Some attackers on the Capitol carried the Confederate flag. Photo: Reuters via BBC Mundo / Courtesy
Wednesday was a dramatic day that revealed the deep political polarization that exists in the United States.
On the one hand, hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington, a compound that represents the most sacred of American democracy, waving the controversial flag symbol of oppression, racism and white supremacy.
On the same day, Georgia, a southern conservative state that was part of the Confederate States that fought in the American Civil War against the abolition of slavery, elected the first black senator in its history: Raphael Warnock.
Warnock’s victory -a pastor of a church Baptist church in Atlanta, where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. frequently preached – along with Jon Ossoff, gives the Democratic Party control of the Senate for the first time in a decade.
The election of Jon Ossoff (left) and Raphael Warnock gives control of the Senate to Democrats. Powerful Emblem and controversial
The Confederate flag was originally used by the 11 Southern states that seceded from the Union and fought against the abolition of slavery in the US Civil War (1861 – 1865), being finally defeated.
Originally adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia, it was quickly incorporated by the rest of the “rogue” states as a potent emblem of Confederate nationalism.
Despite having been removed from government buildings Of the southern states, the flag flies in many places. It would also become a symbol of white supremacy, the oppression and the slavery that, until relatively recently, was hoisted in front of some government buildings in the southern states.
It is still frequently seen in establishments, stamped on the cars, windows and clothes of some citizens from those states.
5 keys to understand why the Civil War continues to generate controversy a century and a half later Why does the Confederate flag, a symbol linked to slavery and white supremacy, continue to fly in the US? Defenders of the right to unfurl the flag maintain that it is an essential element of their legacy. There are southern whites who trace their ancestors back to the Civil War and with the flag they wish to honor the relatives who fought and died in the conflict.
For others, particularly African Americans, the connotations of this flag are so painful and insulting that they believe that the only place indicated to display it is a museum.
Associated with violence After the Civil War, the flag was used primarily for commemorative purposes and at soldiers’ gatherings, but from the mid-20th century onwards began to be used as reaction against the different movement s for Civil Rights .
Racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and advocates of racial segregation turned it into your banner.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan were present at the violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. In recent years it has once again been associated with violent acts by white supremacists, such as the massacre of nine black parishioners in a South Carolina church in 2015, perpetrated by a young white man who was photographed with that flag,
Or the clashes recorded in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, for the protests by white supremacists in which a woman was killed and half condemned by Donald Trump .
In fact, in the mass rallies organized by the Republican president in his four years in office, there have always been a sector that is id Identify with that flag .
This was evident this Wednesday with the assault by hundreds of his supporters on the premises of the United States Congress, some wearing that emblem.