Conservative figures have reignited one of their favorite culture wars: the removal of Confederate statues. Only this time, the statue MAGA is upset about is one that was removed more than five years ago.
The Commonwealth of Virginia replaced its statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee with civil rights icon Barbara Rose Johns on Tuesday in a ceremonial unveiling at the U.S. Capitol. Each state legislature is awarded two spaces in the Capitol to honor icons from its state history. For more than a century, George Washington and Lee represented Virginia in Washington, D.C.
The statue of Lee came down from the U.S. Capitol—an entity the Confederate movement once tried to topple—in 2020 at the request of then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D-VA). That year, Virginia state lawmakers recommended that a statue of Johns should be placed where Lee’s statue once stood. Over 100 Confederate statues came down across the U.S. in 2020 as the country grappled with its history of racial injustice.
Prominent figures in the right-wing media ecosystem are now expressing renewed outrage at the fact that Virginia would replace the Confederate statue with Johns, even though Lee’s statue hasn’t been at the Capitol for half a decade.
Right-wing media outlet The Blaze described the statue of Johns as a “new DEI statue to represent Virginia in the U.S. Capitol after Democrats tore down the statue to Robert E. Lee.”
One digital strategist at the outlet, Logan Hall, said in a post, “They tore down a statue to one of the greatest Americans that ever lived for this.”
Russian state media outlet RT, which frequently wades into U.S. culture wars, asked in a social media post, “They[’re] still doing this under Trump’s watch?”
The Lee statue that once stood in the Capitol was moved to the Virginia Museum of History & Culture in Richmond, where it is on display in an exhibit highlighting attempts to “justify and glorify the Confederacy.”
The unveiling ceremony for Johns’s statue was attended by both Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and several Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Speaker Mike Johnson.
Matt Rinaldi, former Texas state lawmaker and chairman of the Texas Republican Party, said it was “a disgrace that Republicans participated in this. Robert E. Lee was a greater American and more significant historical figure than whoever this is.”
Adam Johnston, a contributor at the right-wing outlet The Federalist, wrote dozens of social media posts lamenting the new statue. In a post responding to Youngkin’s comments on the tribute to Johns, Johnston characterized the whole thing as “disgraceful.”
“You’re delusional if you think any of this stops with Robert E. Lee,” he wrote to the governor, adding that Youngkin was “complicit in the erasure of American heritage and history.”
Conservative influencer Matt Walsh also posted several times, complaining about the new statue.
“Nobody knows who ‘Barbara Rose Johns’ is. Robert E Lee was about a million times more historically significant. He was also a million times more honorable and courageous than all of the politicians applauding in this video,” Walsh wrote.
Republican lawmakers at the event struck a different tone, instead choosing to honor the civil rights leader. Johns is best known for leading a school walkout at age 16 in 1951 to protest segregation at her high school. The NAACP filed a lawsuit on behalf of Johns and her fellow students, and their case eventually became part of Brown v. Board of Education, which was brought before the Supreme Court. That ruling ultimately struck down school segregation.
At the ceremony, Speaker Johnson called Johns one of “America’s true trailblazers, a woman who embodied the essence of the American spirit in her fight for liberty and justice and equal treatment under the law.”
Youngkin, a Republican who has crusaded against diversity initiatives as governor, called the statue “a fitting memorial and tribute to a teenager in Virginia… whose courage inspired a nation to overcome injustice.”
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