Thursday, January 06, 2022

The Corruption Of An American Symbol.

[RANT]

The Gadsden flag was used by the Continental Marines during the Revolutionary War and that great history has now been dragged through the mud and has become a racist and antigovernmental symbol.

It was flown over the insurrection at the Capitol, it was flown at the white supremacists riot in Charlotte.

In the New Yorkers’s article “The Shifting Symbolism of the Gadsden Flag” by Rob Walker, he writes,

As for Gadsden’s creation: after the Stars and Stripes was adopted as the official flag of the United States (with little fanfare or recorded debate, Leepson notes), the Gadsden design remained something of a Revolutionary relic for many years. By the nineteen-seventies, it had some popularity in Libertarian circles, as a symbol of ideological enthusiasm for minimal government and the rights of individuals; there was little mainstream interest in the flag as late as the summer of 2001, when Chris Whitten, who described himself in an e-mail as having “a background in the broader Libertarian movement,” started a Web site dedicated to the history of the flag (and associated merch). Traffic spiked after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Whitten says, and searches (and sales) also climbed as the Tea Party movement emerged. The symbol’s appeal spread through pop culture, as an all-purpose signifier of swaggering defiance. In 2014, Alabama became the seventh state to approve a specialty license plate with a Gadsden design.

We see it flown by QAnon and other right-wing groups at antigovernmental rallies.

The right is so quick to call out “Cancel Culture” well they have done their own “Cancel Culture” by eradicating the history of the Gadsden Flag and corrupting the marines’ first flag and they need to be called out for it.

[/RANT]

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