"Southern Bastards" Rip Apart the Confederate Flag in Variant Cover

[t hedge coke]

I wish creators would remain professional and stop injecting their biased political views in their work. But whatever makes money. I'd probably sell out too if I could.

How is the use of the authors' politics not professional?

All comics show something of their authors' politics or that of their target audience from the moment Garth Ennis decided to stop making French jokes for awhile to Spider-Man criticizing student protestors back in the 60s. An apolitical author does not exist, at most, their politics just fit ours so well it doesn't seem as political as something from someone with whom we disagree.

[Joker]

I wish creators would remain professional and stop injecting their biased political views in their work.

It's their work, they can do whatever they want. Don't like it? Fine, don't buy it, but don't act like they're at all off base.

[andersonh1]

Confederate flag hate is an useless, trendy exercise in selective outrage. The Bars and Stripes flew over a racist, white-supremacist nation for 4 years. The Stars and Stripes that you all love today flew over a racist, white-supremacist nation for 89 years. If you're gonna hate a flag for its connection to prejudice and genocide then you might as well ban all flags in our planet considering the vast majority of nation states have prejudice and genocide woven in their historic DNA. The Japanese flag flew over the killing of millions of Chinese civilians. The Union Jack symbolized racism for Indians for almost 100 years. Are we protesting those flags too and insisting they be banned from public display in the United States? That's what I thought...

Some people are doing just that. Hopefully it won't become mainstream, but it only took a few days for banning the Confederate flag and the confederacy in general to spread over a very wide area, so you never know.

[thewarning]

"Burned Black Churches May Be ‘Violent Backlash’ After Charleston Shooting"

Where is this happening in relation to the Mason-Dixon line?

And can we get a mod to lock this thread, or does it need to get uglier first?

[TotalSnorefest]

And can we get a mod to lock this thread, or does it need to get uglier first?

It's a toss-up between not wanting to stifle worthwhile discussion and preventing arguments, really. For the time being we've elected to let conversation run its course (under heavy scrutiny). That may change, obviously.

[capuga]

"Burned Black Churches May Be ‘Violent Backlash’ After Charleston Shooting"

Where is this happening in relation to the Mason-Dixon line?

And can we get a mod to lock this thread, or does it need to get uglier first?

Thus far conversation has remained within the site rules for civility and will be allowed to continue as long as that is the case. But the thread is being closely watched and bans will come quickly if necessary.

[HsssH]

I feel like attacking a symbol doesn't make things better in any way. Those who are harassed don't fell safer because people, not the flag, are harassing them. And those who are harassing others? Well, they just got another reason to be angry. It also hurts people who like the symbol for other reasons, now they are just thrown into same group as racists. Maybe they'll becomes ones too since everyone else already considers them racists?

It is my pet annoyance with swastika too. We (small European country) have our traditional symbol which is very similar to Nazi swastika... and we can't use it because you'll be called Nazi and might even get fined if things escalate.

[zlovemojo]

It's a great cause,a great statement and a great piece of art. Read Jason Latour's take on it here http://jasonlatour.tumblr.com/post/1...gine-ive-heard

[zlovemojo]

Considering the whole point of Southern Bastards is a celebration of and reaction against the South, simultaneously, we were going to get to this eventually. And it's quite a well done image.

Here here!

[C_Miller]

I don't understand defenders of the Confederate Flag. At best, it's the representation of a failed secessionist movement. At the worst, it's even more problematic.

No matter what way you slice it, The Civil War and the Confederacy was about slavery and the preservation of slavery. Of course there were plenty of underlying causes, but it really comes down to being the Six Degrees of Slavery. The economic differences between the North and the South. That one is easy. The South was actually getting away from slavery until the invention of the Cotton Gin. But where the North was developing technologically, the South remained an agricultural economy built up by slaves. And as they ruined their land by making more and more cotton, they had to move west. Abraham Lincoln was anti-slavery, but he had no intention of emancipation. But he was a firm opponent of banning the expansion of slavery into western territories. His election was the catalyst for secession. And of course there's the famous state's rights argument. We all know what state right they're talking about.

Of course the Stars and Bars as we know it never represented the Confederacy as we know it. It comes from elements of the Virginia Battle Flag and the Navy Jack, but as all representations, it's about how the public takes it over. There's no question what flag is the flag of the confederacy right now. And I'll go out of a limb and say that slavery wasn't based on race. But afterwards in the era of Jim Crow and beyond, the Rebel Flag has unquestionably been co-opted by so much underlying racism in the South.

Now from a historical standpoint, I understanding that it cannot be hidden away as it is part of an important element of American History. I just don’t understand how it represents Southern Pride. Like I said, at best it’s a representation of a failed secessionist movement that was predicated on the belief that owning people was okay.

My entire family is from the South. I’ve spent a lot of time in the South. And I have a lot of Southern Pride. But it comes from bourbon, grits, biscuits and gravy, The Drive-By Truckers, Townes Van Zandt, and Abraham Lincoln, not Robert E. Lee, George Wallace, the Confederacy or the Rebel Flag.

Like all history, we need to remember our triumph and our scars, but the folks that revel in the worst parts of our shared history are going to be the ones who are left behind. Good on Aaron and Latour for displaying real Southern Pride.

[andersonh1]

As a lifelong southerner, I've always just seen it as a symbol of the South in general, and our region's independent spirit. I'd rather fight to keep it as a symbol of that than surrender it to the racists.