Are flags additive?

Lexington Green:

May 17th, 2017 at 4:06 am

The Gadsden Flag was the flag of the Southern backcountry, often not slave owning, against the British. Mixing it up with the Confederate battle flag is unhistorical and misleading. The Tea Party often had Gadsden Flag symbolism. I sometimes wore a crossed US flag and Gadsden Flag to events. It is part of the vicious, ongoing defamation of the Tea Party that people tried to say everything we did was racist. Nope.

carl:

May 17th, 2017 at 5:14 pm

Charles the most interesting part of you post isn’t the topic of flags, symbolism and the changes therein. Pondering those sorts of things are what intellectually inclined old men like us (or rather you, I’m just old) while away the time with. No, the most interesting part is you saw the need to start and end your post with a plea not to let a verbal punch up commence. It is very telling that even in this little corner of the virtual world, where to my recollection everybody has always behaved well, the first and last thing you think of when posting is the possibility of really nasty conflict. And that is here in a pretend world. It the real world would you even try to print up and distribute some fliers announcing a discussion of this topic at a local venue? If you did it would only be after some hard thought about the possibility of, and in many cities the certainty of physical violence. Things are not pretty right now.
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You mentioned civil war as a throwaway line. It think things may be closer to that nightmare than we realize. I’ve thought that for several years now ever since I read articles pointing out how political positions seem to be lining up regionally. Anyway I have a story to tell about the possibility of real conflict developing too. I was at a Trump rally post-election several months ago. There were maybe 5oo people there. About 40-60 of the Berkeley types appeared in their black clothes, balaclavas and bandanas over their faces. They formed up about a block away and moved toward us in a group. As if by magic cops by the scores showed up, kept the groups separated and the scene remained calm. But if the cops hadn’t showed up there would have been a real street battle. The people on my side of the police line were itching for it. If the officers had not been there….
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What we are seeing developing before our eyes troubles me greatly.

Grurray:

May 17th, 2017 at 5:19 pm

Equating the Gadsden flag with racism is part of a broader effort to deny the existence of the Scotch-Irish, such as in historian Nancy Isenberg’s book White Trash. A heritage that consists of poverty, subsistence, struggle, and diaspora rather than deviant feudal lords doesn’t fit the ‘white privilege’ narrative. The narrative insists the United States was formed to defend and perpetuate the institution of slavery, and the supposed white monoculture responsible must retreat from political activity and pay restitution. This is obviously wrong as the Civil War proved. Just the existence of West Virginia is enough to explode that theory.
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The Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, on the other hand, was a symbol of defending slavery. Its display was rare after the civil war. It only had a resurgence later to counter the post-war civil rights movement. In some circles it is now seen to be representative of southern culture. This makes the same mistake as the Reparationistas for different reasons. They want to pretend that the culture doesn’t exist in a vain attempt to cure history’s perceived ills, while some Southern and Appalachian Folk want to forget it in a vain attempt to cure their own ills. Those who fly the Confederate banner bury their real culture under a veneer of revisionism because they can’t bring themselves to be proud of a past filled with difficulty and discord.

Joel Sammallahti:

May 17th, 2017 at 8:51 pm

What a juxtaposition in that second image: the flag, and a shirt with the text Brotherhood of Snakes and the image of a triple serpent.

Joel Sammallahti:

May 17th, 2017 at 9:37 pm

Fourth image, I meant. And I mangled the text too. Anyway.

Kelly:

May 18th, 2017 at 1:32 am

Symbolism is by nature subjective.

When I look at the stars and bars, I see a battle flag from an army that killed thousands and thousands of US Army servicemen, to defend slavery as a social institution. I’m not a fan.

I find these two themes (killers of US army troops, defenders of slavery) so powerful that I can’t overlook them when combined with other imagery.

If you add a drop of sewage to a barrel of wine, you get a barrel of sewage. The sewage ruins anything good that might have been in the wine.

That’s how I feel about the stars and bars.

zen:

May 18th, 2017 at 1:33 am

The Gadsden flag was never considered racist until circa 2015 when an Obama apparatchik attempted to suggest it was so, largely because it was an antigovernment symbol adopted by many of Obama’s grassroots Tea Party critics. It’s a variation of a colonial era flag and also of the US Navy Jack flag:
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https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.Clwdn704JpzuzIwM7UyG0gEsCd&w=300&h=157&c=7&qlt=90&o=4&dpr=1.25&pid=1.7

Charles Cameron:

May 18th, 2017 at 5:06 pm

Thanks, all.
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I am particularly grateful to Carl for his perceptive comment. When I tweeted an announcement of this post, I invited comment from people who might be expected to have strongly felt and strongly divergent views, hence my care to begin and close with a request for courtesy. And were we not enjoying Zenpundit’s hospitality here, where as Carl says, “everybody has always behaved well,” I might well not have posted at all.
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My gratitude, then, to all ZP commenters, and to Zenpundit / Mark himself.