‘Like watching someone die’: Conservatives melt down over video of Robert E. Lee statue being melted down

A statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who led the Army of Northern Virginia against Union forces during the American Civil War, was broken down and melted into pieces recently, reported the Washington Post.

The statue used to be in Charlottesville, and attempts to protect it by white supremacists and Confederate nostalgics led to the deadly white supremacist “Unite the Right” riot there in 2017. The smelted material will be used as part of a new public art project.

Conservatives on X reacted to a viral clip of Lee’s head being smelted at red-hot temperatures with outrage and grief.

“This left me with a pit in my stomach. The sounds, the lighting, the framing … it feels like watching someone die,” wrote @amber_athey.

“This is what happens in a cultural revolution,” reacted @Arlin4US. “To [sic] bad this soft coup isn’t going to conclude in a full takeover.”

“No matter how much one might dislike Robert E. Lee and want him written out of history, he’s an historical figure whose image was captured in this work of art,” wrote Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on his meme account. “I struggle to see the point of expunging his image and memory from public consciousness. #WrittenOutofHistory”

After the Unite the Right rally, which ended with the killing of a protester, Heather Heyer, by a neo-Nazi, James Alex Fields Jr., then-president Donald Trump said there were “good people” on both sides of the rally.

Sen. Lee criticized Trump then, writing that “carrying a Nazi flag or any other symbol of white supremacy is a hateful act that cannot be morally defended, least of all by the leader of a diverse nation still healing from its original sin of racist slavery,” reported Deseret News.

Other posters agreed destroying the statue was an attempt to erase history, with many quoting from George Orwell’s novel 1984, which warns against an authoritarian government that twists language and rewrites history.

“The Taliban also destroys historic art it disagrees with,” wrote Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway.

The Charlottesville Lee statue was commissioned in 1917 and completed in 1922. According to an analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a string of Confederate statues were commissioned and built in the early 20th century as part of a counter-reaction to expanded political rights for Black people in the United States and the establishment of Jim Crow-style racial apartheid laws.

“Speakers and sponsors at dedication ceremonies frequently expressed their commitment to asserting white supremacy and racial terror,” wrote the SPLC in their analysis, quoting one dedication by a businessman called Julian Carr at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 1913.

“The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo-Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war,” said Carr in 1913, “When the facts are, that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.”

Posts on X today echoed the connection between protecting the Confederate monument and white supremacy.

“It’s a symbolic representation of their desire to liquidate white people,” wrote @slb3331969 in reaction to the smelting.

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*First Published: Oct 26, 2023, 5:20 pm CDT