Democrat Activists Urge National Push Against Confederate Statues

statues
Chip Somodevilla / Staff
Neil Munro

Democratic leaders and activists — including the CAIR Islamic group — are expanding their 2017 culture war against Confederate historical statues and landmarks, boosting concerns that progressive ‘Antifa’ groups and white-power fascists may again collide during mismanaged public demonstrations.

Donna Brazile, who has twice worked as the temporary chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted an article on Monday calling for the removal of eight Confederate statues now displayed in Congress.

The linked Atlantic article urged state legislators to replace the statues:

Even without the historical circumstances of the Capitol Hill statues’ arrival, there is virtually no justification for their continued presence. Nor can it be said there aren’t better native sons and daughters to honor. Virginia could replace [General Robert E.] Lee with John Marshall, the legendary chief justice and father of the American rule of law, or Tuskegee Institute founder Booker T. Washington. If it needs a Civil War hero, why not George Henry Thomas? Alabama could select author Harper Lee or jazz legend Nat King Cole. Georgia could replace [Confederate Vice President Alexander] Stephens with Casimir Pulaski, a Polish Revolutionary War hero who died in the battle of Savannah, or a full statue of Martin Luther King, Jr., who already has a bust elsewhere in the Capitol.

The article linked to a July article in the Atlantic noting Gen. Lee ‘s support for racial subordination before and even after the Civil War.

On Monday, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced she would revive plans to move four Confederate-related statues from the city to confederate cemeteries away from their current locations.

A Saturday statement by Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington, Kentucky, said he will try to persuade the city council to tear down two Confederate-themed statues, one of the failed cavalry general John Hunt Morgan and the other of John C. Breckinridge, who was both a general and a U.S. Senator. “We have thoroughly examined this issue, and heard from many of our citizens,” Gray said. “The tragic events in Charlottesville today have accelerated the announcement I intended to make next week.” The two statues would be moved to a nearby park.

The major of New Orleans has already ordered the removal of several Confederate-themed statues from downtown.

Tom Perriello, a far-left Virginia Democrat who served one term in Congress, pointed out that most of the Confederate statues were built well after the war, peaking in 1910.

In South Carolina — which was the first state to secede from the Union in 1860 — local white-heritage and black nationalist groups promised to debate the monuments’ future without violence.

But others are trying to amp up the pressure.

Richard Painter, vice-chairman of the anti-Trump group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, urged the removal of all Confederate statues:

The Islamic supremacists — and party allies — at the Council on American-Islamic Relations also cheered the removal of the Confederate statues from Baltimore and other cities.

“Removing or relocating from public property all monuments that symbolize white supremacy, hatred, and racism is a crucial and appropriate response to the violence of this weekend,” said a statement from CAIR spokesman Zainab Chaudry. “Monuments in public spaces represent what our cities seek to represent as their core beliefs. They shape identity and influence societal values. The enduring values of our cities cannot be rooted in white supremacy. We applaud this move by the Mayor’s office that will make it clear that hate has no place in Baltimore.”

The Islamic group also provided supporters with draft tear-down legislation “Requesting the Removal of All Confederate Memorials, Flags, Street Names, and Symbols from Public Spaces and Property,”  and urging that “all streets and institutions named after Confederates [be renamed]  to honor the names of African-American and other civil rights leaders.”

Breitbart News has frequently noted that the CAIR group is so closely entwined with Islamists and with jihadis that court documents and news reports show that at least five of its people — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses.

Breitbart News has also published evidence highlighted by critics showing that CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Texas-based criminal effort to deliver $12 million to the Jew-hating HAMAS jihad group, that CAIR was founded with $490,000 from HAMAS, and that the FBI bans top-level meetings with CAIR officials.

In response, conservative editor Daniel Horowitz and others noted the lack of controversy over the placement of a Vladimir Lenin statue in Seattle, Washington.

Lenin’s Communist Party killed at least 20 million subjects of the Russian Empire by starvation, hanging, and gunshot, and also allied with Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party from 1933 until June 22, 1941, when Hitler’s armies invaded Russia.

 

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