4 ms·

> there was an effort to rehabilitate it (as in the Dukes of Hazzard) as a symbol of anti-authoritarianism Never got that one. Nothing like the flag of a break

• porkbeer 3y ago
  It's known as the 'Rebel Flag' in the united states, and has indeed stood for being a rebel with none of the modern racist associations attaced to it. Many of your favorite antiracist rock stars of the 60s sported the flag. People under 40 mostly just know the culture-war version where its akin to a swastika, which itself originally had a different meaning. Symbols change, you have to view them through the lens of history and culture before recoiling to modern interpretations,
  • MavisBacon 3y ago
    Most Americans refer to this as the “Confederate Flag” these days. I’m currently living in the south, though, and you’ll hear it referred to as the rebel flag in this region by liberals and conservatives alike. Regardless I appreciate your acknowledgment of the cultural aspect, and people like the Allman Brothers and Tom Petty certainly did fly the flag back in the day
  • psychoslave 3y ago
    I can't tell for the rebel flag, but the swastika never stopped to be used with its original meaning in India, and at least in Europe it's rather well known that nazis "stole" it from India cultural heritage where it doesn't have the same semantic to say the least.
  • dctoedt 3y ago
    > has indeed stood for being a rebel with none of the modern racist associations attaced [sic] to it I grew up partly in the South of the civil rights era and went to one de-facto segregated school. (Dad was military, stationed in various places.) I was a kid, but I paid attention to the news, and my impression was that racism was the clear, undeniable subtext to the "being a rebel" part: Many Southerners — notably, most of those who held political- and economic power — resented federal "interference" with "Southern ways," namely the violent oppression of blacks to keep them as an impoverished, powerless, underclass workforce. (In 2020 I read a tweet thread from an anonymous Army officer, recapping the history of post-Civil War Reconstruction and the Union's de facto surrender in 1877; the quote that stuck with me was, "Sherman should've mowed the deep south like a lawn, making multiple passes") https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843 https://twitter.com/pptsapper/status/1313470161974947843
• rayiner 3y ago
  Part of that effort was to reframe the reasons why the Confederacy was “founded,” at least in part as a way of saving face (which is very important in southern culture). Their narrative glossed over slavery, and focused on the other aspects of the conflict: the industrialized north, with its big banks and big corporations, versus the agrarian south. Do you remember the scene in Hamilton where they negotiate about where to put the capital? And the Hamilton says something along the lines of “let the south have the capital, we’ll have the bank where the real power will be.” It’s not hard to make the south look like the good guys if you ignore the Confederate elites’ actual reasons for the war.
• zarzavat 3y ago
  If the US had not been founded then slavery would have been abolished much sooner, so I don’t think the US flag gets a pass either.