421–430 of 870 posts
I don’t see how you can make a good faith argument the confederate flag is any different from a swastika. Both represent institutions built solely for racist motives and the subjugation of another race.
We get many confused Americans on Reddit’s /r/Germany asking what’s up with all the confederate flags they see.
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That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika. And before you say "come on, swastikas are pretty extreme", remember the moral panic we just went through when 4chan trolls convinced people that the OK hand sign was a "one-sided version ofna White Power" sign and got people fired from their jobs for making the sign.
It may have been made up, but I'm willing to bet that a not insignificant portion of people who are _now_ making it aren't doing so to make a point of saying "everything is just fine". My town had an issue with a cop posing out with a bunch of 3%ers at their gun store. This is in the PNW, and the owner of the store, born and raised in the PNW, has a Confederate flag neck tattoo. This was during some street protests.…
Come to your own conclusions, but mine is: fuck that - I'll be the judge of what is acceptable and what isn't, not some kind of thought mob.
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Reminder that the Confederate battle flag was in use for less than five years and solely as an icon of a conflict that was very much about the (rather racist) keeping of chattel slaves. Before trotting out the "it's a symbol of heritage" line, ask yourself exactly what that heritage is.
Have you never been to a southern state? It's been flown ever since the war and has been detached from the war and attached to southern identity. It's part of the culture here.
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I see lots of people on the internet making the 4 year argument, and I have to admit it's a snappy quip, but I don't think the point is made entirely in good faith. I really do see it being flown as a symbol of rural and/or southern pride that is informed by, but largely disconnected from, the civil war other than as a historical symbol that broadly represents an opposition between rural folk and urbanites. I mean it…
The Nazi flag was in much longer actual use than the Confederate flags. If anything, the Nazi flag has a more legitimate "heritage" defense than the Confederate one.
I think the fundamental argument here is this: clearly the Confederate flag has been spoiled -- the racists won out and now people associate the flag more with racists than Southern/rural pride.
What should happen? There are people who I think have a legitimate non-racist benign claim to the flag but they're now in the minority and being drowned out by racists. And the public discussion on the matter is an absolute shitshow because those people see the desire to ban the Confederate flag as a racist symbol as an attack on Southern culture/pride. Worse! We have people in this fight who actually are doing that because there is a very real anti-rural anti-Southern sentiment that exists in the US. And on the other side we have racists who are hiding behind Southern pride in an attempt to keep their symbol. Ugh.
So everyone thinks everyone else is arguing in bad faith, nobody believes anything anyone else says, some of the people are actually lying and arguing in bad faith and we're all arguing against caricatures of our opponents.
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History is important because it lets us see ourselves in the arc of time and be more cognizant of how and why we arrived at the present moment. When we idolize figures who we believe did good things, we project a guide line from the past into the future for ourselves to follow. When we erase history, we lose this guidance and direction. It's no mistake that the mob is responsible for the destruction, because a lack o…
That's great. And the growing shift of culture suggests that slave owners are not emblematic of people who did good things, so we should remove them from the public display. The intent is not to erase history, it is to signal changing values.
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The Nazi flag is inarguably racist propaganda. The Confederate flag, however, has for decades been a symbol of southern pride for many people. I read somewhere recently that over 40% see it as a symbol of heritage more than racism.
Pride in what? Heritage of what? The South has hundreds of years of history. Why are the 4 years of the Confederacy so celebrated?
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Have you never been to a southern state? It's been flown ever since the war and has been detached from the war and attached to southern identity. It's part of the culture here.
That begs the question. Why did southerners pick the battle flag of the war they fought to preserve slavery as the symbol for "southern identity?"
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That's an argument for banning swastikas, not banning anyone who displays a swastika. And before you say "come on, swastikas are pretty extreme", remember the moral panic we just went through when 4chan trolls convinced people that the OK hand sign was a "one-sided version ofna White Power" sign and got people fired from their jobs for making the sign.
It may have been made up, but I'm willing to bet that a not insignificant portion of people who are _now_ making it aren't doing so to make a point of saying "everything is just fine". My town had an issue with a cop posing out with a bunch of 3%ers at their gun store. This is in the PNW, and the owner of the store, born and raised in the PNW, has a Confederate flag neck tattoo. This was during some street protests.…
Damn, that's scary.
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But there is a big difference between you and Microsoft. Microsoft is a business serving public, and hence subject to different regulations. For example, Microsoft cannot refuse to serve to women or brown people. You can choose to forbid entry to them in your private garden.
Sex and race are protected classes, using a particular image is not a protected class. I'd be quite surprised if there is any country in the world where you can't discriminate against someone using the confederate flag or some other iconography. And honestly I don't think there should be.