Charlottesville was the wake up call for many. Never I expected nazis openly marching on US soil, chanting slogans straight from WW2... nearly a century after WW2.

It also must suck for the locals to have their town's name being forever associated to those scums.

Yeah, generally, I prefer stuff like this to get preserved for historical value, just out of public view.

But many of these things are rallying points for hate right now, and the value of actually destroying that in the present outweighs the value to any historian or student of history in the future.

This one in particular. History won't miss it. Burn the fucker.

Don't worry, it's the south. They have about a thousand more statues of that traitor at least.

Why? They're a dime a dozen and were put up in the 1900s largely due to the Daughters of the Confederacy and to reinforce Jim Crow laws.

They aren't really worth preserving. A picture can be taken to explain how awful these things are.

Museums don't store this sort of thing though. Since it's not from the civil war, it's not sensible to store and exhibit such a thing. Imagine if people started telling the Louvé to display paintings inspired by the Mona Lisa, because it's basically the Mona Lisa. Museum curators would have no reason to do so, despite what the public thinks.

Edit: Also the statue is a piece of propaganda rather than actual history. There's honestly not much to say about the statue itself. The bulk of what could be said is about Lee, and actual historic pieces of his life do exist in museums. Displacing those real historic exhibits in exchange for this statue would be a shame.

That would be one huge museum of equally bad similarly looking statues. No need to preserve them all, because there are so many of them, a couple will do.

Yeah, the caption should be segregation now, segregation forever. And if we are legally forced to stop scratching, we will make their place clear by building statues to the people that fought to keep them slaves when they get their rights from the federal government. The statues were about sending a message to those that believed segregation was done. The stairs being melted is the right move to send a message to those that built them.

If they like the confederacy so much, they should go join them.

Oh wait, they’re all dead losers. Lmao

Because people think the bad guys in history and media are cool

I hope they guard it because it will get vandalized by some racist prick.

Not only that, but Robert E Lee himself thought that there shouldn't be any statues to the Confederacy. After it failed, he was of the opinion that the country should move on - not glorify that time.

So not only were they building statues to a losing traitor, but they weren't even following that losing traitor's wishes on the one thing he was right about!

It wasn't an unnecessary detail, it is integral to the story because it is deliberate positive symbolism. To counter that the original statue stood for deliberate hateful symbolism.

👍

Lee was technically a USG, and was probably one of the best generals in the war. He pretty much kicked the north's ass until the lack of industry in the south became an issue.