Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu compared Confederate War memorials to black face and voter suppression.
Landrieu, a Democrat, was a guest on The Marybeth Conley Podcast on The Mighty 990.“The monuments, like blackface and like voter suppression, they’re all just different fruits of the same poisonous tree,” he said.
Landrieu is the author of “In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History.”
The book recounts the mayor’s effort to remove Confederate statues and memorials across the Big Easy – including a statue of Robert E. Lee.
“There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence for it,” he said. “There are places where you remember people who died and they are called cemeteries.”Landrieu, who defended his decision to erase a part of the city’s history, said the monuments “tell a historical lie” that glorifies people who tried to destroy the nation.
“To put a monument to revere people who fought for that cause in my opinion is wrong,” he said.
Best-selling author and radio host Todd Starnes, described people like Landrieu as “culture jihadists.”“They are hell-bent on turning American history into a pile of rubble, tearing down statues and banning books that they find offensive,” Starnes wrote in “Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation.”