Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee took to Fox News to defend the presence of racist Confederate monuments. In a weak defense of keeping the statutes, he tried to compare people tearing down symbols of white supremacy to attacks on abortion clinics, according to Bustle:
"Where does it stop? Look, I'm okay if we want to go through the process of public meetings and city officials taking the statues down. What we can't do, is have anarchists go tear down the statues because they're impatient with politicians doing it," Huckabee told America's Newsroom host Bill Hemmer on Thursday. "That's not acceptable behavior, that's vandalism, it's anarchy, and it would be like me saying I don't like abortion clinics -- so I'm just going to go tear them down because I find them offensive. Nobody would justify that, including me, that's what I think we're coming to. It's not a matter of reinterpreting our history, it's a matter of having a select group of people tear something down because it offends them personally."
Making this comparison shows just how out of touch he is. Comparing Confederate statutes—which were made to intimidate Black people and honor the treasonous white people who wanted to keep them enslaved—to health care clinics that provide legal medical services creates a dangerous false equivalency. As writer Bronwyn Issac writes:
Anti-choice people forced to pass Planned Parenthood clinics on their commute aren't forced to stare into the wistful eyes of a monument extolling a 400 + year history of oppression, rape, genocide and racism. It could also be noted that Planned Parenthood clinics didn't spark a rally last weekend that left a peaceful protester dead, and 20-year-old DeAndre Harris beaten by white supremacists while cops stood by.
Boom.