Reply #17: No ...

[RoyGBiv]

"People who display the Confederate Flag" is not a description of a monolithic group, nor even of a specific flag. People display various Confederate flags for different reasons. I have several battle flags myself, one of which I sometimes display outside my apartment underneath the American flag during the 4 of July holidays. The flag I display is probably not what you associate with the "Confederate Flag," but it has some similarities, i.e. the St. Andrews Cross. (The flag I display was carried by a regiment of Pickett's Division, Longstreet's Corps, ANV at the battle of Gettysburg, which culminated on July 3, 1863 and which I always commemorate during the days prior to the July 4th holiday.) I have other battle flags you likely wouldn't recognize at all, such as the Bonnie Blue and the battle flag of the Confederate Irish brigade. I also have a reproduction of the 1st Kentucky Brigade, the Orphan Brigade, which almost no one recognizes.



I won't even start on the native American battle flags I posses.

I also effectively display a lot of "Confederate Flags" via the art that adorns my walls, most of which is Civil War art. My favorite painting is called _The Loneliness of Command_ and depicts Lt. General James Longstreet in his tent, alone, deep in thought. As an officer in the Confederate Army, naturally there is some variation of the Confederate flag near him in this painting.

What I perceive you to be talking about is people who display the commonly recognized Confederate Battle Flag, which is itself a problematic concept both to displayers and perceivers because no single battle flag existed, yet a common version of it has become prominent as some sort of "fuck you" statement to the government. The Confederate naval jack, which was slightly modified and adopted for use by the army on the battlefield and later became a common and obvious symbol of resistance to civil rights activists, is both a soldier's symbol and one, as mentioned, of resistance to federal control over states that refused to abide by civil rights laws. In that sense, I oppose display of the flag, and I oppose its display where it is recognized as a symbol of the KKK. (At the same time, in this context, I also opposed displays of the Christian flag and the US flag, both of which were just as commonly used by the Klan at the time they appropriated the CBF.)

In this response, I'm barely touching on the question of what the Confederate Flag actually is. On that subject I will only say that I know very few people who recognize it. As mentioned, the CBF is a soldier's flag that was later adopted by the KKK and other racist groups. The actual Confederate flag has three versions, which are rarely seen.

As for a symbol of traitors in its negative sense, I cannot and will not see any of the various Confederate flags that way because I see this as a hypocritical stance in its purest form. The American Revolutionaries were traitors, every bit as much as those who claimed a constitutional right to secession and formed the Confederate States of America. In fact, the American Revolutionaries were more clearly traitors than the secessionists of the 1860's because, at the time, the question of whether secession was constitutional was at the very least questionable. No one, not even the Revolutionaries themselves, had any question that signing the Declaration of Independence or firing on British troops was a treasonous act. The difference is that the Revolutionary cause was morally just. The Confederate cause, while potentially valid in legal and theoretical principle, was incredibly wrong morally.

Having said all that, most people I see who display the CBF are racist fucksticks who deserve no quarter. I don't think of them as traitors. I think of them as barely human scum.