Statue Down Statue Up

Submission 4,141

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About

Statue Down Statue Up is a political cartoon by Pat Cross that depicts people tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus while a statue of Karl Marx attached to its bottom simultaneously gets erected. Posted in June 2020 following the George Floyd protests, during which several statues of Columbus and other figures were torn down or vandalized, the comic has since been parodied online with versions in which Freddy Fazbear and other characters replaced Marx as an exploitable format.

Origin

During the 2020 George Floyd protests, several statues of Christopher Columbus and other contentious historical figures were toppled or vandalized by protestors, while many others were removed by cities under pressure from the public.^[1] On June 18th, 2020, political cartoonist Pat Cross posted^[2]^[3] a cartoon titled "Statue Down Statue Up" that depicted protestors tearing down a statue of Christopher Columbus, simultaneously erecting a statue of Karl Marx attached to its bottom. The cartoon received over 540 reactions and 460 shares on Facebook in two years (shown below).

Spread

On June 19th, 2020, Facebook page LATINAS FOR TRUMP reposted the image. On June 20th, Redditor^[4] TheJord posted a screenshot of that post to the /r/TheRightCantMeme subreddit, where it received over 28,800 upvotes in two years. On June 21st, 2020, Redditor^[5]^[6] goenyan and another unknown Redditor posted two earliest edits of the image, replacing the statue of Karl Marx with Reimu Hakurei from Touhou Project and Freddy Fazbear from Five Nights at Freddy's (shown below, left and right). The posts gained 160 upvotes in /r/2hujerk and 860 upvotes in /r/195, respectively, in six months.

The Freddy Fazbear edit saw viral spread online in the following months. On September 7th, 2020, Instagram^[7] user youve.g0t.mail posted a cropped version of the image, with the post gaining over 14,000 likes in two years. On January 22nd, 2021, iFunny^[8] user pattywagon007mk2 reposted the image, with the post being featured and receiving over 27,900 smiles. On January 25th, an unknown Redditor^[9] posted a Political Compass meme based on the image that gained over 10,900 upvotes in one year.

Throughout 2021, more edits of the cartoon were posted online. For example, on July 15th, 2021, Twitter^[10] user @lishainik reposted a Big Floppa edit that received 29 retweets and over 140 likes (shown below, left). On September 4th, 2021, Redditor^[11] Mrenvyy captioned the Freddy Fazbear version, "Biden's America," with the post gaining over 4,000 upvotes in the /r/okbuddyretard subreddit (shown below, center). On December 3rd, 2021, Instagram^[12] user arbychief posed a Halo edit that received over 7,600 likes in five months (shown below, right).