{"id":113687,"date":"2021-05-17T10:04:23","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T14:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=113687"},"modified":"2021-05-17T10:04:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T14:04:23","slug":"a-different-kind-of-military-phony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=113687","title":{"rendered":"A different kind of military phony"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Reverend Rob Lee at the MTV Video Music Awards (AP Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

KoB, native son of the south and Civil War buff that he is, sends us some stories on this fella. Bless his soul, the Reverend Robert Wright Lee IV, has used a supposed descendancy from\u00a0the\u00a0<\/em>Robert E. Lee, General of the Confederate States Army, to speak out against Confederate monuments.<\/p>\n

At the time he first started to speak against Confederate history, Lee was an intern at a Methodist Church in Raleigh, NC. Shortly after the MTV speech he made (screenshot above), he stepped down from that position. Allegedly this had nothing to do with parishoners’ voicing outrage at his political activism.<\/p>\n

He’s done OK for himself since then though. He’s even rubbed elbows with Governor Ralph “Coon Man” Northam<\/a> (D-VA), who you will remember can’t remember if he was wearing a Klan hood or blackface in his medical school yearbook photo and also spoke on a radio program where he appeared to support infanticide. Northam, who had his undergraduate education at Virginia Military Institute (a southern institution that played an outsized role in the War Between the States), has become a huge critic of Confederate memorials.<\/p>\n

Reverend Lee says that his grandmother told him, when he was a small child, “See that painting over there, the one of General Lee on the horse? You are related to him, a nephew separated by many generations.” Despite sounding oddly familiar, almost like he’s copied a page from the Elizabeth Warren playbook, he’s based his political activism on that claim.<\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a> has now done some digging into the genealogy of the man and can find no evidence to support his claims.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, known as Rob, has, since 2016, parlayed his ancestry on behalf of what many may regard as a noble cause \u2014 removing Confederate statues and memorials. The pastor stood with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam when the governor announced last June, in the wake of the George Floyd protests, that a statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond would be removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are members in my family who are shaking in their boots. I\u2019m sure my ancestor Robert E. Lee is rolling in his grave, and I say, let him roll,\u201d Lee told a crowd.<\/p>\n

When Northam introduced Lee, he said: \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about his great-great-grandfather.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a common mistake. Lee says he is the great-great-great-great nephew of the famous general.<\/p>\n

There is a Robert E. Lee V, great-great-grandson of the general, who works at the Potomac School in McLean. He speaks rarely about the debate over historical monuments. Meanwhile, Rob Lee has made numerous public appearances, including on \u201cThe View\u201d and the MTV Video Music Awards. At a House committee hearing in 2020, he was introduced by then-Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) as a \u201cdescendant of the Confederate general, Robert E. Lee.\u201d In that hearing, he called himself a \u201cnephew\u201d of the general.<\/p>\n

But there is no evidence that Rob Lee, who was born in North Carolina, is related to Robert E. Lee, according to The Fact Checker\u2019s review of historical and genealogical records. We were aided in our search through these records by a retired Los Angeles trial lawyer and Civil War chronicler named Joseph Ryan, as well as an official at Stratford Hall, the ancestral home of the Virginia Lee family.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is much, much more at the source. In the end the fact checker says;<\/p>\n

Family tales and memories can often be inaccurate. Rob Lee may have firmly believed he was somehow related to Robert E. Lee, based on stories he heard at home about \u201cUncle Bob.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he appears to be a descendant of Robert S. Lee, also known as \u201cUncle Bob,\u201d who served in the Confederate forces \u2014 but was not a general.<\/p>\n

Many people with Confederate ancestry have stepped forward to denounce the racist symbolism embodied in Confederate monuments. But, without new evidence that confirms his claim, the pastor should not state he is related to Robert E. Lee, especially in legal filings \u2014 and news organizations should not echo this claim. (Within an hour of this article appearing online, Lee tweeted that he had withdrawn his name from the Iredell County lawsuit.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KoB, native son of the south and Civil War buff that he is, sends us some … A different kind of military phony<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[406,10,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-link","category-historical","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=113687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113689,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113687\/revisions\/113689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=113687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=113687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=113687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}