Albert Pike was a Confederate leader who fought to protect slavery, and according to some critics, he even joined the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War. When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the nation’s capital in 2020, a statue honoring Pike was torn down and set on fire.
Five years later, the Trump administration, which has been quite eager in recent months to restore symbols related to Confederate forces that took up arms against the United States, announced that the statue celebrating Pike will be restored and reinstalled.
A day later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made a related announcement. The Washington Post reported:
A Confederate memorial removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023 will be reinstalled, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday. The sculpture had been removed as part of a congressionally mandated effort to rid military bases and sites of Confederate names and images.
The beleaguered Pentagon chief described the Confederate memorial as “The Reconciliation Monument,” adding that this is part of some kind of ideological campaign. “Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history — we honor it,” Hegseth said, apparently indifferent to the fact that he’s in a powerful position that’s supposed to serve everyone, including “the Left.”
The Post’s report, however, noted that critics have made the case that the memorial “glorified the Southern cause and glossed over slavery, with elements such as a frieze showing an enslaved Black man following his owner and an enslaved woman — described on the cemetery’s website as a ‘mammy’ — holding the baby of a Confederate officer.”
What’s more, the Confederate memorial’s original removal in 2021 was endorsed by a commission led in part by Ty Seidule, a retired U.S. Army brigadier general.
Asked about Hegseth’s latest move, Seidule told the Post, “The idea of putting that monument back up is just wrong. This is not some woke thing, it’s the will of the American people that Secretary Hegseth is going against.”
The monument, Seidule added, “is the cruelest I’ve ever seen because it’s a pro-slavery, pro-segregation, anti-United States monument. It’s not a reconciliation monument. It’s a Confederate monument and it’s meant to say that the white South was right and the United States of America was wrong.”
Let’s not overlook the inconvenient fact that the defense secretary’s effort will cost roughly $10 million, to be paid for by American taxpayers, not private donations.
But stepping back, it’s also worth taking a moment to note Hegseth’s curious list of priorities. To hear the Pentagon chief tell it, his principal focus is emphasizing “lethality” and a “warrior ethos” in the armed forces. During one recent “expletive-laden address” at the Army War College, the secretary concluded, “We are laser-focused on our mission of warfighting.” And while that rhetoric might resonate with some partisan audiences, it’s worth asking whether he actually means it. After all, in recent months, Hegseth has invested a considerable amount of time and energy in library books. And scrubbing Defense Department websites of articles and images about Jackie Robinson and the Navajo Code Talkers. And renaming military bases. And renaming Navy ships. And restoring racist monuments that celebrate those who fought a war against Americans. How do these efforts advance the nation’s national security goals? They don’t. And therein lies the point: Hegseth might claim to be “laser-focused” on fighting wars, but his record suggests he’s far more interested in fighting culture wars. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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