I don't think removing contentious statues 'destroys a country's history'.
The statue was erected at a time when the the City-fathers (being white men) felt it was appropriate to do so......and any dissenting voices (being non-white folks) could be safely ignored.
Times have moved on and those folks who don't want to look at statues of people who were instrumental in their oppression now have a voice to say so.
The (American) far-right have never needed much of an excuse to start screaming about any perceived infringement of their cherished 'Constitutional Rights', however , the Southern-American far-right have a considerably nastier record when it comes to protecting these rights.
The 'left' in America are anyone not 'of the (far) right'......i.e. slightly right of centre, Centrists and those just slightly to the left. Full-on 'lefties' as catalogued in the UK are few and far-between in USA.
I don't think there can be any doubt that the 'right-wing' in this instance were more badly behaved than the 'left'. Indeed, the 'left', in this case, seem to be those objecting to the statue and I'm not sure that it is accurate to brand them *all* lefty-democrats; you can't possibly know where they would place themselves on the political spectrum other than acknowledge they were present and objecting to the 'far-right'.