (the sword, not my head), at school when I took it in to show the class.

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                              #15
                              Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                              Not particuarly right-wing (and certainly not objectionable in any way), but I was very struck (and pretty pleased I supposed) with the fact that my address in Berlin for my gap year in 1982 was on Manfred-von-Richthofenstrasse. It was near Tempelhof aerodrome, and quite a few of the local streets were named after aviators.

                              My son's old school (and that of Eggchaser ) was on the edge of an estate that was built on part of the site of the old Croydon Airport. Accordingly there are roads named after a number of different aircraft, but also Alcock and Brown, Lindbergh and Amy (Johnson).

                              Back on topic, there's a Sir Cyril Black Way in Wimbledon, Cy having been the town's pretty right-wing Tory MP back in the day. There must be a lot of roads in Britain named after MPs and councillors from the more traditional wing of the party, shall we say. Actually, when I was a resident of SW19 I lived in the MInisters area, which had roads named after PMs from the C18th and C19th, few of whom held progressive views on trans rights or an all-encompassing welfare state.

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                                #16
                                In my neighborhood, all streets are named after second world war generals etcetera. I live on the Field Marshal Montgomery Lane. You know, old Bernard, of pro-apartheid and anti-gay opinions.

                                Liberating the city makes the people forget a lot of other things.

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                                  #17
                                  A numbered grid has many advantages

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                                    #18
                                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                    A numbered grid has many advantages
                                    Yes, NY's system is easy to follow, somewhat more so than another town where streets have numbers: La Canyada, not far from Valencia. There is some logic to the system but I sure feel bad fro delivery workers having to navigate their routes..Just zoom in:

                                    https://www.google.com/maps/place/La...7!4d-0.4856308



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                                      #19
                                      Here in Colchester there is a small estate built just after the war - Roosevelt Way, Churchill Way and Stalin Road. There have been periodic mutterings that it should be changed but the residents are happy for it to stay as it is

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                                        #20
                                        It makes sense in context: they were allies at the time.

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                                          #21
                                          Somewhat tenuous, but near me is Watergate Street.

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                                            #22
                                            The main road through the park where I work used to be called Hindenburgstrasse. It's now been changed to Otto-Wels-Strasse. My colleague Der Blockwart can't get his head (or tongue) around the new name and invariably refers to the road as "Orson-Welles-Strasse".

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                                              #23
                                              https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Wels

                                              Bit of a hero of social democracy, it seems.

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