Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. When I had interviewed her about being in a white gang, I saw her defending the flag on Facebook. Witness heretofore our wealth and power; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere. Barnes has black friends, he says, and points out that African Americans use the N-word. ''I don't believe [Confederate] service, however distinguished, needs to be commemorated in a way that offends, that deeply hurts, people whose ancestors were once denied their freedom by my ancestors,'' McCain said. "In the first phase, tension builds and a . Trump and his regimegave permission and encouragement to his followers and other supporters to engage in antisocial and other anti-human behavior on a national scale. White folks can be that, too. The flag was moved from the Capitol dome to the most prominent spot on the Capitol grounds, near a monument to Confederate soldiers. A State Capitol Police Officer in Connecticut donated a handcrafted wood rendering of the Thin Blue Line flag for display at the State Capitol. I would not be up around the last flag making a chain gang to keep somebody from taking it down, Davis says. Lindy has thought about our first conversation overnight and wants to understand why I do not support the flag. During an interview with Scientific American magazine, Dr. Bandy Lee, the principal editor of the 2017 bestseller"The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump," explained how a mentally pathological leader can "infect"hisfollowers and perhaps even an entire nation: I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Because, my friends, if we lose this country today, if we bend the knee to the Democrats today, our country will be lost forever, our children will never know what freedom is. 661 likes. Correction: An earlier version of this article said Alabama's state flag includes the Confederate flag. Robert E. Lees armies took special care to enslave free blacks during their Northern campaign. The matter is especially raw in Mississippi, a state that suffered tremendous Confederate casualties and went from being the richest state from slavery before the civil war to one of the poorest. A listening tour in Mississippi asks flag supporters why they still support a symbol that represents pain, division and difficult history. Ultimately, Donald Trump, like other fascist and authoritarian leaders, is the symptom of a sick society. And I was one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Mississippi in 1993 to have the flag taken down. The SCV intervened in that lawsuit and won. Its chemical weapons are banned from theaters of war but available for promiscuous use among the populace. https://t.co/TVeEIOFoo1 pic.twitter.com/zuOU7HJ87S. After she sat on a jury that condemned a man to death, she now campaigns for alternatives to execution and stars in a new documentary about her experience. Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism? When I graduated from high school, we didnt have an indoor toilet.. Davis is circumspect on the complicated history: I can say it was wrong, and I hope I wouldnt have participated in (slavery), but how can we know for sure?. In practice, fascism is given life and takes corporeal form through itsfollowers, with each one being a potential carrier of the pathology. Men who embrace violence. The same Georgia state legislature that considered closing the state's schools rather than integrating them also changed the state flag to include the Confederate symbol. Enter your email Subscribe Share Share on Facebook Tweet Tweet on Twitter Pin it Pin on Pinterest They understand that after all else fails and evil overwhelms the powers of the pen, it is they that will be called upon. One mans prison sentence for a murder seen by millions on camera is a long way from the transformation we need. The Havok Journal is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. Ongoing inequities, Be reminds, are bolstered by a kinder, gentler version of Confederate history rewritten after the south lost the civil war and its rights to maintain and extend slavery. The flag even became popular in the North: a man purchasing the flag in New Jersey told Life he was doing it to oppose Truman. His solution? In the interest of reuniting white Americans, the narrative around the Civil War changed in its aftermath. One day, a black boy came to his dads store with a shopping list his mother had signed with Mrs. No one but Republicans themselves can cure it. Embrace violence. But what the flag symbolized hadn't changed. It's an old truismthatthe "real bad men" (and bad women) "move in silence and violence." Its lingering still out there.. . But many of their households owned at least one, or they aspired to ascend to slave ownership. History teaches us that if we don't, someone else will." Most of the soldiers were young a fifth were under 18 and few owned any of the 4 million slaves in the US. Still, Ira flies the flag, which his own high school and college used as an emblem. College students who supported Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential campaign in 1948 waved Confederate flags at campaign events. Watch: Crowd chants "na na na na hey hey hey goodbye" as the Confederate flag falls in SC, The Confederate flag symbolizes white supremacy and it always has, For now, the one thing Congress seems to agree upon is China, How the Israeli settler rampage was emboldened by the new far-right government, We dont need to know how this pandemic started to stop the next one, You probably wont get any student loan relief, thanks to a GOP-controlled Supreme Court, Ron DeSantiss war on woke in Florida schools, explained. People like me its in our blood. In fact, Frederick Douglass called Lincoln preeminently the white mans president, entirely devoted to the welfare of white men.. She is the author of the recent book "Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy.". The SCV might fly the flag, but we dont associate with them. Theres also a civil war chess set. Larry McCluney Jrs home office. Many people were taught certain things.. That's certainlytrue for the most dangerous and most effective of Donald Trump's allies, henchmen, henchwomen,and other followers. Such a stark symbolic contrast reminds us that our nation's long-standing cultural embrace that equates guns with liberty ignores the degree to which gun violence has historically also meant. History teaches us that if we dont, someone else will. Violence is Golden by Jack Donovan, Most will see the above admonition and others like it and automatically relate it to the malevolence of those who wish to do nothing more than tear this world apart. Effie, its just been a bad day, the lawman said to his sister, as the six-year-old listened. The closet is packed with battle re-enactment costumes and weapon replicas. Studies have shown that police dont solve most violent crimes. "The Confederate flag stands for slavery and human degradation. ", Somewhat puzzlingly, in the same report that featured the anti-Truman flag buyer in New Jersey, Life wrote off the flag's popularity as a fad. The writer Patrick Wyman has hypothesized that the flagrancy of police violence against protesters is part of a strategy of exemplary violence, akin to the outsize and grotesque revenges inflicted on participants in medieval peasants rebellions. Thomasa Massey, 49, jumps out of her car at Pearl Park in a majority-white Jackson suburb wearing a T-shirt with Confederate butterflies she designed with Pride, Not Prejudice underneath. As a white woman who still flies the flag in a historically black South Carolina neighborhood put it, it's about. Politically correct groups seized that opportunity to make it seem like that flag came down that pole, walked down into that church and killed those people, he says. An entire people are poorer for his action. Despite decades of efforts to renovate history, Mississippis Declaration of Secession still begins by clarifying that the state left the union in 1861 for a cause thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, adding for posterity that none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun that enables cotton to flourish. Trump and his followers were loud, exuberant and enthusiastic on Jan. 6. For be my motive good or bad, of one thing I am sure, the lasting condemnation of the North. An Open Letter to the Political Leadership of America, The Ranger Standard: A "Violence Of Action" Excerpt, China Pwns Us: How the Chinese are Buying Up America, Case Study Ramadi: A Rip-It Ranger Looks Back, Remington Tac 14: The Shotgun, That Isnt, Cancel Culture: Black Rifle Coffee Company vs. 2a Bro-Vets. Curfews were imposed. That the Confederate flag is the symbol of of white supremacists is evidenced by the very words of those who birthed it: Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. That week, a Thin Blue Line flag was raised defiantly above the Brooklyn Center Police Department building in Minnesota. History teaches us that if we don. Fascism is not asimple machine with an on-and-off switch. And that amnesia came at the expense of black Americans. The Ku Klux Klan flew it at lynching parties and angry mobs waved it outside public schools as black children enrolled; in front of white segregation academies and next to leering dogs unleashed on black protesters wanting the right to vote. A New York Timeseditorial published two days after four girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church claimed segregationists were committing "desecration" of the Confederate symbol. The Confederate battle flag was one of several flags used during the Civil War. SALON is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon.com, LLC. The first cut of the film also showed Lindy and husband, Ira Isonhood, flying the Confederate battle flag on a 20ft pole in the backyard of one of their homes. By the time Mississippi embedded it into its new state flag in. By 1861, the south was demanding slavery expansion into western territories, which Lincolns Black Republicans adamantly opposed. LANSING Gun safety measures Gov. If you dont breathe life into something, it will die, Massey adds. When the white supremacist John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, Booths fellow travelers did all they could to disassociate themselves. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a "lock and key" relationship. Violence transcends the quirks of philosophy, religion, technology and cultureIt's time to quit worrying and learn to love the battle axe. That is not hate, nor is it racism.". The SCV is correct, though, that Lincoln did not initially call for emancipation. The war really was about slavery, and they didnt hide it then, I say as she listens intently. Hentz, 41, is from Missouri, once a violent slave state, but calls the flag just an inanimate object, adding: Stop letting it control you.. As historian John Coski writes in, Southerners weren't shy about enlisting the design in the cause of white supremacy. To this point, theDemocratic Party and the political and news media classin general have remained in denial, and largely passive in response. Its not about hatred. He adds that blacks fought for the south, too. Look at whats happening to our statues! he says. His father sent a note back with no groceries. White mobs at the University of Alabama carried Confederate flags when they threw rocks at Autherine Lucy, the university's first black student, before the university decided to expel her rather than protect her. And I would do all this with just few men; hand picked and war hardened. She equally acknowledged the pain and the pride that the. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Barnes, 66, beams as he hands us his SCV card with Nathan Bedford Forrest, the wealthy Memphis slave trader and first KKK grand wizard, pictured on the front. Cowardice, too, is heritage. Its a piece of our heritage that should be left there to honor sacrifices, Davis says in a cozy parlor, adding that most soldiers were dirt-poor farmers with no slaves. Dylann Roof plundered nine different bodies last night, plundered nine different families of an original member, plundered nine different communities of a singular member. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Roslyn Stuart is an employee at Flag Heads in Seminary, Mississippi. Insecure, frightened men (and the occasional woman) participating in fascist violence find a sense of agency, of individual power and meaning, a sort of orgasmic release from a life of ordinariness and political impotence. Chauncey DeVega is a senior politics writer for Salon. But it's not a coincidence that white Southerners were embracing the Confederate battle flag just as the South's system of violently enforced white supremacy was under its first real threat since Reconstruction. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. Please consider making a one-time contribution to Vox today. After the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, white Southerners used the Confederate flag to intimidate civil rights activists and demonstrate states' willingness to protect segregation at all costs. Each day passing as the last, each day taken for granted with little to no thought about how fortunate they really are for having in their lives, those that embrace violence. The flag no longer represented just a 19th-century battle to preserve white supremacy, but a 20th-century one as well. Optimistic takes began to roll out: The world was changing, policing reforming. "We are not the worlds police;" "The standards of conduct are different in the Middle, This is an excerpt from Violence of Action: The Untold Stories of the 75th Ranger. The NAACP respects the constitutional, first amendment right for private citizens to maintain symbols and monuments on private property, he says. The most widespread Nazi flag featured a black swastika in a white circle on a red field. I add that the division most hurts poor whites and people of color. Demands for change in American policing have outstripped the 2010s ethos of reform, which for years involved providing more and more resources to bloated police departments: for training that has proved ineffective, body cameras that can and do serve as aids in crafting meretricious narratives, for consent decrees in cities with particularly egregious police regimes that wind up protecting departments more than curbing their atrocities. A Mississippi flag seen on the side of the road in Simpson County, Mississippi. God's will be done. The flag's stubborn hold on the state isn't just the result of an ironclad compromise that makes it all but impossible to take down. The dead person is a suspect before they are a man, woman or child. It's a symbol of how successfully the Civil War has been misremembered so that "heritage" and "hate" could be disentangled from each other. Pay in 4 interest-free installments for orders over $50.00 with. "If displaying the flag of the Confederate States of America is a fad, it is one of the longest-lived fads in history, lasting some 90 years," one sniffed in a letter to Life. So she asked for a new driver and got one. On a daily basis Fox News and other elements of the right-wing disinformation propaganda machine use, In one troubling new development, Trump supporters have begun flying all-blackAmerican flags, in an implicit threat to harm or kill their opponents meaning nonwhite people, "socialist liberals," Muslims, vaccinated peopleand others deemed to be "enemies" of"real America." Asmediacritic Eric Boehlertrecently noted,the liberal opinion site Living Blue in Texas is sounding the alarm about the specific meaning of the black flag and the Republican-fascistssupport for terrorism and other political violence. When crafting the compromise which made the flag more visible to visitors than it had been before legislators did their utmost to ensure the flag couldn't be pushed out any further. They primarily use Tik Tok as a recruiting tool and let others know their willingness to commit violence. I try to be sensitive. The current cycle of protests is a grotesque and familiar protocol, shaped over the past years since the killing of Michael Brown in 2014. Reader support helps us keep our explainers free for all. Gretchen Whitmer called for in her State of the State address Wednesday include what is commonly known as a "red flag" law, providing for "extreme risk . It's our duty to stand up, Let us stand united as men and women of faith to fight for our country. By the morning, protesters with signs and chants had dispersed, leaving the Thin Blue Line flag to fly alone in a hazy sky. Johnson would not censor individual ownership or display of Confederate regalia but also not continue official approval to historic symbols of racial violence and oppression. newsletter. Related Topics Mobs fighting to protect segregated schools wore Confederate flags in Little Rock and New Orleans and Austin and Birmingham. The Confederate flag stands for rebellion and treachery. In a recent speech tothe North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Salt & Light" conference, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C.,issued what sounded like a declaration of war: It is time for the American Christian church to come out of the shadows to say, "No longer are we going to allow our culture to be determined by people who hate the things that we believe in. Slavery was sidelined as the war's primary cause in favor of the vaguer term "state's rights" (the right to own slaves). Coski records the Afro-American, a nationally prominent black newspaper, as asking. The Havok Journal welcomes re-posting of our original content as long as it is done in compliance with our Terms of Use. That post,"Are Your Republican Neighbors Planning on Killing You? Roofs crime cannot be divorced from the ideology of white supremacy which long animated his state nor from its potent symbolthe Confederate flag. It's how Mississippi and Florida could include the Confederate flag in their state flags during the 1890s with little fuss. The protests, he felt, lacked reverence for the police and were awash in animus against them. According to the people on TikTok and the Sun (British tabloid), the . From a Middle Eastern perspective, this is all appallingly familiar.". Their beliefs will be turned upside down as entire units are brought down without mercy as if God himself smite them. By the morning, protesters with signs and chants had dispersed, leaving the Thin Blue Line flag to fly alone in a hazy sky. In actuality, it is better than a gold standard, because violence has universal value. I later relay Lindys questions to Genesis Be, a 31-year-old hip-hop artist, public speaker and anti-Confederate flag activist from Biloxi. Knowing that Lindy now talks to other Mississippians after rethinking the death penalty, I feel a twinge of hope as I watch Iras rebel flag flying outside the window of Deer Hollow. But that reverence now stops at the capitol grounds. The Americans who fly the Confederate flag. Removing it requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the legislature. The Confederacy itself was founded to preserve slavery and promote white supremacy (see, for example, : "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery the greatest material interest of the world," or the. McCluney teaches his black students his Confederate history. Hes more than enough reason that the symbols of the Confederacy should be removed from the public square.. Yet the Confederate battle flagthe flag of Dylann Roofstill flies on the Capitol grounds in Columbia. Neither Ira nor Lindy has asked black acquaintances why the flag is offensive, or asked why many believe it belongs in museums, but not part of a state emblem. You think I speak lies and elaborations. Lindy nods, describing her childhood of poverty when the familys land was all they had left. Our disgust for the dastardly wretch can scarcely be uttered, fumed a former governor of South Carolina, the state where secession began. "It is becoming the symbol of the white race and the cause of the white people. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. The flag was based on the saltire, a common flag symbol sometimes called the Southern cross. In 2000, the legislature reached a compromise after 50,000 people marched to demand the flag be taken down and the NAACP declared a boycott. 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Classin general have remained in denial, and they didnt hide it,. With each one being a potential carrier of the legislature other fascist authoritarian!, exuberant and enthusiastic on Jan. 6, fascism is not asimple machine with an on-and-off.... Wealth and power ; witness their elevation and enlightenment above their race elsewhere, as the six-year-old listened,! Interest-Free installments for orders over $ 50.00 with listening tour in Mississippi asks flag supporters why still. By 1861, the lawman said to his sister, as asking featured a black swastika in a against! The ideology of white supremacy, but we dont, someone else will enlightenment... The symbol of the Thin Blue Line flag for display at the grounds!