Maryland had mused for years about what to do with its Confederate statues. Surely they didn’t quite belong in a state that believed in equality, had long since abolished slavery, and could claim only the weakest historical ties to the Confederate side in the Civil War. Then last weekend a Nazi army descended on Charlottesville in the neighboring state of Virginia, beating and killing local people, threatening to destroy the town, and doing enough harm to ultimately affect everyone in the local area. It was a Confederate monument that drew the Nazis and their allies to Charlottesville. The Nazis intended to argue against its proposed removal, and though they had their say, they made their point a self-defeating way.
Overnight, every town that had a Confederate monument wished it did not. Would the Nazis strike their town next? Would they carry through on their threats to burn the town down this time? In this context, Maryland’s Confederate statues became a clear and present danger, an imminent threat to public safety. How many people might the Nazis kill if they came to Baltimore? With the Nazi groups heavily armed, it was easy to imagine a pitched battle with hundreds of people dying, but even one or two deaths would be too many. Officials collected the necessary approvals. Last night, cranes picked up the statues and loaded them on flatbed trucks. By 5 a.m. the four Confederate monuments in Baltimore had been taken away. Officially, their whereabouts are unknown. It does not seem likely that they can be safely stored anywhere, so one hopes they can be melted down and converted to something constructive.
The outcome might seem paradoxical. The Nazis are arguing against the removal of Confederate statues, but the brutal violence with which they state their case makes the removal of most of the remaining Confederate statues almost inevitable. To a governor or public safety commissioner, the compelling point is that with no statue, there is no flash point that could trigger a Nazi invasion. The strategy of removing the statues will not stop in Baltimore or Maryland. At the same time that Maryland was at work on its Confederate statues, the governor of North Carolina was recording a speech calling for the removal and relocation of the much larger number of Confederate statues owned by that state. I imagine North Carolina will quickly approve the removal of the statues, but if not, that action will follow soon enough there and elsewhere. A state does not have to see Nazi flags and torches again and again before it is compelled to move. Each removal of a Confederate statue increases the pressure on those that remain, so that within a few years, thousands of Confederate statues could be melted down or hidden away out of public view.
The result makes sense if you look at the situation through the lens of game theory, the mathematical modeling of making decisions when one’s decisions affect the decisions other actors. Nazis overestimate their popular support, so they calculate that their arguments will rally a large number of people to their cause, when the actual number is quite small. They may also underestimate the fear and loathing they engender, so that they don’t plan on the degree of effort others may make to avoid them. These mistaken assumptions make a highly irrational strategy on the part of the Nazi movement appear rational to them.
Taking down statues that are symbols of repression can have a larger impact than you would expect on the psyche of a community. The most prominent historical example of this is the rapid demolition, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, of the Lenin statues that had littered Russia. With the statues down, there was no chance that the Soviet system could make a comeback. Last night’s work removing statues that symbolized slavery has similarly lifted a weight from Baltimore’s shoulders. It will not be surprising if this turns out to be a similar turning point in the story of the city.
Update: Also see Washington Post story http://wapo.st/2wSyyKe
Update: Congress too is getting in on the trend:
I will be introducing a bill to remove Confederate statues from the US Capitol building. This is just one step. We have much work to do.
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) August 17, 2017
.@SpeakerRyan, it is time to immediately remove Confederate statues from the halls of Congress. https://t.co/twJ4MFOfgB pic.twitter.com/7Yx6p4JgCK
— Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) August 17, 2017
