New Orleans removes a tribute to ‘the lost cause of the Confederacy’ — with snipers standing by
On the same day that some southern states were honoring their rebel heritage, masked workers in New Orleans dismantled a monument to that past — chunk by chunk, under darkness and the protection of police snipers.
“We will no longer allow the Confederacy to literally be put on a pedestal,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) said after a 19th-century obelisk honoring what the mayor called “white supremacists” was taken down early Monday.
It’s incredible to me that this is actually needed in 2017. That workers in New Orleans had to put on masks to protect their identities — some wore bullet-proof vests — and local government had to enlist the protection of snipers in order to prevent retaliatory carnage.
Confederate memorials are the equivalent here of NAZI symbols in Germany. They both represent racist, hate-filled, evil ideologies, and they have no place in any public square. None. There should be zero tolerance for them in any public space. I would never have imagined, looking forward to the future from the America of the 1960s and 1970s, that forty or fifty years later the forces of hate would still be on the rise and this brazen.
The Battle of Liberty Place monument, which honors members of the Crescent City White League who died trying to overthrow the New Orleans government after the Civil War, was the first of four statues linked to the Confederacy that are set to be torn down in New Orleans.
Landrieu said that “intimidation and threats by people who don’t want the statues down” prompted him to order the monument removed before sunrise — without prior announcement, by masked workers, on the same day that some other states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day.
As shocking as all of this is to me — and, yes, I know I shouldn’t be surprised — a side issue hits me as well after reading that article. How on earth has the American political right, especially in the South, managed to claim ownership of the American flag and “patriotism” while at the same time celebrating secession, proto-fascism — the Southern slaveocracy was a prototype for fascism — and recent threats to take up arms against fellow Americans on behalf of the Lost Cause? The tea party, and much of Trump’s base, has a significant neoconfederate contingent, which isn’t always hidden by clever or vague rhetoric. Sometimes, they forget where they are and show their true colors, or they do this knowingly.
White supremacy has made a major public comeback in America in recent times, and Trump has helped mainstream it. This can not stand.