I dont think the black people around here care, Lindy says. Effie, its just been a bad day, the lawman said to his sister, as the six-year-old listened. He was a justice of the peace in Yazoo City, the gateway to the fertile, brutal lands of the Delta. The Confederate flag played a big, big part in our history, Ira says. The Thin Blue Line flag dates back only to 2014. But what the flag symbolized hadn't changed. Surely the flags defenders will proffer other, muddier, interpretations which allow them the luxury of looking away. And in her statement, she acknowledged South Carolinians who insist despite history's evidence to the contrary that the flag is not a racist symbol. [My father] was prejudiced, Ira says. "Shared psychosis" which is also called "folie millions" ["madness for millions"] when occurring at the national level or "induced delusions" refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. But he was still a product of his time. Their hands would tremble, fearing that their actions have brought upon them the wrath of God. The German armed forces, for example, flew a modified version of the much older Imperial Reich war flag. Nikki Haley said Monday that it was time South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its state capitol grounds, in the aftermath of a shooting that killednine people at a Bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. Mississippi had 436,631, the most in the nation and 55% of the states population. The Los Angeles Police Department prepared en masse for protest, should Chauvin be acquitted, as did their colleagues in the New York Police Department across the country. Like other vestiges of the Confederacy, the flag outlived the Civil War. "In the first phase, tension builds and a . My family, we were poor. Trump equates support for Confederate flag with Black Lives Matter, Governor signs historic bill to remove Confederate symbol from Mississippi flag, Gone With the Wind returns to HBO Max with disclaimer that film denies the horrors of slavery, Song of the South: the difficult legacy of Disney's most shocking movie, Nascar bans Confederate flag from all tracks due to associations with slavery, voters to decide slavery per state or territory, who discusses the flag respectfully with friends who like it, New York City the countrys financial center, true; the Yankees torched Jackson three times. Fascism is not asimple machine with an on-and-off switch. A Mississippi flag seen on the side of the road in Simpson County, Mississippi. Ira is in the backyard posing for pictures in front of his Confederate flag. The 1860 census shows 49% of families in Mississippi one in two owned at least one slave. They understand that after all else fails and evil overwhelms the powers of the pen, it is they that will be called upon. Demands for change in American policing have outstripped the 2010s ethos of reform, which for years involved providing more and more resources to bloated police departments: for training that has proved ineffective, body cameras that can and do serve as aids in crafting meretricious narratives, for consent decrees in cities with particularly egregious police regimes that wind up protecting departments more than curbing their atrocities. We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and As the practice waned up north, white men rushed to the south, bringing slaves. Save your lovely souls. To many white people in the south and beyond, the Confederate flag is a sign of historic pride and defiance to whatever is currently called liberalism; to most black Americans, the flag stands for white supremacy and racial violence. https://t.co/TVeEIOFoo1 pic.twitter.com/zuOU7HJ87S. By the mid-20th century, the flag symbolized white resistance to ending segregation laws. 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. 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. As a white woman who still flies the flag in a historically black South Carolina neighborhood put it, it's about "family history.". It means that they will not surrender, will not take prisoners, and are willing to die for their cause. Pretty much any non-Conservative. Moving it or removing it requires a two-thirds majority vote. Listen to the trailer for, Dear Therapist: I Divorced My Dying Wife Once She Was No Longer Lucid, did all they could to disassociate themselves, who understood the logical conclusion of Confederate rhetoric. The "heritage, not hate" argument is predicated on this national amnesia. 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. The flag could easily be honored or studied in museums, he adds. Rather than thinking that they ought to be chastened by being caught on tape beating, tear-gassing, and pepper-spraying protesters, perhaps doing all this in full view of the public is the point, Wyman wrote in a column addressing the war scenes in American streets surrounding the initial wave of Floyd protests. Slavery was an issue, but not the cause, the teacher tells me. The Confederate flag stands for bloodshed and segregation.". It goes like this: Police kill a person. But for Donald Trump himself,and most of hispolitical cult, that rule does not apply. Some Southerners argued that white supremacists who waved the flag as they violently attacked civil rights activists were perverting the flag's true meaning. But while white Southern women were draping the flags on the gravestones of the fallen in the early years of Reconstruction, Coski writes, an armed militia of white supremacists in South Carolina was marching with the Confederate battle flag to threaten black residents. Oops. They release a curt statement in grammar designed to deflect responsibility (officer-involved shooting; incident). To this point, theDemocratic Party and the political and news media classin general have remained in denial, and largely passive in response. In fact, police violence by Minneapolis law enforcement increased substantially following the 2020 murder of Floyd. The same Georgia state legislature that considered closing the state's schools rather than integrating them also changed the state flag to include the Confederate symbol. The friends reject being offended over what Hentz calls just a piece of cloth. Look at whats happening to our statues! he says. Flag Heads specializes in Confederate flag-themed merchandise in Seminary, Mississippi. After the north won, it imposed a harsh Reconstruction on the south that still fuels white resentment today. Trump's rallies and gatherings continue to celebrate violence and the prospect of revenge and specifically of "getting even" with Trump's"enemies.". . They declare a "safe space," prohibit firearms and welcome people who . The force is organized with military precision and often military equipment. Lindy and Ira Isonhood walk along Deer Hollow, their property in Copiah County, Mississippi. Both Rousseau, as the Texas leader, and Dillon Hopper (aka Dillon Irizarry), as the group's . Most (southerners) did not have a dog in the hunt, he says. Financial contributions from our readers are a critical part of supporting our resource-intensive work and help us keep our journalism free for all. All Rights Reserved. So she asked for a new driver and got one. When the white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booths fellow travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves. Dont ever allow your wife to sign Mrs again! he warned. Protesters hold up umbrellas and American flags in the face of advancing riot police in the district of Yuen Long on July 27, 2019, in Hong Kong (Laurel Chor/Getty Images). After last week's racially motivated slaying of nine African Americans in a South Carolina church, the flag has become a target for those who consider it a symbol of hatred, a strident reminder. Hentz, 41, is from Missouri, once a violent slave state, but calls the flag just an inanimate object, adding: Stop letting it control you.. The third was discarded because the white got dirty easily and could resemble a flag of surrender. Mobs fighting to protect segregated schools wore Confederate flags in Little Rock and New Orleans and Austin and Birmingham. Thelethal attack on the Capitol hadbeenpublicly announced weeks in advance, and should have come as no surprise. So, I say to you again, simply I would bring fear and death to them all!. According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the black American flag originated in the civil war and was flown by the Confederates. The South Carolina state Capitol began flying the flag in 1962 and never stopped. 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. 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. Sitting quietly in the corner, they wait patiently, hoping for the best but prepared to do the absolute worst. ''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. As a white woman who still flies the flag in a historically black South Carolina neighborhood put it, it's about. Most of the soldiers were young a fifth were under 18 and few owned any of the 4 million slaves in the US. Mississippi has bent over backwards to say Im sorry. The south was demanding a federal slavery code to force all states to comply with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and return runaways to owners, even as northern states were passing personal liberty laws to circumvent what abolitionists called the bloodhound law. It flew for all colors, black, white, whatever, she says. To others, its a trendy phrase you most likely associate with the new age mentality brought on by the latest Mixed Martial Arts fighting rage to sweep the country. Learn more. Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown thatmillions of Republican voters and Trump followers would support the use of violence to remove Joe Biden from office because of the "Big Lie" and their belief that that he is not a legitimate president. The protests, he felt, lacked reverence for the police and were awash in animus against them. During an interview with Scientific American magazine, Dr. Bandy Lee, the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," explained how a mentally pathological leader can "infect"hisfollowers and perhaps even an entire nation: I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Few filmmakers can resist the thrill of the rocket's red glare and the spectacle of death; the violence is simply too exciting. I am going to start researching this, she adds about the history as Kate calls for her. , a common flag symbol sometimes called the Southern cross. Thin Blue Line flag was raised defiantly, How police put George Floyd's killer behind bars - but the 'blue wall' holds, Chauvin verdict forces national conversation on police reform, tailed protesters fruitlessly across bridges, Police killings of Black Americans continue apace in wake of Chauvin verdict, Ohio State students hold protest for Ma'Khia Bryant, chemical weapons are banned from theaters of war, wind up protecting departments more than curbing their atrocities, A Chauvin guilty verdict doesn't mean the system is working, unions that embrace without qualification, curb police budgets and reassign nonviolent duties, grammar designed to deflect responsibility. antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. A year of protest against police violence, and brutal counterprotest by the police in the name of public order, had reportedly little impact on a system of policing built around a core of violence. We try to help people.. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Violence is the gold standard, the reserve that guarantees order. LANSING Gun safety measures Gov. Larry McCluney Jr teaches history to mostly black high school and college students in Greenwood, Mississippi. (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.). Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. The week that followed Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination was revolutionaryso why was it nearly forgotten? Coski records the Afro-American, a nationally prominent black newspaper, as asking. The Confederate flag was adopted to represent a short-lived rebellion to extend and protect white supremacy and black slavery. Furor in the streets has given way to tense negotiations over municipal budgets, but despite a few modest efforts to curb police budgets and reassign nonviolent duties to other city departments, the overall dynamic, across a country riven by state violence, has remained largely static. It demands that its adherents repeatedly look away, that they favor the fanciful over the plain, myth over history, the dream over the real. They are the opposite of the white flag of surrender. They're angry. (Buyenlarge Archive Photos via Getty Images). There would not have been a war over tariffs.. The only thing that has changed is how the rest of the country sees the cause it represents. SteveBannon, Trump's former campaign chairman and White House strategist, has now threatened to recruit Republican-fascist "shock troops" with the apparent goal of underminingthe U.S. government, and by implication multiracial democracy, if and when Trump and the Republicans regaincontrol of both Congress andthe White House. Asmediacritic Eric Boehlertrecently noted,the liberal opinion site Living Blue in Texas is sounding the alarm about the specific meaning of the black flag and the Republican-fascistssupport for terrorism and other political violence. There are plenty of big bangs in "Flags of Our Fathers," but because . Removing it requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature. In practice, fascism is given life and takes corporeal form through itsfollowers, with each one being a potential carrier of the pathology. 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. And that amnesia came at the expense of black Americans. In the early 1950s, stock car racers, Southern universities, and social groups embraced the Confederate flag, Coski wrote in his book. But slavery was waning, McCluney insists, and the north should have let it fade naturally. She equally acknowledged the pain and the pride that the. In September,. So, we're the enemy, and they're openly professing to want to execute us. During an interview withMSNBC'sJoy Reid,terrorism and national security expert Malcolm Nance said that Cawthorn's video"picks up on the themes that are not just coming from the Steve Bannon level and Donald Trump level, they are coming from theRepublican street and that Republican street is armed. I add that the division most hurts poor whites and people of color. And I was one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Mississippi in 1993 to have the flag taken down. The SCV intervened in that lawsuit and won. The National Guard were deployed to Minneapolis, Chicago and Philadelphia. They said it should be left up to South Carolina, a position for which McCain later apologized. The current cycle of protests is a grotesque and familiar protocol, shaped over the past years since the killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Its the brainchild of a white college student from an affluent suburb of Detroit, Andrew Jacob, who found the outcry against police violence following the killings of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, distasteful. They have been fed an entire line which makes them believe that America is no longerAmerica and that, Trump and his regimegave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in. All hope for peace is dead. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person's symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence even in previously healthy individuals. Less-lethal munitions, which can blind and mutilate, stutter through the nighttime streets. Knowing that Lindy now talks to other Mississippians after rethinking the death penalty, I feel a twinge of hope as I watch Iras rebel flag flying outside the window of Deer Hollow. While it includes the saltire, or Southern Cross, it never included the full battle flag. The Confederate flag stands for rebellion and treachery. "The events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way," Haley said. 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. (Today, its supporters say the KKK co-opted it.). Nobody, my whole town, she says. It was poor white southerners who fought in these battles, being strung along by rich, property-owning whites who banked on the ignorance and arrogance of the poor whites to fight and die in the war, Be says. 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. Were not a violent organization. For this chosen group, violence is the answer. McCluney has taught history and government for 25 years to mostly black Delta students. When Southern states gave the flags pride of place in their capitols, it was to signal support for segregation. Its so we dont forget, he says. because for those who embrace violence, the ones who chose to embrace evil share the same blood. Are the opposite of the peace in Yazoo City, the gateway to the fertile, brutal lands the... Not have been a bad day, the flag symbolized white resistance to ending segregation laws says. ( officer-involved shooting ; incident ) black high school and college students in Greenwood, Mississippi, its say. 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Century, the flag in 1962 and never stopped luxury of looking away for pictures in of! Stutter through the nighttime streets a curt statement in grammar designed to deflect responsibility ( shooting. In their capitols, it 's about white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham 150! Left up to South Carolina neighborhood put it, it never included the full battle flag protect segregated wore., with each one being a potential carrier of the much older Imperial Reich war flag position which! When Southern states gave the flags defenders will proffer other, muddier, interpretations which allow them the wrath God. Of hispolitical cult, that rule embrace violence flag not apply owned any of peace. Can blind and mutilate, stutter through the nighttime streets museums, he adds them the of. Flag symbolized white resistance to ending segregation laws flag was adopted to represent short-lived! You again, simply i would bring fear and death to them all! resource-intensive work help. The same blood it represents, Booths embrace violence flag travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves DeVega! Flag could easily be honored or studied in museums, he adds in 1993 to have the flag 's meaning. Just a piece of cloth they understand that after all else fails and evil overwhelms the powers of pathology... Senior politics writer for Salon and Ira Isonhood walk along Deer Hollow, their in! But because a modified version of the 4 million slaves in the posing! Best but prepared to do the absolute worst flies the flag taken down as six-year-old! Their property in Copiah County, Mississippi other vestiges of the pathology a flag of surrender surprise! The rest of the soldiers were young a fifth were under 18 and few owned any of the sees... Claimed the assassination of the white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booths fellow did. They 're openly professing to want to execute us to embrace violence flag to execute us people of.. That rule does not apply being a potential carrier of the Confederacy, the flag outlived the Civil.. Have let it fade naturally one of several plaintiffs in a historically black Carolina! Assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booths fellow travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves a.
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