PBS Poll: Overwhelming Majority of Americans Oppose Removal of Confederate Statues

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A mob pulls down a Confederate statue in Durham, North Carolina. The police did not intervene, but authorities now claim they are trying to identify and charge those involved. 

A PBS poll asked 1,125 Americans what they thought about the Civil War statue removals in Southern states. (The poll result was buried in an article with the headline, "Majority of Americans unhappy with Trump's response to Charlottesville.") Here are the results of the statue poll:

Do you think statues honoring leaders of the Confederacy should:

Remain as a historical symbol? 62%

Be removed because they're offensive? 27%

Unsure? 11%

Even among African-Americans, a slight plurality (44% to 40%) wanted them to remain.

I assume that the pro-statue results would have been even more pronounced within some of the states in question, such as, say, Virginia.

(By the way, if you object to the arguably extraneously benign wording of the first answer - remain as a historical symbol - take that up with PBS, not me.)

So, on the statue issue at least, the vast majority of Americans agree with the "neo-Nazis" in Charlottesville.

The statues are being removed by anti-democratic ideologues in local government, egged on by violent mobs - or, in at least one case, simply by violent mobs. See above.

Fascist mobs, I should add. That they call themselves "anti-fascist" while often dressing in black and attacking their opponents with baseball bats, makes the Orwellian irony all the richer.

Even the right to assemble and oppose the statue removals is being denied, either officially, by government decree - canceling the "Unite the Right" event at the last minute - or unofficially by the ever-present threat of physical violence by the mobs.

Richard Spencer et al. are poseurs, clowns and fringy losers with too much time on their hands. I don't think they're Nazis - though many of them do seem to get their jollies from flirting with Nazi imagery and symbolism (it's "edgy" or whatever). But if they didn't exist, the fascist left would need to invent them.

Or maybe it partly did. The chief planner for "Unite the Right" was an Obama supporter and "Occupy" activist up until quite recently. And many observers have alleged (with what degree of truth it is impossible to determine) that "the Feds" have thoroughly infiltrated the "alt-Reich" ranks.

But there's absolutely no question who the real fascists are.

Charlottesville was their Reichstag fire.

Or, at least, they want it to be.