Put it in a museum. "The Confederate flag stands for slavery and human degradation. Still, Ira flies the flag, which his own high school and college used as an emblem. In a recent speech tothe North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Salt & Light" conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.,issued what sounded like a declaration of war: It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows to say, "No longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in. Because, my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, our children will never know what freedom is. Dont ever allow your wife to sign Mrs again! he warned. The Confederate battle flag was one of several flags used during the Civil War. He was a justice of the peace in Yazoo City, the gateway to the fertile, brutal lands of the Delta. Thomasa Massey and Evangela Hentz are close friends in Brandon, Mississippi. Optimistic takes began to roll out: The world was changing, policing reforming. Its so we dont forget, he says. This country was formed for the white, not for the black man. ''I don't believe [Confederate] service, however distinguished, needs to be commemorated in a way that offends, that deeply hurts, people whose ancestors were once denied their freedom by my ancestors,'' McCain said. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. The German armed forces, for example, flew a modified version of the much older Imperial Reich war flag. Its hoisting marked the end of a night of violently suppressed protests of the killing of the 20-year-old, a young Black father who had been pulled over, his mother said, because police had seen air fresheners dangling from his rearview mirror and had been shot in the chest by veteran Officer Kim Potter, former president of the citys police union. The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. In the interest of reuniting white Americans, the narrative around the Civil War changed in its aftermath. The writer Patrick Wyman has hypothesized that the flagrancy of police violence against protesters is part of a strategy of exemplary violence, akin to the outsize and grotesque revenges inflicted on participants in medieval peasants rebellions. Reporting by Jack Goodman, Christopher Giles, Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh. They are protected by "law enforcement officers bill of rights" laws in more than a dozen states, which cushion them from the legal fallout of felonies and abuses; by the egregious doctrine of qualified immunity, which shields them from lawsuits against constitutional rights violations; by unions that embrace without qualification the worst offenders in police forces and exercise considerable power over municipal governments with both flush finances and the implicit threat of a heavily armed and punitive membership. And from the moment the design of its best-known flag was proposed, some Southerners began imbuing it with the symbolism of their cause. Talia Lavinis a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Village Voice, The New Republic and many more publications. Learn more. You think I speak lies and elaborations. Men that live outside the illusion of safety built upon walls of ignorance and denial that is our peaceful existence in this world. The Confederate flag stands for bloodshed and segregation.". Nance also noted that Cawthorn's propaganda video is thematically similar to the type of propaganda used by Islamic terroristgroups such as ISIS and al-Qaida to radicalize and recruitmembers. An alarming number of military members have been making Tik Toks talking about how they are being discharged because they refuse the vaccine. Although showing guns on Tik Tok is supposed to be against community guidelines, they show lots of videos of their guns, shooting them, wearing them, or sitting on their bed. "If displaying the flag of the Confederate States of America is a fad, it is one of the longest-lived fads in history, lasting some 90 years," one sniffed in a letter to Life. Robert E. Lees armies took special care to enslave free blacks during their Northern campaign. A Confederate flag at an anti-integration rally in Little Rock in 1959. The Confederate flag began enjoying unprecedented national popularity and became a cultural symbol after World War II, just as the federal government began trying to make good on its Reconstruction-era civil rights promises. The Confederacy itself was founded to preserve slavery and promote white supremacy (see, for example, Mississippi's declaration of secession: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery the greatest material interest of the world," or the speech from the Confederacy's vice president that declared the Confederacy's cornerstone "rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition"). (Kean Collection via Getty Images). At the moment, it is a Republican disease. It was not an unusual number of new cases for the department's eight-member gun violence restraining order unit, which Brooker oversees. Moving it or removing it requires a two-thirds majority vote. They primarily use Tik Tok as a recruiting tool and let others know their willingness to commit violence. (Buyenlarge Archive Photos via Getty Images). Still, Davis balks at the need to exorcise the emblem from the state flag today out of respect to Mississippians who descended from slaves. Yes, he was. You wont find it at Wal*Mart, a large sign proclaims, reminding shoppers that the retailer dropped Confederate merchandise within a week of Roofs massacre. The third was discarded because the white got dirty easily and could resemble a flag of surrender. Whats next? We just didnt believe in racism. Most (southerners) did not have a dog in the hunt, he says. McCluney, 53, is a national officer in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which accepts male descendants of southern soldiers. The flag, which has gone on to earn its creators company, Thin Blue Line USA, a healthy living selling related merchandise, literalizes this vision: a U.S. flag in a stark photonegative scheme, save for a broad line of blue. There are plenty of big bangs in "Flags of Our Fathers," but because . Were on Highway 49 south when it pops up: Flag Heads, which sells adult novelties and Confederate tchotchkes. McCluney teaches his black students his Confederate history. The American Flag is positioned on the left, slightly higher than the Thin Blue Line flag. Embrace equity. In 2000, the legislature reached a compromise after 50,000 people marched to demand the flag be taken down and the NAACP declared a boycott. Eventually, they will take the state flag; they will change it. Southern politicians displayed the Confederate battle flag when they railed against Truman. All rights reserved. https://t.co/TVeEIOFoo1 pic.twitter.com/zuOU7HJ87S. The Confederate flags defenders often claim it represents heritage not hate. I agreethe heritage of white supremacy was not so much birthed by hate as by the impulse toward plunder. His favorite Mississippi history book is from 1900. Watch: Crowd chants "na na na na hey hey hey goodbye" as the Confederate flag falls in SC, The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy and it always has, For now, the one thing Congress seems to agree upon is China, How the Israeli settler rampage was emboldened by the new far-right government, We dont need to know how this pandemic started to stop the next one, You probably wont get any student loan relief, thanks to a GOP-controlled Supreme Court, Ron DeSantiss war on woke in Florida schools, explained. Ultimately, Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, is the symptom of a sick society. The phrase the thin blue line is older, perhaps first popularized in 1922 by New York City police Commissioner Richard Enright, who used the phrase to describe police as that intensive battle line, the first line of defense against criminality., By the 1980s, the phrase had gone fully mainstream, propped up by a symbiotic relationship between increasingly powerful urban police departments and sympathetic media; in Errol Morris 1988 film of the same name, a judge told the camera that police were the thin blue line that separates the public from anarchy.. The flag even became popular in the North: a man purchasing the flag in New Jersey told Life he was doing it to oppose Truman. Here is another choice. Thats what states rights were about: protecting slavery, he says. The history, though, is clear: from the Civil War through the civil rights movement, the flag has always been about white supremacy. The post-war white south embraced the Confederate battle flag, making it their sentimental symbol of the "lost cause" of the war. It was there when our grandfathers, great-grandfathers, were struggling to feed their six, eight, 10 kids. Abandon this charlatanism. But one mans prison sentence for a murder seen by millions on camera is a long way from the transformation we need. Dont ask if you dont want to know. But, he adds, they know me as a teacher who cares about them. God judge me, not man. ", it is clearly true that the Americanright isincreasingly willing to accept or condoneviolence as a means of expanding and protecting their social and political power, more than 50 percent of Trump supporters want "red states" to secede from the Union, During an interview with Scientific American magazine, Dr. Bandy Lee, the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," explained. They're angry. The Ku Klux Klan flew it at lynching parties and angry mobs waved it outside public schools as black children enrolled; in front of white segregation academies and next to leering dogs unleashed on black protesters wanting the right to vote. "The hate-filled murderer who massacred our brothers and sisters in Charleston has a sick and twisted view of the flag, Haley said. Signs set the tone at the Embrace help centers and shelter for victims of domestic and sexual violence in rural Wisconsin. There are trashy white people and trashy black people., SCV is not racist or violent, he says. The Thin Blue Line flag shows how far America has to go to heal from police violence. Thomasa Massey, 49, jumps out of her car at Pearl Park in a majority-white Jackson suburb wearing a T-shirt with Confederate butterflies she designed with Pride, Not Prejudice underneath. By the time Mississippi embedded it into its new state flag in. I have stuck my finger into a bullet hole in her family home where the Klan fired into the wall above where her aunt, then a child, slept. They declare a "safe space," prohibit firearms and welcome people who . The store slogan is You wont find it at Wal-Mart.. When crafting the compromise which made the flag more visible to visitors than it had been before legislators did their utmost to ensure the flag couldn't be pushed out any further. Covid vaccinations, mostly. I have struggled. When Southern states gave the flags pride of place in their capitols, it was to signal support for segregation. But many of their households owned at least one, or they aspired to ascend to slave ownership. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it: Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. The war became a national tragedy, not a just cause. I would not be up around the last flag making a chain gang to keep somebody from taking it down, Davis says. Listen to the trailer for Holy Week. But Lee claimed the assassination of the Great Emancipator was deplorable. Jefferson Davis believed that it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South, and angrily denied rumors that he had greeted the news with exultation. The flag's stubborn hold on the state isn't just the result of an ironclad compromise that makes it all but impossible to take down. It was an historic moment for gay. A minute number of people ever stop to think about the circumstances that surround the very freedoms they spend the majority of their lives enjoying. Shes helped me. And luckily for all of the others, it is! However you interpret these videos posted byTrump followers and otherneofascists which couldbe mainly performative it is clearly true that the Americanright isincreasingly willing to accept or condoneviolence as a means of expanding and protecting their social and political power. Give The Atlantic Politics Take Down the Confederate FlagNow The flag that Dylann Roof. Until that kid went in that church in Charleston, people never thought anything about the Confederate or Mississippi flag, she says. In fact, if the originalhost dies, he or she can beelevated to the status ofmartyr for "the cause,"serving to inspireexisting followers and lure in new ones. (Salon did not find licensed news photographs of these flags, and has made the editorial decision not to reproduce the images mentioned above, which are easy to find on social media.). The most widespread Nazi flag featured a black swastika in a white circle on a red field. 0:57. As Hong Kong police denied the protesters a permit to march, they attacked the crowd despite its peaceful nature, using tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse them. History teaches us that if we dont, someone else will. Violence is Golden by Jack Donovan, Most will see the above admonition and others like it and automatically relate it to the malevolence of those who wish to do nothing more than tear this world apart. And while there's always been a strain of militancy on the American right and left fringes, there is something unmistakably new, and profoundly alarming, about the casual, florid, and sadistic. In this way they honor their ancestors. Booth absorbed his lesson too well. But he was still a product of his time. The flag that Dylann Roof embraced, which many South Carolinians embrace, endorses the violence he committed. The law requires the flag to be hoisted 30 feet from the ground, illuminated at night, and surrounded by "an appropriate decorative iron fence." As red flags show up more and more over time, you'll start noticing patterns of behavior. Most of the soldiers were young a fifth were under 18 and few owned any of the 4 million slaves in the US. In 1863, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger wrote that the flag's Southern cross pointed to "the destiny of the Southern master and his African slave" the Confederacy's hoped-for expansion of slavery into Latin America. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship. She wonders why the flag is once again becoming a big deal. By the civil war, cotton investment had made New York City the countrys financial center due to receiving up to 40% of all cotton revenues, representing $200m in annual trade with the south. I for one, have ever considered if one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God has ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Insecure, frightened men (and the occasional woman) participating in fascist violence find a sense of agency, of individual power and meaning, a sort of orgasmic release from a life of ordinariness and political impotence. People like me its in our blood. Embrace violence. (True, but usually for their masters. "There tends to be a cycle of abuse," says Salerno. In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-blackAmerican flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated peopleand others deemed to be "enemies" of"real America." That was horrific to my organization (SCV) when that took place.. Theyre not afraid of being filmed, because being filmed simply reinforces the central theme: If you come to protest, an action that explicitly challenges the order and my place in it, this is the consequence. For 75 years, it was used as a reminder of the nobility of that cause. It's how Mississippi and Florida could include the Confederate flag in their state flags during the 1890s with little fuss. Some Southerners argued that white supremacists who waved the flag as they violently attacked civil rights activists were perverting the flag's true meaning. The store specializes in Confederate flag-themed merchandise. When the white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booths fellow travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves. Surely the flags defenders will proffer other, muddier, interpretations which allow them the luxury of looking away. The phrase "the thin blue line" is older, perhaps first popularized in 1922 by New York City police Commissioner Richard Enright, who used the phrase to describe police as . All Rights Reserved. And when Southerners at the time said the flag represented their culture, they made it very clear whose culture they meant: "It means the Southern cause," Roy Harris, a legendary Georgia politician, said in 1951, according to Coski's book. The "heritage, not hate" argument is predicated on this national amnesia. The Confederate flag was adopted to represent a short-lived rebellion to extend and protect white supremacy and black slavery. All hope for peace is dead. In his attic, McCluney downplays slavery ownership saying elite planters, not soldiers, owned most slaves. It or removing it requires a two-thirds majority vote moment the design of best-known... Of safety built upon walls of ignorance and denial that is our peaceful existence in this.! 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