About Those Swastikas and Nooses at the Michigan Lockdown Protest...

On Sunday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-Mich.) condemned the anti-lockdown protesters at the State Capitol in Lansing as depicting “some of the worst racism and awful parts of our history in this country.” She specifically mentioned that “there were swastikas and Confederate flags and nooses and people with assault rifles.” She repeated “the Confederate flags and nooses, the swastikas.” So, were there Confederate flags, swastikas, and nooses at the protests last Thursday? If there were, were they racist?

Whitmer is correct that these symbols emerged during the protest, but it is highly debatable whether any of them were racist.

Tom Bevan, founder and president of RealClearPolitics, shared one of the swastika posters at the rally. The swastika features on a poster reading “Heil Witmer,” comparing Gov. Whitmer to a Nazi.

This is gross and rather disgusting hyperbole, to be sure. Whitmer has attempted to override the Michigan legislature in order to extend her tyrannical lockdowns, but she is nothing like Adolf Hitler. Michiganders can — and arguably should — protest Whitmer’s abuses without resorting to this kind of ridiculous demonizing rhetoric.

Yet when Whitmer mentioned swastikas, she suggested that the protesters carrying the swastikas were racist — neo-Nazis. Instead, they were protesting the governor, comparing her to a Nazi.

Radio host Casey Hendrickson shared another picture of a swastika at the protest. Again, the protester was comparing Whitmer to Hitler, not advocating for Nazism.

As for nooses, they did make an appearance or two, but there was no reason to assume any racist intent behind them. The Detroit News‘s Craig Mauger shared an image of a sign reading, “Tyrants Get the Rope.”

America has a tragic history of lynchings — black men heinously murdered by white mobs, often organized by the Ku Klux Klan. For this reason, nooses can symbolize racism, but there is no reason to suggest that was the case here. Instead, it seems far more likely that this truck driver meant to send the same message as the sign above — “tyrants get the rope.”

This may constitute a threat against Whitmer, and such signs certainly are ugly, but they are not racist. Whitmer is white, after all.

As for Confederate flags, they seemed few and far between. Bevan said he could not find any, but State Senator Mallory McMorrow shared one photo on Twitter, showing a Confederate flag next to flags proclaiming the importance of freedom. She also shared one more swastika sign — which attempted to blend the swastika with a donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party, making the same insinuation that Democrats are Nazis.

While the Confederacy did secede from the Union in order to expand the institution of slavery into the territories, the Confederate flag today represents Southern pride and an attack against tyranny. As a proud graduate of Hillsdale College, a school in Michigan that sent its men off to fight for the Union, I would prefer that Southerners and Americans, in general, would swap out the Confederate flag for a flag more reminiscent of rebellion for a noble cause, like the “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden Flag or the “Come and Take It” flag from the Battle of Gonzalez.

However, the Confederate flag is not necessarily a racist symbol.

However, Whitmer’s decision to frame a protest against her as “racist” is malicious and deceptive. These Michiganders are angry at their governor forcing businesses to close, mandating that gardening aisles in “essential” businesses be shut down, and decreeing that people cannot travel to another residence they own.

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