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This was an event designed to oppose the results of a free and fair democratic election and the transition of power that would naturally follow,” Mark Pitcavage, a historian and expert in extremism with the Anti-Defamation League said. Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to benefit Trump. The investigation of that interference produced criminal convictions of Trump aides and extensive evidence Trump may have attempted to obstruct justice.
The women had stopped because Hartley has “an amazing respect for veterans” and had recently sought to join the military. She wore a New York City Marathon T-shirt (she ran the course in 2015) and dangly earrings in the shape of her native Texas. She said she had applied to the armed forces because of “patriotism—America.” If she ever deploys, as an operating-room nurse, she said, “I’d have to carry a gun; I’d be an officer.” Her husband supported her goal, she added, explaining, “He’s a Harley guy, so—we’re just full-blooded Americans.”Six days later, on Jan. 26, a Reddit user posted the same picture in r/pics again with the following caption that mentioned China: "Trump 2024 flags being sewn in a Chinese factory… MERICA!!!" While the caption didn't explicitly say that the flags in the photograph showed official Trump merchandise, several of the comments did appear to reflect this belief. The Facts But there were other flags, familiar to most Americans only through textbooks, now appropriated by the seditionists. The Join or Die flag, for instance, featuring a bisected snake first drawn by Benjamin Franklin. A variation of the Betsy Ross flag, where the 13 stars encircle Roman numerals for three, representing the three percent of Americans that anti-government groups believe fought against the British alone in the Revolutionary War. And in a particularly chilling video, an injured policeman lies curled on the pavement next to a discarded Betsy Ross flag . One recent morning, traffic zoomed along I-70—eastbound to Kansas City, westbound to Denver. Carr, who has white hair and watery blue eyes, had on jeans and a T-shirt that referenced a benefit for veterans. Holstered on his left hip was a Colt nine-millimeter handgun—Colorado is an open-carry state. He raised the rear hatch of the S.U.V. and removed twenty-nine large flags, each of which was attached to a pole made of P.V.C. pipe. Most of these were American flags, but there were also banners honoring prisoners of war and law-enforcement officers. Carr went up and down the bridge, affixing the flags to either side of the overpass, where they lifted and flapped in the wind. The important thing to note is that whether or not the casual viewer can understand what it means, they need to know that it means something” Brooks says. “Because otherwise [the rioters] would not have it.”
The far right has co-opted the OK sign as a trolling gesture and, for some, as a symbol of white power. The ADL added that symbol to its long-standing database of slogans and symbols used by extremists. Trump, who as a candidate in 2016 proposed jail time or loss of citizenship for burning the American flag, called the act a “disgrace” on Monday and pledged support for an “anti-flag burning” statute. At its core, the flag is a simple warning – but to whom, and from whom, has clearly changed. Gone is the original intent to unite the states to fight an outside oppressor. Instead, for those who fly it today, the government is the oppressor.
President Donald Trump said Monday that he’d support laws criminalizing flag burning, saying in a call with governors that it’s time for the Supreme Court to take up the issue again as nationwide protests have intensified over the death of George Floyd.
Then there are the acronyms, the internet shorthand we’ve all adopted when we type “LOL” in reply to something funny. But these have spilled over from darker corners of the web: Capitol rioters wore patches declaring WWG1WGA, “Where we go one, we go all”: a message of solidarity between followers of QAnon, the conspiracy theory centered around the belief that the world’s elite are Satan worshippers who murder children and drink their blood. In December, a photographer captured a Proud Boy marching through the streets of D.C. bearing a shirt emblazoned with 6MWE: Six Million Wasn’t Enough. The Holocaust, the man’s shirt announces, is unfinished business. Much of the rest of the speech, the paper said, was devoted to Trump’s lie that his defeat by Biden was caused by electoral fraud. The certification of the election results proved to be exactly the type of event that brought together various groups and could have led to radical ideas being shared, they say. The initial event, which was heavily promoted and encouraged by President Trump, gave all of these groups something to rally around. The “Blue Lives Matter” banner he displayed—a modified American flag with one blue stripe, honoring the police—no doubt angered those who favor “defunding“ law-enforcement agencies. The idea of demanding greater police accountability had intensified since the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Yet Carr assumed that the flag that he had worn into combat was mutually understood as a symbol of national unity. He said, “These flags represent freedom.” No act of speech is so obnoxious that it merits tampering with our First Amendment. Our Constitution, and our country, is stronger than that,” he wrote. “Ultimately, people like that pose little harm to our country. But tinkering with our First Amendment might.”
The video is real, but it's difficult to tell exactly what it shows.
In 2003, Woden Teachout, a graduate student at Harvard who was finishing her doctorate in American studies, took an American flag to a protest of the Iraq War, in Montpelier, Vermont. Teachout, who was with her sisters, Zephyr and Dillon, noticed that the other demonstrators couldn’t figure out whether she was “part of the protest or a counter-demonstration.” Teachout later said that for her the flag was “a symbol of democracy—people in the streets, talking to their government,” but that others were using it as “a very strong pro-war symbol.” Flown by many protesters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the Gadsden flag has a design that is simple and graphic: a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field with the text “Don’t Tread On Me.” But that simple design hides some important complexities, both historically and today, as it appears in rallies demanding President Donald Trump be allowed to remain in office. But you can’t reduce Johns to any simple “message”. He is interested in complexity. The whole point of his art is to take a simple found image or thing – a target, a map, a beer can, the flag – and remake it in a subtle, elusive way. The British Museum’s new addition is a riposte to the delight in bold icons taken by such pop artists as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. It was Johns’ first attempt at screenprinting, which they loved. Johns said his work might properly be considered an abuse of the printmaking medium
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