Sickles, Hammers, Stars and Bars

Recently, the United States was shaken to its core by a large white nationalist/supremacist and Neo-Nazi rally in the sleepy little college town of Charlottesville, Virginia. Violence broke out at the rally and a young woman named Heather Heyer lost her life in the subsequent car attack.

This "Unite the Right" Rally, was organized as a protest against the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Many protestors carried the infamous battle flag of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, often referred to as the Stars and Bars. 

In recent years, the United States has wrestled with the question of when, if ever, the display of this flag is appropriate. Some argue it is a vital piece of Southern pride and heritage, a symbol of the resolve of the people. Others decry it as an inherently white supremacist flag, citing its use by groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, that flag is often compared to the red, white and black swastika flag once used by Nazi Germany. 

Personal display of the Stars and Bars is not illegal, and strong arguments exist that even with the extremely negative connotations of the Stars and Bars, it should remain available to use on a personal basis. Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have defended the rights of white nationalists and Neo-Nazis to march with that flag as hate speech is still considered constitutionally protected free speech and assembly. 

The flag is still flown at many Confederate memorials, and this has also been a point of controversy. The memorials are considered inherently traitorous as the Confederacy did try to break away from the United States, as well as an enabling symbol of the racism which has tarnished much of American history. 

Some do not want these memorials gone as they fear it will make the history behind them fade away. Some believe these memorials should be razed entirely because of their white supremacist connotations. Indeed, many of the monuments were erected during the Civil Rights Movement and dedicated by the Ku Klux Klan, an unmistakable symbol of white supremacists.

Others believe the memorials can exist, but should only appear in museums and at the Civil War battlefields where they became stained with blood.

Even then, there exist gray areas. On Georges Island in Boston Harbor, deep into what was once Union territory, there exists a large headstone which memorializes thirteen Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war on the island. The headstone was put there by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1963, as both the Civil Rights Movement and Civil War centennial were in progress. The memorial is currently boarded up and some are calling for its removal, but it does not really glorify the Confederate cause in the same way a triumphant statue of General Lee or Jackson may. It is little more than a headstone not unlike what you'd see in a civilian cemetery. 

Symbolism is powerful, and the Stars and Bars has counterparts in other parts of the world. For centuries the swastika was a symbol of luck and good fortune in parts of Asia, but it is synonymous with one of the purest forms of evil in Europe and the Americas. Japan’s Rising Sun flag is still considered a patriotic symbol in Japan. It is still officially used by the Japanese Navy and its symbolism appears in Japanese day-to-day life on Asahi Gold beer cans and the daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun (“The Morning Sun”), despite the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan in China, South Korea, and the United States.

And then there’s the famous, universally recognized symbol of communism, the interlocking Hammer and Sickle. Mention Russia and despite it being over 25 years since the fall of the Soviet Union, don’t be surprised when that symbol is mentioned a few minutes later. It’s near unavoidable, for better or for worse.

For seventy years, that unmistakable crimson banner was the symbol of my country of origin. Had I been born less than two years earlier, I would have been born in the USSR, not Russia. Indeed, my original passport does not say Russian Federation.

It says Союз Советских Социалистических Республик. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The Stars and Bars has been convincingly argued to be a symbol of racism and white supremacy, whether intended or not. Obviously not everyone who flies that flag is a racist, but many, many racists fly that flag. It was clearly displayed by many during the infamous tiki torch march in Charlottesville. It is the same with the old orange-white-blue South African flag and the green and white flag of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

The Sickle and Hammer is a symbol of communism. Communism is not an inherently prejudiced ideology, but under its red banner, over 100 million people in China, the Soviet Union, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe were unjustly imprisoned, sentenced to cruel and unusual punishment, outright executed, or even victim to genocide in Cambodia and Ukraine.

The dynamic is a bit different than that of the Stars and Bars. The Confederacy attempted to break free of the United States. It failed. The Reds, however, succeeded in overthrowing the provisional government of Aleksandr Kerensky and won the Russian Civil War and with it control over all of what was the Soviet Union. When they won, the sickle and hammer flag ceased to be simply a symbol of a political ideology, but a country.

That symbol went on to be included in snapshots of great historical achievement. When Nazi Germany was defeated, Red Army soldiers flew the Sickle and Hammer over Berlin. Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova, the first man and woman to break free of Earth and visit the cosmos did so with "CCCP" proudly displayed on their helmets.

Therefore, it could be argued that there exists a limited space in which one could celebrate achievements of the Soviet peoples with that flag and symbol displayed.

It also comes down to timing. A Russian or a person with Russian heritage with pride in the achievements of his or her people may choose to display with restraint such symbolism on certain holidays such as on Victory Day or Cosmonauts’ Day, but in all other cases opt to display the white-blue-red flag used today.

It would also, without a doubt, be considered especially inappropriate in the presence of certain people and groups. Just as displaying the Stars and Bars to a black person or the Nazi swastika to a Jewish person would be unthinkably disrespectful, displaying the Soviet banner would be gravely disrespectful to display in the presence of citizens of the countries that were once unwilling satellites of the USSR. In the United States, many have responded to the display of the Stars and Bars with the slogan, “Stop pretending your racism is patriotism”. That slogan could be altered in the case of the Soviet banner as well, although perhaps not in a direct condemnation of racism. While communism was oftentimes mixed with ethnic and racial prejudices, the ideology, at least on paper, portrays itself as a force against such prejudice.

In Russia, most of the statues and symbols of communism were not destroyed. Some still stand in their original places, but many have been moved to museums to offer historical context and a space for debate. It is possible that a similar approach to Confederate symbols may be required. To erect a statue of a Confederate soldier in heroic likeness in a city square will almost certainly be considered inappropriate. To erect a statue of a Confederate General from the vantage point where he directed his troops on a Civil War battlefield or at a museum near that battlefield, while not completely without controversy, could be used in a more historical and informative perspective. Even Robert E. Lee, the most famous of Confederate generals, believed statues of his or his brothers in arms’ likenesses would keep old wounds open.