Mob Descends on Chapel Hill in Response to ‘Silent Sam’ Plan

CHAPEL HILL – Right on cue. A mob of hundreds, led by radical social justice activists, gathered to protest Silent Sam, yet again, after new plans regarding the stastue were announced.  The University of North Carolina announced Monday their plan to re-erect the Silent Sam statue, a memorial to confederate dead, that social justice mobs toppled in August. That plan included constructing a $5.3 million building, which would act as a history and (re)education center and cost an additional $800,000 a year to maintain.

For the social justice warriors, it wasn’t enough. In fact, according to their own rhetoric, nothing short of complete, permanent removal and erasure of historical reminders of the Civil War and its victims on both sides will be enough.


We predicted here that construction of a building to house the statue would merely give the mobs a larger target to rage against, and the protesters promised as much on Monday night, if that plan goes forward. During the protest they blocked traffic, ignored police orders, and did their best at creating as much ruckus as possible.

It’s the only way they know.

‘These statues belong in a museum’

This was an oft repeated suggestion from many on the Left, especially Gov. Roy Cooper, during the last few years of controversy over the Confederate statues. The university’s proposal would do just that. Yet the Left is unsatisfied. The museum would likely be replete with social justice narratives, ‘woke’ historical perspectives, and explanations for why the statue was moved. Yet the Left is unsatisfied.

Moreover, these protesters announced their intentions to topple the statue again, no matter where it is housed. To them, the ends of their radical snowflake agenda justify any means at their disposal. The mobs are organized by professional agitators that live and breath a radical agenda that, in this context, wishes to erase all historical references that don’t fit their narrative.

University officials pursuing a strategy of appeasement ha only emboldened the mob. They protected the statue and arrested vandals, only to let them off with slaps on the wrist. Then the mobs grew larger, and police issued a ‘stand down’ order, allowing the statue to be toppled. Now, they announce intentions to put the statue in a museum as opposition suggested, and yet the social justice warriors double down on moving the goal posts.

The radicals have now obscured the legitimate debate around Confederate statues and made it all about them, and establishing precedent for yielding to mob action.

The UNC Board of Governors has yet to make a decision on the proposal, but you can count on the mobs to continue their disruptions for as long as they don’t get their way, or face actual punishment for the laws they break.

Read more about the discussions of, and reactions among UNC officials to the proposal, including the legal tight rope they must walk to move the statue, here.

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