“It’s just history,” critics responded when protesters — in response to the 2020 murder of George Floyd — brought down the Washington DC statue of a Confederate general. On Thursday, the National Park Service announced plans for its resurrection, citing President Trump’s executive orders to “beautify” D.C. and “restore sanity to American history.”

21st century American politics have been marked by an unapologetic awareness of its symbols — and rightfully so. The United States has long utilized icons to represent its values, objectives and achievements. Take the bald eagle, for example — it was chosen in 1782 as the national bird, representing independence and strength. Rosie the Riveter’s “We Can Do It,” slogan was pushed during WWII with the goal of empowering women to join the workforce.

Conscious of this country’s historically dark moments, society has moved toward removing some symbols that no longer represent its culture — like Albert Pike, a general during the Confederacy, infamous for a shameful resignation (even for Confederate standards).

According to the National Park Service’s official government website, the memorial was erected to honor Pike’s influential role in the Freemasons, and was the only outdoor statue of a confederate in the region.

Unabashed about his white supremacist philosophies, he certainly aligned with the Ku Klux Klan, and despite historical rumors about him being a high-ranking founder of the Klan, there’s no confirmed documentation — which isn’t shocking, since it was a secret organization and burned many of its own records. However, some historians argue that these rumors were part of a broader political smear campaign.

Regardless, Pike almost certainly sympathized with the Klan’s core goals of restoring white political dominance and was part of the same elite Confederate circle that incubated and legitimized the Klan’s ideology. And for these reasons, the statue has long been emblematic of a history most Americans are ashamed to remember.

Understanding why it was once erected in the 1800s and left unaddressed for a couple hundred years, is one thing. But understanding why infrastructure and resources would be used to replace it in 2025, is another.

According to the executive orders responsible for the statue’s return, Trump takes issue with what he calls a “revisionist movement” which “seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

But as far as Pike’s historical milestones; he took up arms against the US government, infamously ordered Native soldiers to mutilate Union soldiers’ corpses before resigning from his Confederate command due to scandal and internal disputes — and never disavowed the cause.

In his retirement from the Confederacy, he wrote for, owned and edited a number of pro-slavery newspapers, helping to build the postwar propaganda machine that kept the Lost Cause (an interpretation of the Civil War that romanticizes the Confederacy and minimizes the role of slavery) alive.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) quickly responded to the restoration’s announcement by introducing legislation for its permanent removal.

“Pike served dishonorably,” Norton wrote in a press release. “He took up arms against the United States, misappropriated funds and was ultimately captured and imprisoned by his own troops… I’ve long believed Confederate statues should be placed in museums as historical artifacts, not remain in parks and locations that imply honor.”

Most those who oppose Norton’s position argue that the action white-washes history. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that a statue commemorating the Confederacy, which he refers to as “The Reconciliation Monument” will also return to Arlington National Cemetery after its removal in 2023.

But as far as white-washing history goes, it’s the Trump administration that has explicitly removed historical documentation of civil rights, citing a “historical revision” which reconstructs “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights and human happiness as inherently racist, sexist, oppressive or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

The contradiction is reminiscent of when the Pentagon banned almost 400 books from the US Naval Academy, based on official search terms — including “discrimination,” which resulted in the ban of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou, but not Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”

As Norton put it: “A statue honoring a racist and a traitor has no place on the streets of DC.

In 2020, federal officers arrested Jason Charter, 25, for the destruction of federal property, which was later dropped.

Charter posted to X on Monday, writing, “I did not get arrested by the FBI, so that statue could go back up.