A number of the world’s main museums are full of plundered and stolen items ― and John Oliver of “Final Week Tonight” has had sufficient.
“In case you are ever on the lookout for a lacking artifact, 9 instances out of ten it’s within the British Museum,” he identified. “It’s principally the world’s largest ‘misplaced and located’ with each ‘misplaced’ and ‘discovered’ within the heaviest doable citation marks there.”
A first-rate instance: the Elgin Marbles, aka the Parthenon Marbles, taken from Greece within the nineteenth century by Lord Elgin and at present within the British Museum.
“They weren’t misplaced. They have been taken, which is clearly worse. It’s like being unable to search out the final puzzle piece and studying that you simply didn’t truly misplace it,” he stated. “A British earl snuck into your own home, stole it, after which offered it to a museum over 1,000 miles away.”
Oliver slammed the “unbelievably patronizing” arguments of those that defend the British Museum and different repositories of stolen items.
Some declare the objects have been taken in a distinct time ― and which means there’s a distinct context to think about.
However as Oliver identified, British Prime Minister William Gladstone in 1868 stated he “deeply lamented” objects looted from Ethiopia by the British Military and known as for his or her return.
“He was saying that in 1868!” Oliver stated. “We didn’t even know find out how to repair a UTI with out leeches again then, however we knew that raiding different nations for his or her shit was ‘deeply lamentable,’ which is British for ‘tremendous fucked up.’”
See his full takedown beneath… and you’ll want to stick round for a tour of the “Payback Museum” that includes Kumail Nanjiani: