Laura Ingraham took a moment during her Fox News program Tuesday evening to defend Confederate statues and argue that those who want to tear them down are comparable to ISIS terrorists.
“This recalls the kind of destructive mindset of let’s say, ISIS,” she said. “Think about ISIS, what they did, they pillaged and they wiped away irreplaceable historical and religious monuments. From Palmyra — remember in Syria? — simply because they could. It was offensive to them.”
“This happened, OK, the Confederacy happened,” Ingraham added. “And we owe it to the future to leave history as it existed undisturbed, continue to debate it, have conversations about it.”
The moment was first spotted by Media Matters.
Ingraham’s segment broadly focused on protesters who toppled the “Silent Sam” statue at the University of North Carolina last summer and their subsequent efforts to keep it from being rehoused elsewhere on campus.
The statue controversy has ben a divisive one in many southern states, falling along predictable ideological lines. On the left, activists say the statues memorialize slavery and racism from America’s past, while on the right, others insist — like Ingraham — that it is important to commemorate history.
Ingraham’s defense came in for criticism from many quarters online Tuesday, including her own brother Curtis, who said he sees his father’s anger in Laura’s current positions.
“I state it again, like father like daughter?! How humiliating to hear these echos [sic] of our father’s anger and racism broadcast about. Shame on my sister!” he said in a tweet responding to a clip of her defending confederate statues. “As her brother, I am disgusted that she continues to support this presidential disgrace. They are two bullies at the pulpit … and what a profitable pulpit it has been for each. Shameful!” he said elsewhere.