I mean it's definitely being flown by racists and edgy teenagers and I think there's a strong case to be made that a different design is warranted since the heritage people have been largely unsuccessful in keeping the iconography from becoming a racist dogwhistle. But I think it's important to meet the heritage people where they are and start from there.

One could even argue that it's at best negligent to fly a flag without knowing the most basic history of its symbolism, but if that's really what's going on, then surely it wouldn't be hard to educate all these people who are unintentionally flying the flag.

The Confederate flag has always been a racist dogwhistle. Right from day 1.

The flag, as far as I understood it, was about being a rebel, “don’t tell me what to do” anti-authority.

Maybe my experience is quite different from yours. I never saw a klan rally or anything like that.

I did only buy a “git ‘er done” lighter from a gas station for its redneck kitsch. I didn’t intend to be a racist signal. Comically it’s stuck somewhere and I suspect should my grandkids ever find it in my estate it will be revered as some nazi memorabilia, incorrectly based on my intent.

The point it became a "southern symbol" is a previous set of edgy teenagers and racists who flew it while legislating against black people and trying to stop civil rights.

The point of that iconography is to be a racist dogwhistle, and it's been a very successful one over the past hundred years

I think the fundamental argument here is this: clearly the Confederate flag has been spoiled -- the racists won out and now people associate the flag more with racists than Southern/rural pride.

What should happen? There are people who I think have a legitimate non-racist benign claim to the flag but they're now in the minority and being drowned out by racists. And the public discussion on the matter is an absolute shitshow because those people see the desire to ban the Confederate flag as a racist symbol as an attack on Southern culture/pride. Worse! We have people in this fight who actually are doing that because there is a very real anti-rural anti-Southern sentiment that exists in the US. And on the other side we have racists who are hiding behind Southern pride in an attempt to keep their symbol. Ugh.

So everyone thinks everyone else is arguing in bad faith, nobody believes anything anyone else says, some of the people are actually lying and arguing in bad faith and we're all arguing against caricatures of our opponents.

That pretty much sums up most modern sociopolitical discouse right there.

This postulates that the Confederate flag did not start out spoiled by racism.

If it's being used now by people intending it to represent regional pride who are simply unaware of its history (which I find unlikely, but a lot of people are claiming that), then all it should take to convince them to take down their flags is to share that history with them.

As a symbol for part of the Confederate army, it's still racist even in its first use. Some of the people fighting might have been conscripted against their will, but the symbol itself is still one that promoted slavery of black people

The flag was flown as the symbol of the actual Confederacy for a short time sure, because the Confederacy itself was short lived. But it's been flown as a symbol of southern pride for a long time since then.

And traditions need only span one's own lifetime to be meaningful.

Wouldn't surprise me to see these people switch to one of the other, lesser-known variants to work around the ban.

That's exactly what Georgia did. In 1956 they added the Confederate Battle Flag to their state flag in support of white supremacy and segregation, and in 2003 switched it for the Confederate Stars and Bars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(U.S._state)

>On April 23, 1863, the Savannah Morning News editor William Tappan Thompson, with assistance from William Ross Postell, a Confederate blockade runner, published an editorial championing a design featuring the battle flag on a white background he referred to later as "The White Man's Flag."[6] In explaining the white background, Thompson wrote, "As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause."