A Missouri state representative is being asked to resign after saying vandals who threw paint on a Confederate statue should be “hung from a tall tree with a long rope.”
Rep. Warren Love, a Republican who represents The Show-Me State’s 125th District, took to Twitter on Wednesday and posted a news article about the defacing of a Confederate monument in Springfield National Cemetery.
Along with the post, Love wrote: "This is totally against the law. I hope they are found & hung from a tall tree with a long rope."
The allusion to the once-frequent crime of lynching — in which African-American men and women were hanged by the neck by racist mobs in the South — had Love’s fellow politicians up in arms.
Rep. Shamed Dogan, the only black Republican in Missouri's legislature, posted a screen grab of Love’s message, which appears to have been removed, and commented:
Stephen Webber, chairman of the Missouri Democratic Party, tweeted:
Bruce Franks Jr., a state presentative from Missouri’s 78th District, said on Twitter:
Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, said Monday: "Representative Love should resign for his unacceptable comments."
House Minority Leader Gail McCann Beatty of Kansas City also called for Love to step down, The Springfield News-Leader reported.
"In calling for the lynching of those who vandalized a Confederate statute in Springfield, state Rep. Warren Love invoked a form of political violence used throughout the South to keep African-Americans subjugated for generations following the fall of the Confederacy, and for that he must resign," Beatty said.
In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Warren insisted he was not calling for vandals to be lynched.
"Oh no. Hell no! … That was an exaggerated statement that, you know, a lot of times is used in the western world when somebody does a crime or commits theft," Warren told reporter Jack Suntrup.
"That’s just a western term and I’m very much a western man. … You know, I wear a coat. You know, I dress western. And, you know, I’m the cowboy of the Capitol. I guess I could’ve put on there that, you know, they were yellow-bellied, low-life or whatever.
"But it is disturbing when you see objects of remembrance — and they can be anything from memorials to tombstones to, you know, somebody putting a cross on the highway and planting flowers on it — that somebody would be a low-life enough to desecrate it or vandalize it.”
Love, 67, who has served in the Missouri House since 2013, also insisted he is not a racist, telling The Post-Dispatch, “I am definitely not that word. I don’t even like to use that word.”
Love has made controversial statements in the past, once labeling President Abraham Lincoln as “the greatest tyrant and despot in American history.”