CHICAGO– Following Donald Trump’s historic conviction, a steady stream of images of upturned American flags have emerged on social media as his supporters and right-wing commentators protest his felony conviction.
At least one such flag was spotted outside Trump Tower in New York City on Friday as the Republican former president spoke about the trial. Some elected officials, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Trump ally, have shared images of inverted flags online.
The inverted American flag recently received widespread attention following revelations that it was flown outside Alexandria, Virginia, home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, following the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking the certification of the Capitol stop. the results of the 2020 presidential election. Such a flag was carried by the rioters as they echoed Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
Right-wing pundits and podcast hosts with hundreds of thousands of followers, as well as ordinary Americans, rallied around the upside-down flag in the hours after Trump was convicted of 34 crimes in his hush-money trial in New York on Thursday. They included Fox News Channel writers Guy Benson and Katie Pavlich, conservative talk show hosts Graham Allen and Owen Shroyer, and far-right conspiracy theorist and “Stop the Steal” rally organizer Ali Alexander.
Other inflammatory rhetoric on social media called the verdict a “declaration of war” or a sign of a coming “civil war.” The words “RIP America” trended on X, formerly known as Twitter, immediately after the statement.
The inverted flag, once a signal of distress to sailors, now represents the “Stop the Steal” movement, which falsely claims the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump for Democrat Joe Biden. Courts across the country and Trump’s attorney general found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome, and the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division called the election “the most secure in American history.”
The U.S. Flag Code, which is not legally enforceable, says flags should not be inverted except as a signal of “serious distress,” but the symbol has been used for decades as a form of protest.
Protesters against the Vietnam War used the inverted flag to protest the government’s actions. A 1974 Supreme Court decision upheld the right to display a flag upside down after a college student was accused of violating state law by hanging an upside down flag bearing peace symbols to protest the killing of four anti-government protesters. Vietnam War.
After the symbol was spotted outside Alito’s home, the judge said his wife had hung the flag as part of a dispute with neighbors.
Some users also posted images of the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag in response to the verdict. That flag, a symbol of American resistance during the Revolutionary War, has been adopted by far-right and Christian nationalist movements. It has been flown. Trump rallies and was seen during the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
The “Appeal to Heaven” flag also hung outside Alito’s beach vacation home in New Jersey, The New York Times reported.
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Associated Press writer Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.
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