At a scheduled appearance from Trump Tower in New York City, Trump went off-script to defend right-wing demonstrators and rebuke what he termed “alt-left” for its role in the violence in Charlottesville.
“What about the alt-left that came charging at the alt-right?” Trump said of the counter-protesters with “black outfits and baseball bats” at the Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
“What about the fact that they came charging with clubs in their hands? Do they have a problem? I think they do.”
Trump defended the Unite the Right rally’s decision to gather in protest of the removal of Confederate monuments, suggesting that this was a slippery slope to toppling statues of founding fathers and slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Read more (8/15/17 4:45 PM
On Tuesday, David Duke, the one-time leader of the Ku Klux Klan, tweeted his support for President Donald Trump’s statements on the “alt-left” during an off-the-rails Trump Tower press conference.
“Thank you President Trump for your honesty and courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville,” Duke tweeted, adding his praise for what he saw as the president’s bravery in condemning the “the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.” Read more (8/15/17 6 PM)
I have zero problems with taking down Thomas Jefferson statues
public statuary serves a different purpose from artistic and – idk what to call it, event-recording? – statuary.
i do have a problem with taking down statues of historically influential figures because they were problematic. that’s the same mindset that leads to the taliban dynamiting stone buddhas. statues of the founding fathers are put up because those people were causative agents for the existence of the country, not because they were behavioral role models. this is like wanting to take lead off the periodic table because it’s poisonous.
however, taking down statues of a defeated enemy is pretty standard, and it’s very weird that the united states had them up in the first place, considering the confederacy started a civil war and lost. they belong in museums, as historical record, rather than in public spaces as influential figures.
as for ‘right to protest’ and violence from antifa – both true, both completely irrelevant to the necessity of denouncing fascism. they had the right, under US law, to gather and talk smack; everyone had an equal right to counter-protest. none of that has a damn thing to do with whether it was a good idea for the goddamn president to ostentatiously refuse to denounce literal fucking nazis. repeatedly.
don’t let those smokescreen tactics fool you into shooting yourself in the foot, my darlings – the fascists would LOVE for your reaction to be restricting the right to protest, because they could use it against you. they’d LOVE for you to attack the constitution because several slaveowners were involved in writing it, because that constitution protects rights they want to take away from you. they’d LOVE for you to try to erase the national founders, because then you’ll look like crazy people to mainstream voters, instead of the sane alternative to fascist madness.
don’t let them confuse you into doing their job for them.
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