This represents a willful misunderstanding of the issue. The problem is not that the statues are feting slaveholders, it's that they are celebrating people who went to war against the Union because they didn't want to give up being slaveholders.

Not to mention, most of the statues were put up decades after the war as an explicit message against civil rights and desegregation. Just a vile reminder all around, and there is no good reason to keep them in public spaces. If you want a reminder of history, museums exist for a reason.

I wouldn't be quite so quick to jump to the "willful" label. I'm not a native, so I know very little about US Civil War. I also know that much of what you think you know about the war is actually bare propaganda written by the winning side (I'm from Russia myself, the Soviets did a lot of that during and after the war, and did it so thoroughly that authentic accounts of what actually happened are still very few and far between).

It just seems weird to me to obsess about some stupid statue enough to march with torches under it or to throw shit&pee bombs at those marching with torches. I'd understand this if all the _real_ problems in the country were already solved and people had nothing better to do, but that's not the case at all. Seems to me someone is trying to deliberately destabilize things by pitting two aggressive factions against one another, in order to achieve their secondary agenda or distract from something.

I've seen this shit happen before, it does not usually end well for the society as a whole.

Do you think people have a right to organize protest against the removal the statue though? That's the key question in this. Not the "righteousness" of having the statue removed.

That's not the point the parent was making, and not the one I was responding to.

When did I suggest that was the point the parent was making? It is however the more general issue.

Should people you disagree with have a right to express themselves in protest?

Yes, and they do, independent of my opinion on the matter.

Fully agree. Thanks.

Ok great. I understand. But what statues get taken down is about 999,999 on the list of important things in the world. Certainly not worth buying a plane ticket and playing KKK with a night time torch march. That just kind of proves the point the people who object to the statue are making. Get a fund together and rent some lawyers or something. Or buy some land and put up even a bigger statue. You can all go meet there every year and celebrate your whiteness. That is effective. What is being done is something else and it isn't effective.

On the other side, if people do want to protest who cares? Let them march all they like. Why the need for a counter rally? With clubs and sticks and shields? Over a statue? It's ridiculous. Inconceivably so.