, Columnist
Banning Offensive Flags Won’t Get Rid of Hate
Trying to prohibit racist iconography is like playing endless Whac-a-Mole. It doesn't solve the bigger problem.
Can you tell the good flags from the bad?
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
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One boon of living in a free society like the U.S. or Germany is that we can say (almost) anything we please and wave pieces of cloth depicting (almost) any symbol. The bane is that we’ll forever be debating whether and when to include those two parenthetical “almosts.”
Consider flags that extol neo-Nazism or other strands of White Supremacy and racism. The U.S., thanks to the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, has no legal ban against such symbols. On the face of it, that would seem to be the most self-confidently liberal stance.