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The Stars and Bars itself is not a CSA flag, it was a battle flag for parts of the Confederate Army, but it is not, nor was it ever the national ensign of the confederacy, an element of yes, but not the colors on it's own.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
The Stars and Bars itself is not a CSA flag, it was a battle flag for parts of the Confederate Army, but it is not, nor was it ever the national ensign of the confederacy, an element of yes, but not the colors on it's own.

Which means when it 'resurfaced' in the 1950s as a response to opposing integration and resisting 'civil rights', people who claim that 'I am not racist, it is southern pride and its original meaning' are full of crap and basically are racist and supporting the attitudes of anti-minority violence.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
The Stars and Bars itself is not a CSA flag, it was a battle flag for parts of the Confederate Army, but it is not, nor was it ever the national ensign of the confederacy, an element of yes, but not the colors on it's own.

I said that a few posts in and no one believes me about it sadly.

He actively worked against them.

And I think motivation matters a great deal in a discussion about motivation.

How, exactly?

 Platuan4th wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:


AHAHAHA NO! Get your history from somewhere other than a factually inaccurate wikipedia article.

You mean like my wife's history books about WWII in Africa from her History of Middle East and Africa Masters classes? Most of which focus on the Afrika Korps and Nazism in Africa?

"History is written by the victors." The allies used the idea of Rommel as this anti-Nazi crusader as propaganda to try to get other Germans to break ranks with the party and in the process completely whitewashed him and overlooked a lot of what he had done, much in the same way that the Nazi party had previously rewritten Rommels history to make him appear to be a some sort of god-like legendary warrior of the Nazi party. The factual historical record, including first hand accounts, etc. shows that Rommel was definitely not what you think he is, and lets put it this way, you don't become one of Hitler and Goebbels favorite generals, and command Hitlers bodyguard unit without them having a lot of trust in you, and you don't get their trust by standing against them. And you realize of course, that Hitlers war, of which Rommel was more than a willing participant, was NOT defensive, right? They were purely wars of conquest, and expansion, and everywhere Rommel went, the Final Solution followed. While you could argue that not all those who fought for the CSA fought for slavery, because many fought to defend their homes, etc. you cannot argue that Rommel didn't fight to exterminate the Jewish population, because he was primarily used as part of offensives, and he was, in fact, well aware of what was going on and that his successes allowed the Nazis to cast a wider net across Europe. While he might have 'refused orders' to round up jews and execute commandos, and the like, that was moreso to keep his own hands clean rather than out of a disagreement with the ideology behind it.

Really, it boils down to this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
Just substitute Rommel for Bartoleme and I guess Hitler for Columbus.

Rommel's position as an anti-Nazi towards the wars end isn't a fiction. Personal letters to his son show he was disgusted by the Holocaust and by the way Hitler and his crones handled the war. Of course, Rommel like most of the German military supported the war wholeheartedly at the start.

He got his position in Hitler's bodyguard because of his book Infantry Tactics, which Hitler greatly enjoyed. Not because he consciously agreed with all of Hitler's politics.

Rommel was largely detached from the war at large because of his position in North Africa. Is debateable whether he even knew about the commando or Jewish execution orders at all as his staff directly burned the orders and refused to issue them and possibly did it on their own initiative (arguably they did it because Rommel told them to or as a tight knit group were all aware they didn't want to follow the order). It helps that they were mainly fighting the British and the Germans had a lot more respect and less hatred for the British than they held for Russians, Poles, or Slavs.

Rommel is the 'best' of the bad guys. A person who in the context of reality wasn't a terrible person in the end for all his flaws, arrogance and blinding patriotism being among the. That's not really a myth or the result of whitewashing.

EDIT: He's honestly kind of a close parallel to Robert E Lee. All said, not a bad person, but was definitely on the wrong side of the conflict and moral right, and was held up after the war as a hero of sorts to rehabilitate his countrymen.

Another example like Rommel is John Rabe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe

But it won't change the negative meaning of the Swastika, how it was used then and how it is used now as universally a symbol promoting violence and hate against specific ethnic groups.

I dislike the idea of word and symbol "corruption" that our society has. As soon as something is used for evil purposes it becomes corrupted and unusable every again in polite society. The reverse is never possible. You cannot take something corrupted and use it for any other purpose, making this a one way process. I believe that words and symbols can be reused and repurposed for other means and ends and that this act of "purifying" is a far better solution than the banishment we currently have.

An interesting point about symbol corruption is the Swastika...



There's more then a few uses omitted from this list including the Nordic variant which is a symbol of protection commonly found on shields. Yet when you say Swastika (a term the Nazis never used, prefering the term "Crooked Cross") you immediately think of the Nazis.

They had great PR, however this is off topic unless people are suggesting that the Confederate flag was an ancient religious symbol that has been somehow tainted by an unfortunate association with a group of people who waged a massive war to avoid giving up slavery.

 Manchu wrote:
This can be confusing, even in India.

"I've been getting a good response with the Hitler name; sales are good. I'm concerned that business could drop off once I change it," Chandani told the Los Angeles Times.

India has a rather odd relationship with Nazism. Plenty of streetside booksellers will have a copy of Mein Kampf. Teens will often develop an affectation for Hitler in that brief period in their lives when they've become interested in politics and shaping their own identity, but haven't yet begun to read proper books.

In the West Che Guevara fills largely the same role.


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 Polonius wrote:
And it's a shame we turn history into a child's game of right and wrong. Slavery is a tremendous evil, but not everybody associated with it was evil. Context matters, and morals are always easy when it isn't your wealth tied up in them.

It's worth realising that no matter how nice and moral people may be in their personal dealings, almost all of us are basically products of our social system. We accept what we are born in to, the good and the bad, and learn to treasure what good we personally gain from the system, while looking past what evil it inflicts on others as inevitable or necessary.

The problem was never that the people of the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, or Apartheid South Africa were somehow inherently more evil than people born in other times or other places, but that the economic and social system in place was one that produced evil outcomes.

That they marched in to war to defend their system says nothing of them personally, but simply of the basic nature of all human beings.

It's a lesson that's very important, because one day we'll need to use to explain to our grandkids why we were so tolerant of whatever behaviour of ours that will look so immoral to them in 50 years time.


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 Seaward wrote:
I'd honestly suspect your average Confederate soldier didn't have much of an opinion either way about slavery (or was ambivalent) prior to the war's outbreak, given that he was, statistically, a poor non-slave-owning subsistence farmer. I don't know that for sure, obviously, and I'm certainly willing to be educated.

Ultimately, you just have to compare to Apartheid South Africa to realise how that view can't really work.

Very few White South Africans personally benefited from the land grabs that motivated the original Apartheid regime, but any suggestion that a majority of white South Africans weren't intensely invested in the social order of Apartheid is clearly false. Apply the same to the Antebellum South, while a poor famer might not gain anything from slavery, the social order that regime enforces will impact his life every day, giving evidence of who is beneath him, who he and his family can talk to, who might talk to his daughter...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
They had great PR, however this is off topic unless people are suggesting that the Confederate flag was an ancient religious symbol that has been somehow tainted by an unfortunate association with a group of people who waged a massive war to avoid giving up slavery.

Age alone should not denote value. The fact that something becomes sectioned off is relevant. We have millions of symbols and thousands of words and a growing number of them that we chose to discard and waste rather than reuse or repurpose. It is not the symbol or the word, it is the intention and the meaning that we lend it that should be rejected. Attacking a symbol or word is as useful as attacking a piece of paper. To remove it from use is to limit ourselves. If we were to continue to ban and remove symbols and words that offended us, there would be nothing left to express ourselves through. Look at 1984's concept of the minimalist language. It's an extreme and unlikely example but the principles remain. Language and symbols are tools we created and we control them. It does no good in removing tools from our toolbox. If we cannot control our tools and their purposes, then they are our masters.

 Surtur wrote:
If we were to continue to ban and remove symbols and words that offended us, there would be nothing left to express ourselves through.

You should note no-one has suggested banning the flag, merely that people ought to bee honest about it's meaning. And that meaning differs, of course, based on context - when used by re-enactors it has an entirely different meaning to when it is attached as a bumper sticker to the back of a car.

And by all means a person is free to put that Stars and Bars bumper sticker on the back of their car. But there is nothing requiring the rest of us to pretend we don't know the history of that flag, and the institution that flag symbolises.

Look at 1984's concept of the minimalist language. It's an extreme and unlikely example but the principles remain. Language and symbols are tools we created and we control them. It does no good in removing tools from our toolbox. If we cannot control our tools and their purposes, then they are our masters.

You should see what Orwell had to say about accuracy in with words and their meanings - I don't think he would have thought much of your idea of 'controlling our tools' - instead he simply recognised a word as it was properly intended, to give the clearest definition possible. He would have had little trouble in realising the clear meaning behind waving the Stars and Bars.