After posting this yesterday, and one person throwing a fit it made me want to check myself.
So I reached out to all my black friends who grew up and currently live in the south.. I asked them their impressions about people wholly the confederate flag.
Every single one of them said that they agree with what I said, the southern flag wavers were always the kindest people they met and while they have experienced racism (of course) it was never targeted from them and in fact they were some of the least racist people they have ever met...
No surprise, as usual the racists are the ones trying to pretend they are the heros vilifying the good ones.
🇳🇱
@freemo@qoto.org
@lonelyowl Yea nazi flag isnt remotely comparable however...
For starters the north was **extremely** violent against Native Americans. So there was not one side that was clearly the racist and the other the good guy. Native Americans almost entierly fought for the south since the north was still actively trying to wipe my people out.
Moreover the north still had slaves at the start of the civil war and the emancipation proclimation only freed the southern slaves not the northern (though the states did free them later in time). Largely pointing to the less than obvious divide, it was very much a grey area.
WW2 also was "evil vs evil" situation from today point of view unless you discount the mores of the times. Sir Churchill was super racist, soviet union was fucking insane imperial violence machine and the US also had racial segregation.
But the flags being flown today are not so much about history as about contemporary narratives and modern meaning, and today confederate flag is widely associated with racism and slavery.
I'm not trying to say you're lying or misguided, since you likely know your country and people better than me 😀
It's just difficult to imagine for me that a lot of people flying a flag is widely associated with racism and slavery aren't racists.
Say what you will, and i think its fair to question if the association is generally good or whatever.. but the facts are, these flags and symbols arent treated the same...
1) Virtually everyone with no exception who adopts the swastika specifically in a way that is linked with Nazis (it is a positive symbol in other cultures) uses it with racist intent.
2) The over whelming majority of southern people who fly the confederate flag do not do so with racist intent and are generally kind people who arent very racist at all.
To me anything else about if its a good look or not is scondary.. intent means far more than anything else, and the intent of people who fly the confederate flag is almost never a racial one.
I know that wikipedia is not always super neutral and accurate, but it says that the flag is definitely associated with racism and some other evil garbage, and has a long history of being used in racist context after the civil war 🤔
But okay, i'll assume you're right, then what do they mean by flying that flag?
> I know that wikipedia is not always super neutral and accurate, but it says that the flag is definitely associated with racism and some other evil garbage, and has a long history of being used in racist context after the civil war 🤔
We all know it, like the USA flag itself, has associations with racism.. Its hard for a flag to exist as long as it has and not be. And sometimes Im sure its been used explicitly as a sign of racism, but that is the exception and doesnt say much about other people who fly it.
> But okay, i'll assume you're right, then what do they mean by flying that flag?
I have asked this of a lot of people. Usually the answers I get are some of the following:
1) As a symbol of rebelion against the government
2) Southern pride / heritage
3) Freedom
I'd say the overwheming majority was #2.
As a symbol of rebelion against the government
Freedom
A rather weird chose of flag since there is a gadsden flag used by libertarians internationally for exactly this, without other contexts.
But okay, anyway thanks for the explanation 🙂
@lonelyowl Not so weird when you consider that even when used as a symbol of freedom, it stillhas a connotation of southern pride and southern independence... something other flags wouldnt have and therefore less appealing as a symbol for those int he south.
> but I don't like Russia but I remember seeing the Ukraine army wearing swastikas.
This is because there is, indeed, a lot of nazis and other far-right folks in the ukrainian army. And a russian volunteer corp who is fighting for ZSU is also full of nazis, or at least right-wing lads. And a leader of "legion of liberty" has some nationalist background.
In general this ukrainian conflict made me to rethink my attitude towards people holding these beliefs. I still don't like them and find them suspicious, but i'm gonna have to admit that if some insane autocratic bastard will ever attack your country, the first people who will rise up to defend freedom, democracy, love, friendship, and peace will not be liberal intellectuals, queer people, or even freespeech-libertarians, but these right-wing gentlemen with swastikas 🤷♀️
@freemo any reason you restricted your sample to southerners? I see people around here (OH, which is *very* proud of its contribution to the Union war effort) paint it on their barns and I'm not really sure what message it's intended to send, if not support for the Confederate worldview.
@khird only reason is i never met a nonsoutherner who used the flag, so i have no expience to call on.
In the few cases ive swwn sourthern flags on norther homes i just assumed they moved here from the south. But i cant say for sure as it was just in passing, i didnt know them.
I suspect if someone was flying it with no souther heritage then it ia reasonable its a underhanded way to show racism. But again never witnessed it to really say.
@freemo well I looked it up - this is a barn on the main road connecting Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland (our three biggest cities). Seems the guy is a Klan leader; there's apparently also a burned cross, but I've never noticed it.
I too have never *met* someone who flies it, to my knowledge, but they're pretty visible anyway.
@khird Well as I said, there is no doubt there are edge cases who might use the flag in that way... I dont doubt that at all... But when half of a whole country use it in a positive way the fact that a small handful of execptions use it explicitly for racism, while disgusting, should not reflect on the overwhelming majority of people who carry the flag and it represents something positive for them.
@freemo I won't argue about the southern pride thing, I don't know, but that seems to have a ring of truth in it. but is this statement reasonable?:
"No surprise, as usual the racists are the ones trying to pretend they are the heros vilifying the good ones."
Ignoring the use of the word racist for a second, I would argue that you are running up against the difference in education backgrounds between the north and south. When I first moved to the south, I was shocked to hear that most considered the civil war to be about states rights. I had not heard that before despite my father being from the deep south. I still think it's a bit of a cop out, since they wanted the right to continue a vile tradition, but that is the education that southerners receive, so I have to accept that background.
On the word racist, this doesn't seem accurate, this is more of a bigotry thing. To be clear, northern bigotry against southern battle flag culture. To me racism and bigotry are the same kind of human ignorance, but usually not the same sort of vile associations, so more precision might not cause as many fits.
> I won't argue about the southern pride thing, I don't know, but that seems to have a ring of truth in it. but is this statement reasonable?:
>
> "No surprise, as usual the racists are the ones trying to pretend they are the heros vilifying the good ones."
To an extent, if you get my mentality... Keep in mind I've been in deep with southern people, both black and white, and been debating this issue with them all day.. so im going from a fresh perspective here.
Generally the southerners are treated like stupid, ignorant, racist people to be dismissed by pretty much everyone else.. I mean its aweful... So here we have the "City folk" doing it again painting all the confederate flag wearing members as if they are KKK members and racist, and almost violently pushing that fact at times...
They are acting **very** racist towards them (white trash rednecks as they see them).. when in fact they are some of the nicest least racist people you could meet. so yea the supposid heros burning the confederate flag and calling them racist, ARE the racist ones,, and its nothing new to be racist against the deep south.. meanwhile the ones getting called the racists are actually the good guys in this scenario.
> Ignoring the use of the word racist for a second, I would argue that you are running up against the difference in education backgrounds between the north and south. When I first moved to the south, I was shocked to hear that most considered the civil war to be about states rights. I had not heard that before despite my father being from the deep south. I still think it's a bit of a cop out, since they wanted the right to continue a vile tradition, but that is the education that southerners receive, so I have to accept that background.
Its only a cop out if they say they didnt care about slavery, then its a lie.. but otherwise its true. A war, and this war in particular, is not about a single thing. It was about state rights, it was about slavery, it was about a lot of things.
Lincoln for example didnt free the slaves during the emancipation proclmation... he freed **only** the southern slaves, all northern states were allowed to keep their slaves... Let that sink in, one of the first acts that kicked off the north is that the southern slaves were all freed and the north kept all their slaves (in the states that still had slavery, this isnt 100% of states)... Doesnt sound like it was as much about freeing the slaves as people make it seem...
@freemo Although the emancipation proclamation didn't end slavery in the north, the 13th amendment was proposed shortly thereafter and ratified in 1865. I am not much of a historian, but I suspect that Lincoln did not have the authority to end slavery universally without that amendment. In any case Lincoln was a major force behind getting it ratified (it failed once).
On racism and bigotry. Although there is overlap, I think that as a concept bigotry is a broader concept than racism. A racist is always a bigot, but not every bigot is a racist. Despite the fact that people (in your example) are considering a group white trash rednecks, and this sounds racist since there is the word "white" in there, it seems more like bigotry to me. I guess if you allow the concept of racism to include prejudice against any "other" group based on any thing whatsoever, then every such person is a racist. I don't happen to agree. The result can be the same, but I don't think the prejudice comes from the same place, and racism's consequences are generally more persistent.
I understand the idea of southerners being dismissed, I have personal stories in my own southern family about such prejudice, in particular with poor farmer kids being dismissed by the townies as stupid and ignorant. I still don't consider it racism. They weren't prejudiced against because of their whiteness or some other physical characteristic beyond their control, but because they looked and acted like poor farmer kids. When he joined the military, the uniform and training erased all differences in background, and that effect lasted after the service. The blacks of the same era did not get the same benefit, after their military service they were still considered "other" because of their skin color.
That sounds a little implausible.
I love hitler jokes and i wouldn't mind to fly a nazi flag for the lulz and as a sign of protest. I am myself not a nazi, i don't hate queer or black or jewish folks, i just love jokes and don't like mr. Putin.
But 99% of other people who wouldn't mind to fly a nazi flag are... well, nazis 😐