What is to be done with the monuments to Southern white supremacy? New Orleans has already begun the process of removing these symbols of white supremacy and New Orleans mayor, Mitch Landrieu, revealed to the Atlantic, some of the issues raised by this project.

 

Then there’s Daily Kos blogger Hunter, who weighed in recently with a post titled “Tear Them Down”. Pointing out that nearly all of the monuments nationwide were erected long after the end of the Civil War, most were less an attempt to honor the exploits of those fighting to preserve slavery than a demonstration of the continued dominance of white power and privilege. Putting them in historical context he says:

It is long past time to tear the statues down. Not remove them. Not warehouse them, or sell them to willing bidders. It is long past time to tear them down in chunks. To take sledgehammers to them where they stand, as the residents of Berlin did to their contemptible Wall. To tie chains around them and topple them into the pavement, as the liberated has long done to the symbols of their tyrants. Break the chunks into smaller chunks; break the smaller chunks into gravel; melt down the metal and grind the stone into dust. Make sure there is nothing left to be kept as heirlooms for the shelves of racists; make sure not a scrap is left as artifact for some future murderous loser to rub and cherish as a symbol of what might have been.

*******

It is not historical societies or men with pictures of their Southern ancestors rallying around the traitors’ statues. It was organized by white nationalists. It was protected by white nationalist militias. They marched with Nazis, and shouted praise for Hitler.

So tear them down.

 

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