Are symbols permanently shaped by their past or are they products of their current usage?

>mfw a yankee calls the rebel flag a confederate flag

Considering its relatively moderate use in the Civil War, compared to its extensive use in the Civil Rights...

>Dude you can use a Swastika despite people using it for thousands of years all over the world, the Nazis used it so its bad

>THE CONFEDERATE FLAG IS EVIL IN ANY CONTEXT

Kek

The Red Hand of Ulster has quite a confusing history

It began as a symbol of the Uí Néill dynasty in the north of Ireland, who were one of the most powerful Gaelic dynasties from the 5th century onward. In the 16th century, the Ó Néills, as they were now known, became the leaders of resistance to English rule in the northern Irish province of Ulster, and came within a hair's breadth of ousting the English from Ireland. Obviously the red hand was a frequently seen symbol on their banners and devices.

Now, because of reasonably successful English efforts to anglicise Ulster, the Red Hand has become a symbol of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment, and is frequently used by British loyalists in the north of Ireland who aren't aware of its Gaelic origins.

It's quite sad because it looks pretty cool.

>mfw my fellow Southerners call the rebel flag "THE confederate flag"

they're permanently shaded by their past so long as people remember their history. you cannot forge a new identity so long as people chase after you with your old one.

Both

This thread is getting dangerously deconstructionist. shut it down

>tfw the Cincinnati reds hat became an apparel for Bloods snd other dindu fangs wuo don't even care about baseball

>But who owns a symbol though?

No one owns it. People can attach whatever feelings they want onto a symbol. I think it's wrong for either side to ignore the legitimate claims about the flag.

Too bad that isn't the confederate flag, and the modern usage is just from the civil rights era.
A lot of neo-liberals talk about the owning of racial terms, and how mulattos took the term and made it their own, whereas nigger, black, and African American are given terms. This exists within symbols, and I believe its important to keep your symbol, and own it, maintain its power with your beliefs, and not let another group define its meaning for you.

Because of this, its more important than ever to be open about your beliefs, and to always be willing to explain them, especially to this "New" wave of people who want to be able to label everything, to have smaller and smaller boxes to fit people in so that they can feel special, since their box is small, but also feel like they have power, and allies.
Its important for us as people to maintain individuality, and open communication, to own our terms and symbols and not let them be forcibly evolved into the writhing masses of confusion and grey lines that many are subject to now.

It's a Confederate Battle Flag

The one the rednecks use is based off the Army of Tennessee's proposed flag and the Naval Jack

>"It's a symbol of Southern Pride"

As a Southerner, there's nothing to be proud about the Civil War. We lost, it's time to move on. Seeing a bunch of rednecks with rebel flags on their pickups reminds me of participation awards that they give to kindergartners. You don't get to celebrate a defeat, ya stinking hillbillies. If you ain't first, ya last.

t. Carpetfagger or Yankee-loving collaborator

Either way, you deserve to hang.

Reminder that the only good Unionist is a dead one.

8=D ((i))

This is not offensive

It is just that eight equals d and it is an integer.

No one owns it, but the people who have the most credible claim to it's contemporary meaning are the people that use the symbol.

Liberals who hate the flag and would never use it have are cunts for trying to arbitrate an objective meaning to the flag that overrides the subjective opinion of what the flag means to someone who does use it.

Contrast this scenario to say, North Korea's name. People from around the world have a right to call North Korea out on it's bullshit for calling itself a Democratic Republic of the People. The reason why is because many people around the world live, or claim to live in republic or a popular democracy. It's fair for such people to compare and contrast their version of a democratic people's republic with North Korea's and claim their version illegitimate.

It's also fair for a butt-hurt liberal to insist that the flag means something different TO THEM and it offends them. Fair enough.

The problem lies with liberals wanting to assert their personal value judgement of a flag they don't fly as an objective observation that people who do fly that flag must accept as doctrine.

Anyone who fights and is willing to die for what they believes deserves to be proud even if they lose, and even if they are wrong.

>symbol of a failed rebellion to protect chattel slavery
>used by rednecks to intimidate minorities and let them know where they aren't welcome
>pretend it's a celebration of history and not a symbol of white supremacy
Words have meaning. Symbols have meaning. If you're going to fly this flag, you know exactly what it means and why you're doing it.

>lose war
>claim other side is butthurt
The only reason north allowed you to keep your heritage was due to break down resistance, they also pumped 'the lost cause' meme which was quite popular back then, in order to pacify any southern gorilla warfare .

Now decades later you spout muh flag muh flag even though they trampled upon it. Lincoln really spoiled you lot in the name reconstruction

I'm not from the south, and yes, liberals are the ones who are butthurt as fuck.

Its shapes and colors. Shapes and colors cant transport hatred, people do.

That attitude is exactly how otherwise good men get manipulated to enable evil things. There is zero honor in fighting for blatantly shitty causes.

People would be far better served thinking long and hard about what they're doing rather than going "lul it's my duty" like a bunch of brainless idiots. And any tool who legit buys into that stuff should not be mourned when they get spanked by people far more righteous than them, as their removal from the gene pool means one less danger to himself and others.

Don't be dense, people don't fly the soviet flag because "I'm a farmer and my favorite comic book character is thor. Also red is my favorite color"

Of course flags can't have emotions. But I'd bet someone with a commie flag flying in their front long is a tankie, just like I'd wager that someone flying a confederate battle flag is at least a revisionist, if not worse.

>just like I'd wager that someone flying a confederate battle flag is at least a revisionist, if not worse.

Don't take that wager.

>Don't be dense, people don't fly the soviet flag because "I'm a farmer and my favorite comic book character is thor. Also red is my favorite color"

Has anyone ever claimed to fly that flag for that reason?

Doesn't even have to be "confederacy dindu nuffin." "Heritage, not hate" is revisionism if your heritage is hate, considering the context of its use as a symbol even after the civil war. And considering that's invariably the first thing that comes out of people's mouths when you bring this up, I think I could make myself a rather rich man.

No, because flags convey ideas and people don't fly flags for their shapes and colors.

This is exactly why every single soldier in the great war fought. They were duty-driven, as at that time in Europe militarism was seen as the ultimate form of a pure, noble, and respect worthy way of life. Not just in Germany, every country sent hundreds of thousands of their best young men to their doom for the sake of duty and honor. It was only later in the war that the soldiers realized there is no honor in marching into a meat grinder for the sake of national pride and sacrifice.

Every government during that war acted like spoiled, shit-flinging, children.

>"Heritage, not hate" is revisionism if your heritage is hate, considering the context of its use as a symbol even after the civil war.

There's a difference between revisionism and different or new interpretations. Revisionism is an attempt to force a new consensus on the truth of a matter.

Whatever the flag means to the consensus or what it historically symbolizes is immaterial to how it is interpreted by people to day.

>what it historically symbolizes is immaterial to how it is interpreted by people to day

Is its history immaterial when people fly it as a symbol of their history?

>Is its history immaterial when people fly it as a symbol of their history?

Yes.

Also, you're under the deeply false assumption that the confederate flag is only flown by southerners with ancestry going back to the days of the confederacy.

>Is its history immaterial when people fly it as a symbol of their history?

>Yes.

The mental gymnastics are getting laid on too thick for me to bother with this anymore

You're concession is noted.

>"I said something so stupid he gave up, therefore I win"

whatever you say mang

>And again, it should make you wonder why that's the specific symbol the south decided to rally its identity behind
what did they mean by this?

>The Confederate Battle Flag. The best-known Confederate flag, however, was the Battle Flag, the familiar "Southern Cross". It was carried by Confederate troops in the field which were the vast majority of forces under the confederacy.
The Stars represented the 11 states actually in the Confederacy plus Kentucky and Missouri.

taken from: usflag.org/history/confederatestarsandbars.html

>Note: It is necessary to disclaim any connection of these flags to neo-nazis, red-necks, skin-heads and the like. These groups have adopted this flag and desecrated it by their acts. They have no right to use this flag - it is a flag of honor, designed by the confederacy as a banner representing state's rights and still revered by the South. In fact, under attack, it still flies over the South Carolina capitol building. The South denies any relation to these hate groups and denies them the right to use the flags of the confederacy for any purpose. The crimes committed by these groups under the stolen banner of the conderacy only exacerbate the lies which link the seccesion to slavery interests when, from a Southerner's view, the cause was state's rights.

what's your angle, dude?

>itt: people expressing their feelings based on what they think they learned

There may come a point where the connotations of the Confederate Flag are far enough removed from its origin that it has independent historical significance, but that's not right now.

That flag is used maliciously by white supremacist groups to express hostility to minorities. Until it reaches a point where it can't be used in a hostile manner, I don't see the Confederate Flag establishing an independent historical identity.

>still expressing personal feelings
>cant see past hollywood

>Just (((Hollywood))) guise

>image from 50 years ago
how are you going to discuss origin, yet represent a time that influences (your) connotations? why are (((you))) still seeing race and letting this continue to bother (((you)))?

They are a defined by how people perceive their past and current usage. Somethings fade and othersee don't.

>swastikas present in nearly every culture..native america, nords, india, africa
>then nazis

you decide

why is the rising sun not banned

Well done, Veeky Forums.

You're not understanding his point.

The vast majority of the millions of people who own and fly confederate flags claim it represents their culture.

The majority of people who fly the Soviet flag do not state that it represents their love of farming and thor.

You're purposefully separating the stated intent from your interpretation and creating a ridiculous strawman.

I would compare it more to buying an electric car or a pickup truck.

Most people say they do it to protect the environment or haul tools and do work.

Do some people buy trucks just to feel like big boy douches?
Sure.

Do some people buy electric cars to feel smug and superior to everyone else because they're being "eco-friendly"?
Sure.

But the stated intent of the majority outweighs those with alternate intent.

symbols are just images they don't mean anything, occasionally people assign meaning to them though

The hell does that have to do with colion noir?

>white supremacy is wrong
>but black supremacy is okay
leftypol spotted

why would they care about baseball?

Some people just don't know how hard it is to be a white man. Between the jews gassing us in droves and blm lynching us in the streets, nowhere is safe. We need someone to stand up and defend white culture, which has been repressed by cultural marxists for millennia!

>used by rednecks to intimidate minorities

You're projecting, it's been used as a symbol for the South for over one hundred years. People just started getting their panties in a bunch over it during the 90's. The Dallas cowboys cheerleaders used to wave it for fucks sake.

Symbols have no fixed meaning that applies to all humans. The attitude towards a given symbol is different for every human being (though you can make some broad, general categories) and is shaped by their perceptions, i.e. what they have seen and heard about that symbol.
I'm not very knowledgable about the american civil war or whereever it was that a faction rode under this flag, but the symbol's use and discourse in mainstream media made me associate it with redneckism and racism.

The past does not necessarily have to have an influence on modern perception of a symbol. It often has, but doesn't have to. Because that's not a direct cause->effect relationship.
Like
{At one point, people do something and use a symbol} -> {their actions get reported (accurately or inaccurately) and brought into other people's perception} -> {these "other people" start associating the reported actions with the symbol and creating the image associated with the symbol, which enters some other people's perception} ... ad nauseum.
With something as historical as that flag, what the original actions were is pretty much completely irrelevant at this point, as what is shaping public opinion is not that.

Funny that you mention the swastika. In the west, can the swastika ever be reclaimed as a symbol of Budhism and Hinduism? Like, in the sense people stop doing the Nazi association first.

The flag didn't become popular until the 20th century.

>Lincoln
>Reconstruction

Wow you're an idiot

Why would they wear a baseball team hat when they don't care about baseball?

Chaplin and Hitler had both the same mustache. One of those two did great things. Its a matter of subjectivity, an icon is an icon, its completly neutral. Nazis did the same salutes as Romans, now if youve never heard if Adolf but you you want to salute people like romans citizen did back then, does that makes you a national socialist?. Perhaps we should fight people instead of their symbols.

There's a minority of liberal scum in my country who hate the St George Cross and say it's a symbol of racism because it was used when killing kebabs was the the latest trend.

It's our fucking country's flag for christ sake, they can complain all they want.

I don't understand the hate for St. George's Cross.

The use of it in England has nothing to do with the crusades or any holy orders, it's taken from the flag of Genoa. Not to mention national flags didn't even really exist when the crusades happened, when England fought in them the closest thing to any national symbol was pic related.

>muh white privilege
Why do leftists hate white people so much?

It's because apparently Richard I adopted it in the crusades so that makes it automatically raysis.

Yes.

As I said, I understand the history. But you couldn't deny that very horrific behaviour took place under the American flag as well, including the perpetuation of the slave trade as well as the oppression of minority groups. Yet I still think the symbol of the American flag represents something different from what it may have meant to some people in history.

>And again, it should make you wonder why that's the specific symbol the south decided to rally its identity behind.
As I mentioned before, there are not that many symbols of the Southern US, they don't exactly have a flag aside from this. Sure, you have the state flags (one of which has a Confederate flag on it) but there is no other symbol that could have really been used as a flag representing the South aside from the real Confederate flag itself. I think the main reason this symbol was chosen over other Confederate flags is that it is more aesthetic.

As I mentioned, I am by no means proud of Southern behaviour during the Civil War, I just think the symbol has evolved beyond a symbol of people fighting to keep black people enslaved. I don't live in the South as of now, and I want a symbol of my Southern birth and I think this symbol is a strong reminder of Southern identity even if I don't support the original cause over which this flag was raised.

So are American flags.

>In the west, can the swastika ever be reclaimed as a symbol of Budhism and Hinduism?
Only for people who could be assumed to be Buddhist or Hindu. I know a Indian people few people who wear swastika necklaces or wristbands. Remember that the Indian swastika is square-aligned as opposed to diamond-aligned and goes the opposite way, you can generally tell when the swastika is used to represent a religious symbol instead of a Nazi symbol.

Which is quite sad. You think that the idea of moving it away from its past to reappropriate it as a symbol of regional pride would be seen as a good thing.

>But you couldn't deny that very horrific behaviour took place under the American flag as well

I think you have to look at point of origin, however. The Stars and Stripes was ultimately created by men attempting to found their own nation after a long train of abuses suffered under the British (as outlined in the Declaration of Independence).

The intent of the Stars and Bars was specifically as a battle flag made to support a confederacy of rebellious states fighting with the expressed, inarguable intent of keeping several millions of people in chains. It was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, as Alexander Stephens said.

> there are not that many symbols of the Southern US, they don't exactly have a flag aside from this.

I think perhaps the question then becomes, why do you need a unifying flag? The Midwest doesn't have one, nor do the Great Lakes, nor the Rust Belt. New England does, but that's a merchant naval ensign dating back to pre-Revolution days and is rarely used today anyway. Speaking as someone born, raised, and who has lived virtually his whole life in Massachusetts, I don't think I've ever actually seen the New England flag in real life.

Why do you need a shared sense of Southern heritage - and by natural extension, an "otherness" to separate you from the rest of the Union? Having decided you need to single yourselves out as necessarily distinct and "other" from the Union, why would you want a Confederate battle flag?

are you dumb? they only have one useage and thats the present usage

Don't allow your government to wuss out on Brexit. Do it for your long lost eldest son.

Because whites are successful in the modern age.

Actual solution: go even further back than the War of Secession and recognize your aristocratic Cavalier rite.

>Man defends Confederate flag
>Wow Sjw
This word has lost all meaning

That depends on what people read into the symbol. Do you feel anything particular when you see the letters SPQR for example?

>But who owns a symbol though
No one and everyone. The meaning of a symbol is dictated both by what you mean when you use it and what other people interpret when they see it.

That might sound complicated, arbitrary and ambiguous, but humans seem to be doing just fine despite all that. In fact, language itself is all three and people still have no problem communicating with each other.