I must say that in the way of bizarre arguments here’s one I find particularly remarkable. The context of it is as follows: there are towns in Germany that ‘still have Adolf Hitler on the rolls as an honorary citizen’. Where that has been discovered to be so, a common way of dealing with it was to remove the honour. But there are those who argue it shouldn’t be done. It shouldn’t be done because that would be ‘an attempt to whitewash something that can’t be whitewashed‘.
The removal of the honour, however, in no way dictates any effort to deny the fact that it was once awarded, or to cover up the whole murderous history of which it was a part. One can tear down the statues of a tyrant, who in his day had a mass following, and still try to teach people about his crimes, through other types of memorial, museum and what have you. Otherwise what? You have to keep the statues?