Trump To Restore Statue Of Confederate Leader Albert Pike, But Democrats Are The Party Of Slavery, Right?

I’ve made this argument before — numerous times, in fact — but it still baffles me how Republicans go out of their way to emphasize that Democrats were the party that supported slavery 150-plus years ago while failing to reconcile that fact with the fact that, in modern times, it is the Republican party that fights tooth and nail to preserve and celebrate the legacy of slavery.

According to the New York Times, the National Park Service announced Monday that the Trump administration will restore and reinstall a statue that commemorates Albert Pike, a Confederate diplomat and general who worked closely with Native Americans from slave-owning tribes that sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. The original statue depicting Pike, who was a fierce warrior in the fight to preserve the institution of chattel slavery, was the only statue in the U.S. Capitol that honored a Confederate leader until it was toppled and set on fire in 2020, during the wave of anti-racism protests that erupted across the country.

From the Times:

The bronze, 11-foot-tall statue of Mr. Pike, which had been in storage since it was toppled from its perch near the Capitol grounds five years ago, was approved by Congress in 1898 and built by an order of Freemasons. The monument’s inscriptions do not directly mention Mr. Pike’s ties to the Confederacy, and the statue itself depicts him as a leader to the Freemasons. Inscriptions on the monument laud Pike as a poet, a scholar, a soldier, an orator, a jurist and a philanthropist.

The announcement by the National Park Service on Monday was the latest component of President Trump’s sweeping effort to restore Confederate symbols in the military and in public spaces.

So, basically, President Donald Trump and his band of white nationalist sycophants want to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy, but they don’t want to talk about the slavery part. Pike was a poet, a scholar, a soldier, a charitable person and a leader of the Freemasons. These are the parts of his life and identity that are highlighted because that history justifies the restoration of his statue. Trump might have a slightly more difficult time selling the idea as an ode to the man who fought tirelessly to preserve the legality of an institution under which human beings lived and died as the physical property of white people, had their future generations of children born into life-long servitude, had their heritage stripped away from them, were torn away from their families and worked day and night for white people to profit off of their free labor under the constant threat of death and/or torture.

More from the Times:

Mr. Pike’s role in the Civil War centered on Native American tribes on the western frontier who were caught between the United States and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Mr. Pike was appointed as a Confederate diplomat to those tribes, and he negotiated alliances with slave-owning tribes — offering the tribes statehood and congressional representation in the Confederacy. A condition of the alliance was a declaration by the tribes that “the institution of slavery in the said nation is legal and has existed from time immemorial.”

In 2025, the Republican Party is the party of slavery. It is the red states that recognize Confederate holidays. It is Republican voters who call themselves patriots while flying the flag of traitors and slavery advocates. It is Republican leaders who would rather teach students that enslaved people benefited from being slaves, and that there are “opposing viewpoints” that should be taught so that the transatlantic slave trade isn’t presented as an “oppressor vs. oppressed” system, “based solely on race or ethnicity,” simply because that’s exactly what it was.

Why is it relevant that Democrats once supported slavery, when it’s today’s GOP that is stretching itself into a noose knot to downplay it and honor those who fought for it?

Again, I’ve written about this before:

If we’re going to take the position that what the world looked like politically and socially in the times of slavery and the KKK mirrors what it looks like in “modern times,” why isn’t it more relevant that the KKK was founded in Tennessee, which is currently a Republican state? Why isn’t it more relevant that the part of the country that fought for the preservation of slavery during the Civil War is currently red-state America? Why isn’t it more relevant that the descendants of those who owned slaves, fought for slavery, and supported the continuation of slavery are the people who are most likely to vote Republican in “modern times?” It is those people of those days who passed down their culture, heritage, traditions, ways of life and points of view through their generations to the very people who largely make up the Republican electorate today.

Trump made it a top priority for his second term to restore the names of military forts that honored Confederate leaders who went to war in order to keep Black people in bondage and perpetual servitude. He signed an executive order that directed officials to restore every monument depicting Confederates that came down in 2020, because MAGA Republicans feel it’s that important to celebrate those who fought on battlefields to ensure Black people would never know a life of self-determination, equal status to white people, or human value, as opposed to property value.

White supremacist are using their power to protect the legacies of white supremacists — and that’s how we’re making America great again.

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