Retired Lt. Col. Allen West, a former Republican congressman from Florida, criticized left-wing protesters for their latest public vandalism in which a statue of African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass of Rochester, New York, was smashed from its pedestal and dragged onto the cusp of a throat.
The Douglass statue was dismantled and taken Sunday from Maplewood Park, a site along the subway where Douglass and Harriet Tubman helped transport slaves to freedom. President Trump condemned vandalism on Monday and said in a tweet: “This shows that these anarchists have no limits!”
West told “Bill Hemmer Reports” on Monday that the attack on Douglass shows that the protesters are unaware of the history of the United States or what its ultimate goal is. He praised Douglass as a true leader of the civil rights movement, having advised President Lincoln and lobbied for the cause of abolition.
West also blamed the state of American public education as part of the reason why protesters appear to be so ignorant.
“Once upon a time we taught history, and we taught civics, and then it was replaced by something called social studies, which is whatever cultural or ideological agenda prevails in the day,” he said.
“But do you think of [it], you knocked down the statue of a man who was a slave [and] who became one of the great influencers and political figures in the United States of America and an adviser to President Abraham Lincoln. [Douglass was] the reason we had the Emancipation Proclamation and the reason we had the first Black soldiers to serve in uniform, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, which tells me we have a generation, this generation of canceling culture that ignores our own history and they go out and pursue a goal and an objective that they really don’t understand. “
West said protesters have so far also smashed a Boston memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the story of which was told in the 1989 Matthew Broderick / Denzel Washington movie “Glory.”
West, who wrote a Fox News Opinion article on the meaning of Independence Day, said he dismisses the protesters’ claim that the United States is a malicious country, and mentioned his education in then-segregated Atlanta.
“When I think about [President Trump’s] message over the weekend I reflect on my own life … In 1971 I was born in a black-only hospital. I grew up in the Old Fourth Ward that produced Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, “he said.
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“My father fought for this great nation at a time when it did not provide him with the rights and privileges as he did with others. He fought against [German] National Socialism and Italian fascism … I think that is what we should be talking about, the things that make us unique, and the quality of what makes us unique and not this culture of cancellation that is emerging and destroying the statue of Frederick Douglass. “
West told host Bill Hemmer that the “mafia” will never be satisfied or come to a point where it stops public defiance. He compared protesters to children who “had a tantrum” at the grocery store who didn’t have a product they wanted, and then complained more once they got the product because they haven’t had enough.
“It never ends because the mafia cannot be appeased. You cannot compromise with them and you cannot come up with any rational solution,” he said.
Stephanie Pagones from Fox News contributed to this report..
