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John Schneider, aka Bo Duke from the TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, recently asked his fans a question via YouTube: Was The Dukes of Hazzard a racially charged show? Was the intention of the paint scheme on the General Lee a white supremacist statement in any way? And if you think it was, I wanna know.

For the uninitiated, the General Lee was the Duke brothers 1969 Dodge Charger, which outperformed the cop cars of rural Georgia week after week from 1979 to 1985. Bo and Lukes car was named after a Confederate civil war hero; its horn played the opening bars of Dixie; and, as for its paint scheme, it sported a giant Confederate flag on its roof. It was basically the American south on wheels.

We all know why Schneider felt the need to ask, 35 years after the show ended. In response to the police killing of George Floyd and the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, Confederate monuments and symbols are being removed and reassessed, not least the flag. Last month Nascar banned Confederate flags from its race meetings and Mississippi became the final US state to remove the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag. And, earlier this month, the US defence department banned the Confederate flag and other divisive symbols from all military bases. Culture is also undergoing a reappraisal: Amazons streaming service is considering removing The Dukes of Hazzard from its catalogue.

And its not over yet. Dispute rages over what the Confederate flag really signifies. With his limitless desire to open another front in the culture wars, President Trump recently asserted that it represents freedom of speech, and criticised Nascar. Spike Lee, on the other hand, said the flag made him feel the same way my Jewish brothers and sisters feel about the swastika. Having once stood for one, unambiguous thing the Confederate army during the American Civil War the flag has now accumulated a multitude of meanings, many far removed from the original Confederate cause. Popular culture has been central to that process.

The responses to Schneiders question were an overwhelming No, even from commenters claiming to be black and Latino fans. On the face of it The Dukes of Hazzard was simple, good-natured fun. It barely ever broached matters of race, slavery or the civil war, although the erasure of non-white characters from the landscape made that easier. Sure, their car had a Confederate flag, but the Dukes were just good ol boys, never meanin no harm, as the theme tune had it.

The Confederate flag as we know it 13 white stars on a blue cross with a red background was designed in 1861 by William Porcher Miles, an avowed pro-slavery secessionist politician. After the civil war it became the prevailing way to represent the Confederacy, initially in the context of military history and memorials. It began to seep into popular culture in the 1940s, says John Coski, historian at the American Civil War Museum and author of The Confederate Battle Flag. It was adopted by southern fraternities, and soldiers from the south used it during the second World War. It entered postwar politics via the pro-segregation Dixiecrats. In the early 1950s the US developed a flag fad, and suddenly it was everywhere: on T-shirts, licence plates and mugs. It became an icon for an attitude, says Coski.

And that attitude was rebel. But, rather than military and political rebellion against the northern states in defence of a racist ideology, the flag came to represent more nebulous forms of rebellion. Lynyrd Skynyrds 1974 pro-southern anthem Sweet Home Alabama featured the flag on its cover, and the band used it liberally in their graphics, merch and stage act, as did such other southern rock acts as Tom Petty and the Allman Brothers Band. Petty would unfurl the flag on stage during the song Rebels, whose chorus begins: I was born a rebel down in Dixie. They all later renounced its use, though not Johnny Cash, who sang in front of it on The Muppet Show in 1980.

It wasnt just southern bands. Primal Scream put the flag on the cover of their 1994 album Give Out But Dont Give Up, but this was intended to signal their new southern-tinged sound, the album having been recorded in Memphis. The cover was actually a photograph by William Eggleston, celebrated chronicler of the southern American landscape, whose work often incorporates Confederate flags, overtly or covertly. Egglestons best-known image may be 1973s Greenwood, Mississippi, itself used as a cover for Big Stars 1974 album Radio City. It depicts a bare light bulb on a garish red ceiling, with white cables forming an X across it, like a subliminal Confederate flag.

On screen the flag came to represent another form of rebellion, that of the outlaw. It had often figured in movies in a historical context, as in Gone with the Wind, but a new trail was blazed by the car-chase caper Smokey and the Bandit, the USs highest-grossing movie of 1977 after Star Wars. It features many elements The Dukes of Hazzard would later adapt: a charming southern maverick (Burt Reynolds) evading inept cops in a fast car, with a Confederate flag on its licence plate.

In both cases the flag is associated with mild rebellion against the local law, more on the level of moonshine-running, in a virtually postracial south. Consciously or not, pop culture was now in step with the lost cause narrative, which had striven to dissociate the Confederacy from slavery and racism, aligning it instead with nobility and heroism.

The reality was quite different. For one thing General Lee wasnt some good soldier who happened to be on the losing side. When Robert E Lees army marched into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863, says the historian Kevin Levin, it was with the intent of kidnapping upwards of 200 free blacks. That army was carrying the Confederate battle flag. That army was a slave-catching army. It was functioning as the military arm of a government that had one purpose: to protect the institution of slavery.

To African Americans especially, the Confederate flag represents a darker form of rebellion, one that targets their civil rights. The flag was adopted by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s and was frequently brandished by counterprotesters at civil-rights marches. Even in 1982, when The Dukes of Hazzard was at its peak, John Hawkins, the first black cheerleader at the University of Mississippi, ignited a controversy by refusing to bear the flag at college football games, where it was a ubiquitous fixture. His fraternity was picketed by more than 1,000 white students waving Confederate flags. The local Ku Klux Klan held a protest.

What is the idea that this symbol is intended to convey? says Kyle Bowser, consultant to the Hollywood bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP. The common denominators seem to be elements that are malicious, unproductive and certainly injurious to certain members of our society. In 2000 the NAACP and other groups began an economic boycott of South Carolina over its refusal to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol, where it had flown since 1962.

Ironically, around the same time, the flag began to be appropriated by black musicians, who sought to redefine its meaning. Such rappers as Andr 3000, of Outkast, Lil Jon and Ludacris all wore the symbol. Ludacris caused a stir at the 2005 Vibe awards by performing draped head to toe in a Confederate-flag outfit. After the show, he said: This flag represents the oppression that we as African Americans have endured for years. This is a symbol of segregation and racism. At the end of the performance, I removed and stomped on the flag to reveal my version of the flag a flag comprised of black, red and green. Those are the colours of Africa.

In a less thought-out way, in 2013 Kanye West wore a jacket emblazoned with the flag and incorporated it into merchandise for his Yeezus tour. I took the Confederate flag and made it my flag, he said. Now what you gonna do?

All these attempts to untether the flag from its original associations were largely undone in 2015, when a mass shooting in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, left nine African Americans dead. The 21-year-old shooter, Dylann Roof, was avowedly motivated by white-supremacist beliefs, and his website featured images of himself waving the Confederate flag. Within weeks major retailers, including Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sears and eBay, pledged to stop selling Confederate-flag merchandise. The manufacture of toy replicas of the General Lee also ceased. And, in a victory for the NAACP, the flag was removed from the South Carolina state capitol. Mississippi was the last hold-out.

The recent wave of Black Lives Matter protests ought to have ended the idea of the Confederate flag as an innocuous symbol, but the battle continues. According to a Quinnipiac University poll this month, 56 per cent of Americans see the Confederate flag as a symbol of racism. In another poll, however, 70 per cent of Republicans saw the flag as a symbol of southern pride. Even as the US military and Nascar abandon the flag, other southern groups are resisting the erasure, encouraged by Donald Trump. On July 15th about 4,500 patriots drove in a 12km convoy through Ocala, Florida, in support of the flag, which, of course, appeared in abundance. Leading the convoy was a replica of The Dukes of Hazzards General Lee.

To its defenders, as the bumper sticker puts it, the flag represents heritage not hate. The NAACPs Kyle Bowser responds: I would press those who feel that connection to clearly articulate that heritage. Is it the food they ate? Is it a style of dress or art? I dont see what the connective tissue is between states that hoisted the Confederate flag, other than their commitment to the exploitation of black people.

John Coski points out that the people who were most opposed to the proliferation of the Confederate flag into the wider culture were Confederate groups themselves. The United Daughters of the Confederacy were responsible for airbrushing Confederate history and erecting monuments to the civil war in the 20th century. In the 1940s and 1950s they campaigned to pass laws restricting the use of the flag solely to historical and commemorative purposes.

Why make a point of trying to keep it out there, says Coski, where everyone has a right to interpret it however they wish? Isnt it in your interest to limit it to museums, where it has an unambiguous historical context, or to cemeteries where it has an unambiguous memorial context?

Should we also put The Dukes of Hazzard in a museum? Should we remove it from our screens, like Disney did with Song of the South (having accepted that the films cheery nostalgia for slavery and plantation life was grossly offensive); or provide historical context, as HBO Max recently did with Gone with the Wind? These are tricky questions. But, while the culture war grinds on, no creator of film, television, music or art is likely to use the Confederate flag unthinkingly ever again and most will choose not to use it at all.

As with the Confederacy itself, the fight to retain the flag in US public life is facing defeat. The only thing it now seems to symbolise is the United States inability to heal its divisions and reconcile with its past. Guardian

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From Dukes of Hazzard to Kanye West: The Confederate flag curse - The Irish Times

It's been 6 months since the WHO warned about an unknown virus circulating in Wuhan, China. Now, the U.S. has more than 3 million confirmed cases and there are more than 12 million globally.

It was a tactic Trump used to launch himself to the White House in 2016. But his advisers say the world has changed since the coronavirus pandemic seized the global economy and nationwide protests against police brutality erupted. In that climate, they fear voters wont be as receptive to certain divisive culture war issues, especially the independent voters, senior citizens, suburban women and the sliver of African Americans Trump must win to carry crucial swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio or Pennsylvania.

He has been spoiled with his successes, but Im not sure it is the same atmosphere as it was in 2016, said one Republican close to the White House. The problem is when he gets off on the tangents on the Confederate flag. Im not here to defend that.

Several Republican strategists said reviving cultural wars and making not-so-subtle nods to Confederate sympathizers is not a way to mobilize the voters outside of Trumps hardcore base. Trump has also leaned hard into arguments that Michael Flynn, his first national security adviser, was duped by the deep state into lying to the FBI, and allegations that presumptive 2020 rival Joe Bidens family is corrupt.

People do not care about Michael Flynn or Bidens kids, says Ed Rollins, chair of the Pro-Trump Great America PAC and former national campaign director for President Ronald Reagans successful 1984 campaign. Those issues are complicated. People care about whether you can lead the country through these two crises of a pandemic and a recession.

I thought when the virus broke out and the economy fell apart, it gave Trump an opportunity to step up and show what kind of leader he could be, but he certainly did not do it well, Rollins added. If we are sitting here on Labor Day with these polling numbers, we will not turn it around.

Part of the problem stems from Trumps insistence that he alone acts as his best campaign manager, communications director and strategist. Campaign staffers are quick to say the president drives the message. They simply follow and amplify his words.

Few staffers or advisers around the president can give him bad news, apart from a handful of allies, like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

More often, advice to Trump is delivered by friends or surrogates on television: a medium the president monitors so closely that the ensuing coverage drives his reactions. It was on TV recently that former New Jersey governor and longtime Trump friend Chris Christie urged him to drastically change his tone and approach heading into the November election.

Recent national polling has consistently shown Trump trailing Biden by an increasingly large margin though Trump campaign officials are quick to say such polling is flawed and that they are more focused on polling in nonbattleground states. That polling, though, paints a bleak picture for the president, too. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report predicted on Wednesday a Democratic tsunami at the polls in November, with Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida up for grabs and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania leaning Democratic.

Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Trumps reelection message should hinge on the presidents handling of the economy, his patriotism and his work on health care, which she argued would resonate with women.

But several advisers believe the president should hammer a message of supporting law enforcement and police, especially as cities like Atlanta, Chicago and New York have experienced recent surges in gun violence, including spates of shootings over the July 4 weekend. They see such appeals as more effective than specific attacks on African Americans like Bubba Wallace which, privately, Republicans have viewed as disastrous.

And some donors and advisers want Trump to continue his campaign to protect controversial statues and monuments. They see a fine line between that push, which they say resonates with many Americans, and tweeting about the Confederate flag, which they say is a losing issue.

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller disputed the idea that the campaign cannot settle on its messaging, saying each subject resonates with different voter blocs.

Trump built the greatest economy in the history of the world, and he is doing it again, and for many voters, that is the strongest reason they are supporting President Trump in his reelection, Miller said. For many other voters, the fact that President Trump is pledging to get schools opened for this fall speaks more to their families and their situation, and for other voters, President Trumps commitment to push back against a radical left-wing mob is one of the strongest selling points.

The result, at times, has been an all-of-the-above approach that can bounce between each message.

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Trumps political advisers are not yet on the same page on the messaging, said Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally and former House speaker. It is a work in progress, but it is early July. They will get to that by the time they get to the convention.

The challenge is to find the discipline to stick to the messages and to keep coming back and hammering on them, Gingrich added. When Trump is on his A game, he is the best politician in the country. They just have to keep him on his A game for three months.

In those months, Trump will get a lot of scrutiny, with cases of the coronavirus surging and many Americans still stuck at home.

These swing voters want to know, How do I get my normal life back? What has to happen to get my normal life back? said a second Republican close to the White House.

They are paying attention to news and politics more than any time in their lives, the person added. If I am the Democrats, I am happy about it because they are paying more to the idiocy of Trump, but they are also paying attention to the extreme machinations of the left.

Link:
Trump's culture wars worked in 2016. His aides worry the world has changed. - POLITICO

A space ship could land on the White House lawn or a war could break out with Suriname. But absent that, two compelling national narratives are hurtling us toward Election Day COVID-19 vs. culture and COVID-19 is winning hands down.

Both issues are powerful, each a winner in the right hands. But President Donald Trump is bungling both, and former Vice President Joe Biden is content to sit back and watch.

The culture war should be a slam dunk for Trump politically. Masked mobs (ideally) are tearing down monuments and dumping them in rivers. Beloved national symbols are being desecrated with eggs and spray paint, and an atmosphere of chaos is descending on cities, with shootings up and police response times down. The average person doesnt like that.

The situation begs for steady, law-and-order conservative leadership, but instead of focusing on the lowest hanging fruit the crime, the destruction of a Frederick Douglass statue in Rochester, attacks on Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Christopher Columbus monuments to name a few Trump attacks NASCAR for banning the Confederate flag at its race tracks and African American driver Bubba Wallace for questioning why a noose was hanging in his garage. From a purely calculative perspective, its political malpractice.

But thats what Trump does. He inexplicably opens himself up to charges of supporting white supremacism when there are legitimate conversations to be had about hooliganism and preserving cultural heritage. Handled correctly focusing on the objectively egregious and letting southern states self-determine what stays and goes through legal processes Trump could be driving a winning cultural message through Election Day. Its a message that talks to me, and I cant stand the guy.

But theres this little thing called COVID-19 to contend with, too, and on that Trump has totally dropped the ball. Hes acting as though the virus doesnt exist, and thats more than malpractice. Its political insanity.

Nothing is more important to voters than their health, and its crazy to think their attention can be drawn away from an imminent life-and-death issue like COVID-19 by sleight of hand. Tweets that once distracted voters from unfavorable Trump news cycles are powerless while this virus runs rampant. Trumps change-the-subject tactic, moreover, makes people feel he doesnt care about them. COVID-19 was raging in Tulsa, but he had to have his vanity rally. Now hes planning to drag the Republican National Committee to virus-raged Florida for his nominating convention.

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With COVID-19 alone Trump should be leading Biden comfortably. Why? Because the adage you dont change horses midstream normally applies. As gross as it sounds, public emergencies are an enormous political opportunity for those holding executive office. The public is scared and dependent on leaders like at no other time. An executive who takes the reins even if he errs is rewarded, worshipped even. Ask Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.

Trump simply let the reins go and hoped for the best.

Those advising the president to focus on American culture are half right. Done carefully, it will drive voters into his camp. But things arent happening in a vacuum. The worst pandemic in a century is spreading virtually unabated across the United States, while other countries are tamping it down. Trump needs to acknowledge that and take charge if he wants a second term.

COVID-19 trumps everything until its behind us. Only a fool would think otherwise.

William F.B. OReilly is a consultant to Republicans.

William F. B. O'Reilly is a Newsday Opinion columnist. He works as a corporate and political communications consultant. He works with clients on the Republican side of the aisle.

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O'Reilly: COVID-19 trumps the culture wars - Newsday

Someone close to me recently bought a copy of Reni Eddo-Lodges book Why Im No Longer Talking To White People About Race. This initially surprised me, as this person has never read a book in his life. But then I learned that it is one of the top-selling books on Amazon, and the reason became much clearer to me.

I fear that the current culture wars are not being won by a battle of ideas. Instead, the new left is realising its worldview through the tactics of intimidation. The idea that silence is violence is a case in point, in which those who are usually apathetic to politics are expected to wake up and get woke. But people are becoming political in a climate where individual inquiry and genuine debate is not tolerated.

You could even go as far as to say that the new left is not interested in debating its opponents. When Polly Toynbee wrote last year that the vote to leave the European Union could be overturned because most Brexit voters will have died through old age, her argument rested more on the destiny of demographics than the democratic ideal of persuasion and argument.

But does she have a point? From experience, most people who graduate from university tend to be sympathetic to the ideas of the new left. Many, for instance, believe vehemently that Britain is a systemically racist country. Moreover, 50 per cent of young adults at school-leaving age now go to university. Surely, then, it is only a matter of time before Britain becomes a graduate-dominated society? And when that time comes, will the cultural purge we are experiencing today seem harmless in comparison?

You do not have to be a conservative to believe that, as a society, we have a duty to pass on the values of liberty particularly freedom of thought and speech from one generation to the next. As this seems to be no longer happening, we need to find solutions to the culture wars which look beyond parliament and the ballot box.

We certainly cannot legislate our way out of the culture wars. Even if this were possible (which legislature could seriously keep up with the current madness?) it would not be desirable. Future majorities can overturn laws in a matter of days. Worse still, a legalistic approach would undermine liberties today while offering nothing of lasting substance for the future.

The answer instead lies in the democratic ideal. True democrats believe that everyone, regardless of class, colour or gender, is an equal citizen with an equal degree of sovereignty. We should take inspiration from this principle of democracy. No one can be more powerful than the sovereign people of today. The power to improve our society for the better is always in our grasp, and we should reject the deterministic impulses of the new left, which argues we are always defined by our history, our race or our gender.

This sublime idea of democracy says we are all equal in the responsibility of government, too. But we have to cooperate with others in order to realise our political ambitions. This is where individualism departs from democracy.

Yes, the individual is important, in that we should reject external restraints imposed by a nannying state, or by the more subtle gagging orders brought about by wokeness, which limit the individuals right to free speech. But to say the individual is sovereign in a democracy is not only false it also misses a trick. As individuals, we are all equal, yet also equally weak. Individuals in a democracy only become powerful when they act in concert with their fellow equals and advance towards a shared goal.

It is therefore time we started organising in order to defend the principles of liberty and democracy. Currently, there is a Free Speech Union, Dont Divide Us (challenging racial identity politics) and a campaign to Defund the BBC (one of the most important bastions of wokeness). Great but we need so many more initiatives like this. Because it is only by building large associations, outside the traditional arena of Westminster politics, that we can put checks and balances on the woke Leviathan.

Associations have the potential to weaken the moral empire of the new left. First, they give confidence to the associate that they are not alone in their ideals. In our time, expressing the wrong ideas can cost you your job and livelihood. But once individuals come together, these threats are enormously diminished.

Second, associations can sow doubt in the eyes of our opponents. By organising, we show that we are also equally convinced of our beliefs, thereby offering apathetic or less confident individuals the opportunity to resist conformism. In a democracy, safety comes in numbers. Most importantly, associations embody the ideals of liberty and equality. No one can force you to join an association, for instance.

Its time to take back control of the public sphere. Against all the doubters, four years ago we voted confidently to leave the European Union in order to retrieve what was always ours: our right to self-government. Today, we will have to adopt a similar sort of confidence if we are to reclaim our right to free speech and to ensure our cultural sphere remains free for all.

Jack Harris is a writer.

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Democracy is the antidote to the culture wars - Spiked

The culture wars have spiralled out of control. Cancel culture has run amok. The once-fringe ideology of wokeness has graduated from the campus safe space to the adult world, colonising politics, the media and corporations.

Culture Wars with Andrew Doyle, a new spiked podcast, will provide a monthly antidote to all this, with stand-up comedian, satirist and spiked columnist Andrew Doyle joined by guests to discuss the latest in woke idiocy.

But Culture Wars will also go beyond the headlines and the partisan bickering to understand whats really going on, while having fun along the way.

The guest for the first episode will be writer and comedian Bridget Phetasy host of the YouTube show, Dumpster Fire, and the podcast, Walk-Ins Welcome. Phetasy is a fearless advocate for free speech, an acerbic critic of woke culture, and best of all, shes brilliantly funny. Make sure you catch the episode as soon as its out, by subscribing to Culture Wars with Andrew Doyle now.

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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Introducing... Culture Wars with Andrew Doyle - spiked - Spiked