Today, the statue of Confederate leader Robert E. Lee was removed from Charlottesville, Virginia, after years of protest. It was the inspiration for 2017's white supremacist rally, where activist Heather Heyer was killed. This is long overdue. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/r…
The true Lee has long been hidden behind a fog of nostalgia. Months prior to the rally, I wrote about Lee's canonization as a reluctant, anti-slavery Confederate—part of the postwar propaganda push to whitewash secession and justify the Jim Crow system. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
I revisit this essay in THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT, because the Lee mythology was the reason the white supremacists believed they could use him to mainstream their cause—and they were delighted with Trump's defense of the rally. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Lee opposed abolitionists, not slavery. He betrayed his country in defense of human bondage. enslaved free black people in his invasion of the north. He kept people enslaved by his father-in-law until forced to free them by a court.
He refused to trade black soldiers for the freedom of his own troops. He allowed Confederates to commit atrocities against black soldiers because he understood the humiliation his men felt facing black men as equals on the field. After the war, he opposed black suffrage.
As I argue in THE CRUELTY IS THE POINT, the purpose of defending the Lee statue was to leverage the mythology of Lee to garner sympathy for the white nationalist movement. They wanted to use the false Lee to promote the values of the true Lee.
Unlike the mainstream writers blinded by Lost Cause mythology who defended Lee and his statue however, the white nationalists who rallied in Charlottesville understood that Lee's cause was theirs. Hopefully, you do too, and also understand why Lee does not deserve to be honored.
Removing the statue does not solve the nation's most difficult challenges, nor is it meant to. But it rightfully denies an honor to a man who fought and killed for an evil cause, and was canonized for the perpetuation of that cause. Bye Bobby.
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