Who is your favourite revolutionary?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That piece of fabric is a symbol of a nation that existed to oppress and enslave an enormous number of people. Symbols matter, as they signal to others that you approve of the ideas those symbols represent.

 

I am probably less familiar with Voltaire's ideals than you are - can you please remind me which one of them said it's okay to celebrate racism and oppression? I do recall that he was willing to defend ideas which he did not agree with, but that is not the same as honoring hatred.

Your comment regarding understanding of the confederate flag is inaccurate. People may say that they understand the confederate flag differently than that, but if you explore their belief it turns out to be code for nostalgia for a world where people with their skin color got to oppress people with a different skin color. The confederacy was founded on the principle that black people should be enslaved. The defense of states' rights and a "southern" way of life is a post-civil war construct that enabled white people to disguise their racism by pretending that the confederacy and the civil war were not what they in fact were.

 

Take your argument to its logical conclusion. Would you fly a swastika?  why not, if it's just a piece of fabric?  The answers to these queries are so obvious that you can treat them as a rhetorical questions.

 

It was a national flag, the flag adopted by the Confederate States of America after they seceded from the United States (note, according to Wiki, it was the third and last flag adopted by the CSA).  As such, it was the symbol of the Confederacy, which was founded to protect the institution of slavery from abolitionists.  It has continued to represent white supremacy, which is why it is such a powerful symbol and one that conveys a strong and repugnant message.

 

And no, it's not just a piece of fabric.

 

After 600,000 northern and southern soldiers died in deadly battles, the southern states were allowed to keep variants of the confederate flag by the now solidified U.S. government, in order to placate the southern states and let them use the flags for memorials and the like.

 

The confederate flag has come to be viewed as a badge of bigotry because of what it represented in the past but also because it was commandeered by white supremacists groups and other bigots such as Nazi skinheads in European countries where the WWII Nazi flag is outlawed.