Fox News star Laura Ingraham compared people who advocate for the removal of Confederate monuments to the self-proclaimed Islamic State terror network, or ISIS.
During Tuesday night's broadcast of her primetime show "The Ingraham Angle," the host slammed the "movement," which she alleged is popular "particularly among the young" that "hate[s] the past and eradicate[s] anything they find objectionable or troubling."
Ingraham was referring to the news that protesters, who in August tore down the Confederate monument nicknamed "Silent Sam" at the University of Carolina, are now campaigning against the school's plan to relocate the statue inside a new $5 million campus building, which some students and community groups called a shrine to white supremacy. The statue honors North Carolina's Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War and stood on the college campus for more than 100 years until it was toppled by protesters over the summer.
The backlash comes after school leaders on Monday recommended building an education and history center on campus to house the statue. In their report, they noted that, while they prefer removing the monument from campus and placing in a secure off-campus location, such as the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, state law does not allow that.
On her Tuesday night show, Ingraham slammed the students latest protests and argued that pulling the Silent Sam statue "recalls the kind of destructive mindset of, let's say, ISIS."
"Think about ISIS – what they did. They pillaged, and they wiped away irreplaceable historical and religious monuments," she continued. "From Palmyra – remember in Syria – simply because they could. It was offensive to them."
Ingraham added that, despite varying opinions about Confederate monuments after the Civil War, "This happened, OK? The confederacy happened."
"We owe it to the future to leave history as it existed undisturbed, continue to debate it, have conversations about it," she continued. "Why not allow future generations the opportunity to mark this history, process it and come to their own conclusions?"
Ingraham then suggested placing another statue "commemorating the slaves who were abused and killed, adjacent to Silent Sam."
"But to destroy instead of engage, to defy the law instead of respect it, is no way to honor the past or the future or to highlight all the gains America has made," she added.
Ingraham warned those who want to take down Confederate monuments that, perhaps in the future, "some other mob might well tear down your statue, because they themselves find what you did offensive." Doing so, she argued, would each future generations that "it's fine to destroy all trace of whatever we find objectionable in the past."
"Now, let's hope the board of UNC, North Carolina's historical commission, has less destructive tendencies," she concluded. "We can hope."
Watch the full clip below, via Media Matters:
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