Symbols from the Nazi-era, such as the swastika or the “Heil Hitler” salute are illegal in Germany. Since the end of WWII, the country has been making a concerted effort to distance itself from the crimes of its past, and it tries to prevent future catastrophes like the Third Reich.
In the United States, in the age of Trump, both the swastika and the Confederate flag have resurged in yards, on the backs of pickup trucks and at rallies and other political events and demonstrations.
I have never been able to understand how the Confederate flag in the United States of the 21st century can have such a strong foothold. It has become a symbol of power for some people, of course. Arguments are that the Confederate flag represents people’s heritage and should therefore be honored and cherished.
I challenge that view. If a family can trace its lineage back to an individual that fought in the Civil War under the Confederate flag, and died for it, yes, I acknowledge that there is family tradition and honor involved. But I believe that 99.99% of the time, the person brandishing the flag cannot identify such lineage. Most people can’t identify the names even of their great-great-grandparents. I certainly can’t. That would bring me back to about 1880 or so. 1865, not a chance.
So, unless a person served in the Civil War under General Lee and died, the Confederate flag has no direct meaning with respect to a family’s heritage.
For the vast majority of people in the United States, the flag is a symbol of slavery, and the misery and oppression it brought to millions of people for many decades. It is a symbol of continued oppression for another 100 or so years until the major civil rights activities of the 1960s. It is a symbol of hate against minorities in the most recent decades.
And it is a symbol of treason of the southern states against the union.
I do not understand how our society accepts the Confederate flag as it does, being that it stands for oppression, hate and treason.
The only justifiable purpose I see is the expression of free speech, a right bestowed upon us by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
You have a right to fly the flag, but you must know that the vast majority of us view it as a symbol of oppression, hate and treason.
Or is it the vast majority of us?
“The only justifiable purpose I see is the expression of free speech, a right bestowed upon us by the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
An Amendment that Trump has challenged by wanting to sue newspapers who write something “not nice” about him. It is, like most of what he says, an empty threat from a brain that has no filter, but even thinking such a thing clearly indicates to me dementia/pathology along with a mean streak wide enough to include half of America.
Imagine Obama saying ANY of the things Trump spouts!
The America of my birth is now so fucked-up, I don’t recognize it anymore. I only hope to live long enough to see the pendulum return to a more reasonable and less hard-lined politicized position. Fat chance as long as there is totalitarian religion supporting any totalitarian regime — and a “man” at the top who legitimizes racism, etc., etc. I see a another Civil War looming.
This just came in from Alternet this morning…
A friend writes, “For basically the past six months or so I’ve been trying to tell my lefty friends in so many words, ‘Hey, there are a bunch of people on the Internet who are waiting for someone to tell them it’s okay to start shooting at you.’” He became concerned when a thread at the non-political firearms-enthusiasts website he regularly follows became filled with comments in all caps referring to liberals as enemies who must be shot. Developments both online and off following Donald Trump’s election have caused me to share his concern.
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/right-wing-foot-soldiers-are-routinely-escalating-violent-behavior-streets?akid=15495.1075399.i_uz6I&rd=1&src=newsletter1076256&t=4
This is scary stuff you dig out, Barbara. My goodness.
I have a few theories on this Norbert. I think it has anthropological roots in the evolution of the human race in the differences in how people live in colder vs warmer climates and how work ethics evolved as a result of gathering food, building shelter, etc. A colder climate provides for a shorter growing cycle, thus requiring people to work harder picking native wild foods or growing their own crops to ensure that there is abundant food for the off-growing season. The people that inhabited colder area’s did their work faster to burn calories and stay warm, the warmer climate folks moved a bit slower to prevent heat exhaustion. The folks in the warmer climate had a larger wild amount of vegetation to gather for a longer period of time, thus require less effort be put into subsistence. The cold climate folks had to gather wood to stay warm and hunt for animal skins or make heavy protective clothing, they had to make warmer more insulated domiciles. I see some of these tendencies in operation today.
When it came to living and settling for or selecting a location, in the US, people had lots of choices as to where they would establish themselves, w they weren’t so stuck to communities where their ancestors lived for centuries and confined by social hierarchies an castes. People migrated to the East coast and settled according to their preferences. Somewhat dis-similar cultures came to be in great part because of the temperate differences. Industries (Inside buildings) developed in the North, while plantations and ranches presided in the southern warmer areas where those enterprises could thrive better. Despite all te commonalities we have as people , we tend to focus on what makes people different in order to distinguish people and groups, subsequently and gradually a an “us versus them” mentality arose and came to a head with the 2 regions, principally over the issue of slavery with some other issues mixed in to help deflect the primary issue.
The South came to have a much different Ethos and Slavery was part of that, so when the passage of abolition came to be, that became a wound that never quite healed. All the confederate deaths, the removal of slavery and the symbol of the Confederate culture, the Stars and Bars, made southerners resolute in their contempt for the damn Yankees and what they did to the south. In taking away slavery, it upset profitable enterprises, unsteadied competitive balances of internal and external trade and in general made life hard for the wealthy southern slave owners (not that everyone owned a slave, as those that didn’t were the combat recruits, fighting for slave holders rights. They fly their flag from a cultural unity disposition, which can include aspects of racism for blacks. But it is not, in and of itself just a symbol of slavery.
Thanks for the elaborate comment! Yes, I see your lead-in, and I can understand how this came to be. Unfortunately, this is 2017, and we must do away with symbolisms and a way of life that subjugated and – yes – enslaved entire classes of the population for the gain of others. Back in the middle ages we burned witches. That was someone’s way of life. Yet, today, civilized society should not accept it anymore. We need to be vigilant so that we don’t creep back to ways of life that hurt the masses to benefit the few. And that’s exactly the trend that some people want us to go back to now.