Power and Fear: the Return of the Antebellum Crisis

For a man dead 150 years, 2017 was unexpectedly eventful for Robert E. Lee. The furies in this most turbulent of years clashed most memorably around the Charlottesville statute of Lee, proud, tall, and darkly symbolic of the past and, inevitably, the present. “You will not replace us”, chanted in the torchlit marches surrounding Lee’s statute, was the most apposite mantra of 2017, containing within just five words the purest distillation of far-right demographic dread.