Tu, I don't think we can judge the actions of people who lived 225 years ago by the norms in today's society.
The statues are reminders of our history and should be kept as reminders so that we don't repeat previous errors and re-live our past mistakes. To try to interconnect a statue to a radical political group or fringe element of society is dumb. IMHO the removal of these statues is being done solely as a way to try to get at the POTUS, with the hope in mind that any group that dissents, can immediately be called racists and tied back to Trump in some way.
If we are going to topple statues and change street names because the person being honored is now considered to be "unacceptable by today's standards", then where do you stand on removing all items honoring MLK? He was a known thief, adulterer, and pedophile. Why does every big city in America have a MLK Drive when we all know this was not a decent man by today's standards?
We judge the actions of those previous people every time we open a history book.
I'll be honest, I don't know where you grew up, but I grew up all through the south and no one gives a damn about any of those statues unless they are in fact racists. I'm just being honest. If you are in Richmond, Va, no one stops and stares at the statues and talks about how great Lee, Jackson, or Davis are, unless they want to say that white makes right.
Now, that's not to say everyone is like that, but I know what I know, and what I'm saying is true. Hell, the people that live near the statues are the last people who want them. All of the people who love the statues live away from the cities in the rural communities. Let them take them out to their towns where they are 90% of the population, I wouldn't care. They have a statue. Yay. They can sit there and pray to it for all I care.
Hell, I was just thinking about how there were people from like Michigan and Pennsylvania out there... Why the fuck would people from those areas give a flying rats ass about Lee or Jackson? There's only one possibility.
If you can prove to me that MLK was a pedophile, I'll be happy to remove anything with his name on it immediately. However, that is a completely unsubstantiated rumor at this time, but if you can show me some proof, I'll get on-board with you, and we can start petitioning that they are removed.
I just don't think you'll find any proof. You know if it existed back in the 60s, they would have put that shit on the front page of every newspaper.