TOP Tory Murdo Fraser was carpeted by bosses after he appeared to sympathise with the white supremacists protesting the removal of confederate statues in America.
Last weekend, neo-Nazis, members of the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists, and the so-called alt-right gathered in Charlottesville for a “Unite The Right” rally organised to protest the town’s decision to remove a statue of confederate general Robert E Lee.
On Saturday, a white nationalist drove a car into a crowd of anti-racist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
In an incredible press conference on Tuesday night, Trump came to the defence of the far-right marchers, saying that not everyone who marched with the Nazis was a Nazi, and that some were “very fine people”.
He also said it was wrong to take down the statue of General Lee, whose role in the fighting for the pro-slavery South in the Civil War, has left him an unpopular figures in modern America.
“So, this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson’s coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? Trump asked, reminding the press pack that the two founding fathers were also slave owners.
“You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?” he added, before suggesting the removal of statues amounted to “changing history.”
Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of history and law at Harvard told the Washington Post, Trump’s comments “misapprehends the moral problem with the Confederacy.”
“This is not about the personality of an individual and his or her flaws,” she said. “This is about men who organized a system of government to maintain a system of slavery and to destroy the American union.”
Yesterday morning Fraser waded into the debate.
“How much longer will we tolerate the statue of the brutal tyrant and oppressor Charles II in Parliament Square, Edinburgh?” he tweeted.
Minutes later it was deleted.
“Rather sad how many Scots seem to be ignorant of their own country’s history. They should read more books,” his next tweet said.
Fraser, who has recently written a book about the fortunes of the Covenanters under Charles II, was condemned by the SNP.
Christina McKelvie said: “Murdo Fraser’s tweet – and his hasty, ham-fisted bid to remove it – is embarrassing, but speaks volumes about Tory attitudes.
“In trying to draw parallels between Scottish history and the unrest in the US over its civil war legacy, he is deliberately stoking divisions of the past. That is foolish, irresponsible and wrong – but the Tories are a party obsessed with the past, not the future.”
A spokesman for the Scottish Tories said: “The SNP is in no position to dish out lectures on social media use.”
Meanwhile, Nicola Sturgeon has said a state visit to Britain by Donald Trump should be “unthinkable”.
Speaking to LBC radio, Sturgeon said: “When you’ve got the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan praising the president’s comments, I think it is time for him to perhaps reflect that he is on the wrong side of this debate.”
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