Hindu students ask schools to discern the swastika from the Nazi Hakenkreuz

(RNS) — ‘I think it’s very important that young people are told that the swastika has a very positive meaning, but it has been taken and used as a racist symbol,’ said Baijayanti Roy of Goethe University Frankfurt. ‘The swastika does not have any negative connotations, whereas the Hakenkreuz stands for evil.’

Mira Trivedi, right, presents a lesson about swastika history to kids. Photo courtesy of Mira Trivedi)

Trisha Mukherjee

August 10, 2026 

(RNS) — Mira Trivedi, 15, grew up surrounded by the swastika. Her family hung it around their home for holidays. A priest drew it on her newborn cousin’s forehead. Her family members wore jewelry with the symbol.

To Trivedi, who is Hindu, the swastika always signaled its auspicious Sanskrit meaning: well-being, good fortune and peace.

So when her eighth grade social studies teacher said the swastika was a hate symbol representing Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism, Trivedi went up after class to explain that the Nazi symbol was not the swastika but the Hakenkreuz, a German word meaning “hooked cross.” The swastika, which is usually slightly different in appearance, is a devotional symbol in South Asian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, she said. 

Trivedi hoped for a lightbulb moment after her spiel, but the teacher said only higher ups could implement changes about what’s taught about the symbol. “That’s what started my whole journey,” Trivedi said.

She presented her case to the vice principal, principal and board of education at her central New Jersey school in May 2025. “I was sweating through the entire meeting, I was so nervous,” she said. But the effort paid off, and she convinced the school board to educate 35 teachers about the difference between the symbols. 

In recent months, a small but growing contingent of Hindu students across the country like Trivedi have successfully pushed for curriculum changes and education about the difference.

The conflation between the swastika and the Hakenkreuz emerged in the 1930s, but the presence of the swastika in Germany dates back to the late 1800s, said Baijayanti Roy, a lecturer and researcher on interactions between India and Nazi Germany at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany. During this era, Germany’s Theosophists and Buddhists, who revered Indian philosophy, used the symbol to represent appreciation.

But at the turn of the 20th century, the racist and antisemitic völkisch movement co-opted the swastika to signal Aryan German heritage, Roy said. The proposed design for the fledgling Nazi party’s flag arrived in front of Hitler bearing a mirrored version of the swastika. Hitler approved the design, with one exception: Due to his hatred of Indians, whom he perceived as bastardized Aryans, he replaced the swastika with the “Hakenkreuz” by changing the tilt and removing the four dots and flourishes that typically, but not always, adorn the swastika.

---

Thus was born a new symbol, stripped of dharmic roots, to represent the Third Reich.

From then on, the Nazis referred to the symbol only as the Hakenkreuz. While some leaders of the Indian independence movement like Subhas Chandra Bose sought tactical military alliances with Hitler, Hitler maintained his animosity toward South Asians as he set into motion the murder of 6 million Jews.

When American media mistakenly described the swastika as a Nazi symbol in the 1930s, the misconception pervaded the American psyche.

“I think it’s very important that young people are told that the swastika has a very positive meaning, but it has been taken and used as a racist symbol,” Roy said. “The swastika does not have any negative connotations, whereas the Hakenkreuz stands for evil.”

 (Photo by Nidhi Srivastava/Flickr/Creative Commons)

But as immigration and globalization increased — and as concerns about antisemitism have ebbed and flowed — the obfuscation has led to fear and confusion about the swastika as a hate symbol.

Members of the nonprofit Coalition of Hindus of North America have sought help from its leaders, as some have panicked after being reported as neo-Nazis by well-intentioned neighbors and coworkers, said Pushpita Prasad, CoHNA’s chief communications officer. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, workers who glimpsed swastikas in their Hindu colleagues’ homes via Zoom would sometimes report them to human resources. Neighbors, seeing swastikas drawn for Hindu festivals, sometimes called the police. The ensuing investigations were usually dropped once the context became clear. But especially for immigrants with visas, “it was a very shaky, unpleasant experience,” Prasad said.

It’s an example of what scholars have called a context collapse, said Susan Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project, part of the Center for the Study of Organized Hate, a Washington, D.C., group dedicated to preventing and combating hate. “You have people who are existing in two different normative communities and the two sets of norms collide,” she said. 

Many Hindu students across the United States have witnessed and experienced that context collapse. Trivedi said her Hindu neighbors store away devotional objects bearing the swastika whenever guests of non-dharmic faiths visit to avoid painful misunderstandings.

Saisha Vyas, 15, grew up seeing her family draw swastikas on new cars, denoting good fortune. But when her uncle had to take his car back to the dealership, she said the workers called the police on him.

And Priya Bakshi, 17, often longed to wear a sentimental swastika-inscribed necklace to school, but it was banned in her Maryland county. “It’s infringing on our First Amendment rights,” she told RNS. “We cannot express our religion.”  

Vyas and Bakshi, who are both Hindu high schoolers in Maryland’s Howard County Public School System, decided to campaign in their school district for a distinction between the swastika and the Hakenkreuz, emphasizing the intention with which they’re displayed.

After months of preparing educational material, they convinced the school board in February to ban the Nazi Hakenkreuz instead of the swastika, changing the rules for nearly 50,000 students in the district.

All three students RNS spoke with said they are sensitive toward the violence and fear that many of their peers, especially Jewish students, associate with the swastika. “There have been cases where the Hakenkreuz has been drawn to bully students in my school,” Bakshi said. “I don’t want to be mixed in with the bullies. That’s why I was very, very conscious about how I talked about it.”

Still, they faced challenges. Trivedi became known among her classmates for her campaign. “One kid decided to draw the symbol on my notebook when I stepped away from my desk for a moment, and right underneath that symbol, ‘Nazi’ was written,” she recounted.

But moments of support have vastly outnumbered the antagonism, the three students said. Bakshi said her Jewish friends have been particularly receptive, and she and Vyas met with Jewish groups. “I think they realized that we are trying to help their community as well,” she said, suggesting that the misconception gives the Nazis ongoing power over a symbol and religious practice they despised. “When people come together with genuine empathy, I think it really does help bring everybody in the circle closer together.”

The fundamental question at the heart of the campaign harkens back to the landmark 2003 Supreme Court case Virginia v. Black, which considered whether states could ban cross burning. The case determined that its legality depended on whether the act was done in order to intimidate, Benesch explained. This same distinction can be made about whether a Hakenkreuz is scratched in a school bathroom or a highway overpass, versus a swastika depicted on a Hindu student’s bracelet or in a devotional painting in one’s home.

---

RELATED: Hindu group sues Chicago suburb to build temple, citing 1967 legal barrier

---

“None of this stuff is easy,” Benesch said of context clashes. “Even though the collision can often be unpleasant at the time for both parties, in the long run, it can be a very salutary form of public education.”

The students’ successful campaigns over the past two years were built on a smattering of past examples. In 2021, after the Oregon Department of Education heard feedback from Hindu students as well as Native American students who used the whirling log to signify well-being and protection, the statewide policy was edited to refer to the Nazi symbol as the Hakenkreuz.

CoHNA has also campaigned for similar policy updates in Virginia, New York, California, Canada and other regions, Prasad said.

The students hope to formalize the distinction at the state level, and they believe that their recent victories can herald a wider student movement to distinguish the two symbols. Several classmates have signed on to their campaigns. And across the country, their peers have held discussions in Hindu student groups, written essays on the subject and initiated their own dialogues with teachers. 

“I want them to see what we’re doing and feel like they can do the same,” Vyas said. “I can also speak up at my school. I can also speak up in my county. I can make an impact for my own culture.”

It’s Time to Use the Strait of Hormuz to Demilitarize the Persian Gulf

Nicky Reid

 July 31, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Image by Ivan Rohovchenko.

The Middle East has a serious fucking problem and any semi-sentient anti-imperialist with two brain cells to rub together can tell you that the problem isn’t Iran. It’s America and its dead-eyed flunkey Israel, or is it Israel and its dead-eyed flunkey America? The exact semantics of the Zionist con-job have become a tad bit murky in the Epstein era, but regardless, the source of the violence and chaos that has long plagued the Middle East is without a doubt a Western contagion with a distinctly Wall Street heritage.

This carnage isn’t exactly new, but it has taken on a severely sinister turn in recent years as the IDF has finally emerged from the metaphorical phonebooth, shredding their snappy business suite, and proudly revealing the swastika on their chest before feverishly slaughtering what’s left of their longtime captives in the Gaza Strip along with their more inconvenient Arab neighbors at a downright blitzkrieg pace.

In fact, not only has this final solution been a long time coming, it would have been downright impossible without decades of intercontinental planning and preemptive acts of mass slaughter. Auschwitz wasn’t built in a day, and our current stage of the Nakba was only made possible by America’s so-called War on Terror which systematically eliminated every state or non-state actor rogue enough to resist a full-blown Zionist holocaust in the Levant.

Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar Assad; all butchers who have been replaced by equally barbaric incompetents dependent on the Atlantic juggernaut that brought them to power in still simmering forever wars. None of this is a coincidence. It is all part of a very concerted and well-documented plot that Benjamin Netanyahu has been intimately involved with from the beginning.

In 1986, Bibi was still a lowly Permanent Representative to the UN when he edited a political science study called “Terrorism: How the West Can Win” in which American neocon powerbrokers like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan made the argument that the still largely secular Palestinian resistance movement represented a global threat to “western democracy” which they labeled “militant Islam.” A threat that could only be addressed by Western militaries targeting these militants’ state sponsors across the region. Uncoincidentally, Likud began financing a then small-time Muslim Brotherhood offshoot in the Gaza Strip known as Hamas around this time as well.

A decade later, in 1996, another American neocon powerbroker named Richard Perle put together a policy paper for then-incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which came to be known as the Clean Break Report. This document followed the same logic as the previous one but was far more explicit in its intentions, advocating the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq with his already destroyed stash of WMDs as an excuse along with the destabilization of Syria and Lebanon through financing and facilitating debilitating sectarian proxy wars with those dastardly militant Islamists to be used as convenient errand boys.

Those two Bibi-helmed documents pretty accurately laid out the last 25 years of American Israeli chaos in the Middle East like a stacked tarot deck. The only thing they didn’t predict was Iran rallying the region’s long disenfranchised Shia tribesmen into a high-functioning Axis of Resistance in every warzone touched by Bibi’s quasi-atavistic vision of an American Zion.

Thus, Iran has become the big-bad to Wall Street’s big-bad, with the Islamic Republic successfully painted as the Antichrist in the AIPAC production of the Book of Imperial Revelations and the Donald cast as the grabby leading man tasked with eliminating this threat while the IRGC and their allies in Hezbollah and Ansar Allah appear to be the last line of defense standing between Palestine and utter oblivion.

But are they?

The picture may look grim, but it is also not totally devoid of hope. Even with much of their leadership and infrastructure decapitated over the last several months, the skeleton crew that remains of the Islamic Republic continues to maintain a slight upper hand over their colossal foes simply by using the Strait of Hormuz to create a heavy economic price for an oil-dependent globalized economy actively colluding with American imperialism and Israeli genocide.

This is the only reason why Donald Trump pretends to play ceasefire on-and-off like a psychotic game of red-light-green-light. That rapist and his cuckolds in Tel Aviv are attempting to feign diplomacy just long enough to keep the world economy from imploding, at least until after the midterms, but those already desperate acts have been badly botched by an unexpected third party in the Persian Gulf named Oman.

This frequently overlooked sultanate on the south-eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula has long played a very quiet role as a kind of Arabian Switzerland in the region, using its status as the oldest independent state in the Arab world, complete with its own sect of Islam to serve as a rare bridge of diplomacy in the Middle East.

The Sultanate has played a major role in brokering a variety of often unthinkable ceasefires in a very hostile neighborhood, including between Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia as well as between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They were also instrumental in facilitating the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal that Donald Trump famously ravaged to shreds like a rabid honey badger during his first term.

However, what makes Oman downright deadly to the Yankee-Zionist menace is the simple fact that its notoriously neutral monarchy shares territorial waters with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, with the two nations’ 12-mile nautical territorial limits quite literally overlapping in the narrow waterway.

Now, Oman has long advocated for these waters to remain toll-free and open to international passage, but the havoc that a pair of white psychopaths like Bibi and Donald have brought to their once calm waters appears to have them second-guessing this policy.

During the early chapters of the war, there were a rash of largely unconfirmed reports, both of Oman and Iran collaborating on a deal to facilitate a toll system in their shared waters that would provide the Islamic Republic with the kind of revenue they desperately need to rebuild, as well as rumors of the Trump Administration attempting to bully Oman into cutting ties with Iran altogether.

These reports appeared to be confirmed in late May when Donald Trump literally threatened to “blow up” Oman if the notoriously peaceful nation didn’t “behave”, followed shortly by equally bellicose threats from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to enact “aggressive sanctions” against the Sultanate on Twitter.

It is my strongly held belief as a semi-sentient anti-imperialist that it is not simply a toll that clearly terrifies these powerful men; it is the weaponization of bioregionalism against global conquest that could easily upend the entire fabric of the Atlantic model of neoliberal capitalism that underpins military-industrial psycho-states like Israel and the US.

If Oman and Iran can close the Strait, they can finally return the governance of the Persian Gulf back to the nations of the goddamn Persian Gulf. And after the last 25 years of Bibi’s imperial War on Terror, they would be insane not to also attempt to demilitarize the region entirely, by which I mean block all traffic in and out of this waterway to any nation that shares its shores with foreign soldiers.

This isn’t to say such brinksmanship would come without great risk, but, historically speaking, great risk in the name of regional populism has also invited great reward.

It was a bold move like this that brought Gamal Abdul Nasser’s Egypt to the brink of nuclear oblivion when that maverick strongman nationalized the Suez Canal back in 1956. But this gambit also precipitated the collapse of British imperial influence in the region when the Crown tried and failed on multiple occasions to remove Nasser from power.

The US ultimately had to wait for the much-beloved Colonel to drop dead before they could pay off his successor and regain control over that pivotal waterway, once again securing Israel’s ability to kill more civilians with ever-increasing impunity.

We stand waist deep in similarly shifting waters amidst the shallows of an American Century that has long overstayed its welcome anywhere but in a nation as diabolically cruel as Israel. In this tide, just a few unorthodox leaders on the right shores could easily play a deciding factor in the fate of millions. Houthis and Sultans and borders defined by Allah above the lesser gods of Westphalian dementia could be all it takes to redraw the map.

Here’s one heretic hoping for a few small miracles.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.

Fashion against fascism: When trademarks deter neo-Nazis

Sarah Hucal

DW

06/07/2026 - 

In Germany, where Nazi symbols are banned, activists are using trademark law to fight far-right merchandise.

A campaign uses creative means to fight racist codes, even turning them into anti-racism merch

Image: Jung von Matt

In recent years, far-right merchandise has become an important source of income for some right-wing extremist groups and individuals in Germany. Online stores sell clothing, accessories and other products that use symbols members of the far-right scene recognize.

Because many openly Nazi symbols are illegal in Germany, sellers have increasingly relied on coded language to get around the law. Hitlerhas become HTLR, while Hakenkreuz (swastika) is abbreviated to HKNKRZ.

But the campaign "Recht Gegen Rechts" (Rights Against the Right) has found a clever way to combat this legal workaround. They take control of Nazi-related symbols, coded extremist phrases and the names of far-right businesses by registering them as trademarks at the European trademark office.

The campaign was launched in 2021 by German creative agency Jung von Matt, together with Hamburg-based nonprofit Laut Gegen Nazis (Noise against Nazis).

If extremist retailers continue to sell products bearing the newly protected names or phrases without permission, they could face legal action for infringement — including paying compensation for each item sold.
How registered trademarks stopped far-right merchandise

"These online shops are not in the darknet; they're existing there online. You have just to find the right URLs," explained Simon Knittel of Jung von Matt.

Simon Knittel was among those who started the campaign in 2021 to raise awareness about neo-Nazi codes       Image: Jung von Matt

However, for those outside of the far-right scene, the stores aren't easy to find. The team had help from Joern Menge, the founder of Noise against Nazis (Laut Gegen Nazis), as well as Philip Schlaffer, a former neo-Nazi and online shop owner, who is now a speaker and activist against far-right extremism.

"Basically, you can find these shops if you know what keywords to enter. A lot of them are now based overseas," Schlaffer told DW. "It's become a global business where a lot of money is changing hands."

The team identified more than 35 online stores with over 1,000 articles in each shop and then determined which trademarks would be most effective. For Schlaffer, the campaign's approach is both creative and effective.

"Neo-Nazis shouldn't feel like they have a safe haven; they should be afraid that the ideas they have — the ones they're selling — might be taken away from them and that the products will need to be taken offline. That takes away their sense of security," he said.

Indeed, the team saw this in action after the first trademark was secured.

"When we published our initial press release announcing that we had registered a trademark, it only took about 30 minutes, and the trademark was taken down by all the online shops. We didn't have to do anything," explained Knittel. "They did it voluntarily because they knew that we really had something against them and didn't want to be on the losing side of a court case."

Each subsequent trademark was met with the same response: items were quickly taken offline.

"In the end, we had to wait just 10 minutes, not 30. That was the proof for us that we found something that really solves the problem," said Knittel.

Philip Schlaffer is a former neo-Nazi-turned activist who helped advise the campaign

Image: Philip Schlaffer

Germany's strict approach to Nazi symbols

Germany's approach to Nazi imagery reflects the country's history and its efforts to prevent the revival of National Socialism. Under Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, displaying or distributing symbols of unconstitutional organizations is generally prohibited. This includes symbols associated with the Nazi Party, such as the swastika, SS symbols and the Nazi salute, except in educational contexts or for research and historical documentation.

Violations can result in fines or even imprisonment. Germany has one of the strictest approaches to extremist symbolism anywhere in the world.

How Germany is targeting violent neo-Nazi networks  13:44

Turning racist codes into anti-fascist merch

Rights Against the Right has also taken the process a step further by turning the neo-Nazi slogans into snarky anti-Nazi merchandise.

The campaign secured the trademark and the web domain of Druck18, a major online seller of neo-Nazi merchandise run by far-right extremist Tommy Frenck.

The shop sold products featuring extremist and xenophobic messages, including items designed to appeal to Nazi nostalgia. Recht Gegen Rechts replaced it with their own online shop, which sells anti-Nazi and anti-racist merchandise.

In the new Druck 18 online shop, you can buy a sweatshirt with the words HKN KRZ, the shorthand for swastika in German, that features the words crossed off and the text: "Thank you trademark law: We've registered this Nazi code as a trademark so Nazis can't spread it."

The team had to find a way to use the new trademarks without contributing to neo-Nazi rhetoric

Image: Jung von Matt

New trademarks are legally required to be used commercially within five years, so the team had to get creative. "We had to find a way to make [these Nazi codes] commercially available without contributing to any Nazi scandal or anything like that. So, we turned them upside down and had them written on the shirts," said Knittel.

Challenges with registering trademarks

The campaign has secured six trademarks and is in the process of securing more.

"It's quite complicated — it takes up to six months to have one trademark registered and costs €1,600 ($1,823) — and you never know if you will actually get it registered," said Knittel. The campaign relies completely on donations to fund its operations. Jung von Matt works entirely pro bono.

Harassment in the form of hate mail, emails has been commonplace, and the campaign is currently looking for name donors, as each trademark needs to be registered under an individual's name.

Street art against far-right hatred in Verona  04:57

The campaign is also involved in a lawsuit with Tommy Frenck, the owner of the original Druck 18. He sought a court order to stop them from using the shop's name but lost in both the first instance and on appeal.

And some of the codes used by Neo-Nazis can't be protected by trademark law in the first place. "So, there are still codes out there that we can't protect against," explained Knittel. "But in the end, the goal was to create awareness that these codes exists," in both the public and political spheres.

And that is something Rights Against the Right has certainly done — one trademark at a time.

Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier


Sarah Hucal Freelance Multimedia Journalist

Progressive Patriotism for America’s 250th Birthday

Progressive believe that the core claims of this nation—fairness, equality, freedom, and justice—are their own. And they are right


“This year as a time when democracy itself is under serious threat, progressives are seeking ways to claim their patriotism and recapture the flag,” write Dreier and Flack.
(Photo by Bradyn Shock on Unsplash)

.


Peter Dreier

Dick Flacks
Jul 04, 2026

Common Dreams

July 4 is the big occasion for Americans to express patriotism, none more so than this year, the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. But the ways we do so are as diverse as the country. People and groups from right to left celebrate in conflicting ways and with conflicting views—from “love it or leave it” to “love it and fix it.”

This year as a time when democracy itself is under serious threat, progressives are seeking ways to claim their patriotism and recapture the flag.

“America is beautiful, contradictory, unfinished,” wrote Zohran Mamdani last July 4 before he had been elected mayor of New York City. “I am proud of our country even as we constantly strive to make it better, to protect and deepen our democracy, to fulfill its promise for each and every person who calls it home. Happy Independence Day. No Kings in America.”

Since the American Revolution, each generation of progressives has expressed an American patriotism rooted in democratic values that challenged jingoism and “my country—right or wrong” thinking, rejecting blind nationalism, militaristic drum beating, and sheep-like conformism. Democratic movements—abolition of slavery, farmers’ populism, women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, civil rights, environmentalism, gay rights, and others—sought to overturn the established order while claiming to fulfill America’s promise. They believed that America’s core claims—fairness, equality, freedom, justice—were their own.

Even the founders would be aghast at how far Trump, and his courtiers, as well as most Republican politicians, have gone to establish an authoritarian state.

As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., declared in a speech during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, “The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right.”.

Donald Trump consciously and cynically has been re-enacting the long tradition of patriotism as jingoism, nationalism, flag waving, and “America first” sloganeering. What seems new is his systematic drive to debase major symbols of national identity—such as the White House, the reflecting pool, and Arlington Cemetery—while wrecking the entire national plan to celebrate America at 250.

Although they disagreed on many issues, the founders were adamant that they didn’t want the country to be run by an all-powerful king. Yet here we are 250 year later, governed by a president publicly claiming such power, with a Supreme Court majority acting as his enablers,

Of course, many of the founders were skeptical of a robust democracy. They created institutions, including the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the Electoral College, that were never intended to completely reflect the voice of the people.

Even the founders, however, would be aghast at how far Trump, and his courtiers, as well as most Republican politicians, have gone to establish an authoritarian state, exploiting the opportunities provided by the Constitution’s elitist features.

The Gallup poll regularly asks Americans what the founders would think of America today. This year, only 19% think the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased with how the country has turned out. Over three quarters (77%) now say the founders would be disappointed. This compares with 42% in 2001.

Americans’ disappointment with the country is obviously tied to Trump’s performance and his low favorability ratings in the polls. We expect our nation’s leaders, especially our president, to express a deep loyalty to a vision bigger than one person. But Trump has no overarching vision. Besides grabbing power and wealth for himself, his major commitment appears to white nationalism—turning America into a country for the uber rich and white people only. In contrast to the patriotism expressed in Emma Lazarus’ poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty (“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”), Trump wants, to rid the nation of immigrants of color, whom, in his eugenicist view, he thinks “pollute” the country with bad genes.

Trump and his coterie have systematically acted to undermine the spirit and letter of the Constitution. One of America’s core beliefs since its founding has been that elections should determine who becomes president and that it is important to ensure the orderly transfer of power. But insurrectionists at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021—urged on by and loyal to Trump— attempted to stop that process, while. carrying American flags. Many of these were convicted and sentenced for insurrectionary crimes. Trump’s blanket pardon and embrace of the convicted was an announcement of his autocratic hopes and plans.

As the 250th anniversary approaches, Trump is intensifying his campaign to end the right to vote—the fundamental idea of the American Revolution. Abetted by the Supreme Court majority’s dismantling of the Voting Rights Act (a key victory of the 1960s), and building on the ongoing GOP campaign to maintain power as they lose their capacity to win the national popular vote, Trump is trying to undermine states’ control over the electoral process.

He’s used his powers to eviscerate other cherished rights, including free speech, a free press, and freedom of assembly and dissent. He has used the tools of government—including the FBI, the Justice Department, and the IRS—to unleash his revenge on protesters, the media, immigrants, Democrats, and all others he considers his opponents.

Right wingers have always wrapped themselves in the flag under the guise of being the true patriots. ‘“Americanism” campaigns in the early 20th century were designed to undermine the labor movement and limit immigration. Congressional and state legislative “Unamerican Activities” committees collaborated with the FBI beginning in the 1930s, to build blacklists against leftwing activists and artists,

Even American Nazis sought to be seen as patriots. On Feb. 20, 1939, 20,000 of them filled Madison Square Garden for a “Pro-America Rally.” They erected a massive 30-foot banner of George Washington (it was timed to celebrate his birthday) surrounded by American flags and swastika banners.

Trump’s own MAGA rallies feel like modern-day versions of that Nazi event. He fetishizes the American flag and other patriotic symbols, even while displaying a shallow, ahistorical, and bizarre understanding of what they meant.

Once, at a campaign rally in Tampa, as his cult followers chanted, “Build that wall,” Trump interrupted his speech to give a bear hug to an American flag on the stage behind him.

“We want to make sure that anyone who seeks to join our country, shares our values and has the capacity to love our people,” Trump said at a rally at the Kennedy Center in 2017.

“We all salute the same great American flag,” Trump said in his 2017 inauguration address—a line he has repeated in many speeches since then.

To Trump and his followers, the flag is synonymous with “America First.” It was a slogan used to unite isolationists and Nazi sympathizers against involvement in the European war in 1939. For Trump, it means reporting undocumented immigrants and caging their children in detention centers, restricting visitors from Muslim countries, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and other international agreements, and engaging in friendships with like-minded dictators.

Trump’s faux patriotism and its clownish griftiness has been providing a wide space for coalitions of resistance. The “No Kings” protests and the slogan itself help provide a very fitting frame for revitalizing a progressive, democratic, populist patriotism. Many participants waved American flags.

America now confronts a new version of the Gilded Age, brought upon by Wall Street greed and corporate malfeasance.

President Barack Obama said: “I have no doubt that, in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it.” He observed that, “loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Loving your country must mean accepting your responsibility to do your part to change it. If you do, your life will be richer, our country will be stronger.”

President Joe Biden said that “we’re all part of a chain of patriots” who fought for democracy, freedom, fair play, peace, security, and opportunity. Patriots, he explained, seek “the right to equal justice under the law; the right to vote and have that vote counted; the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and know that our children and grandchildren will be safe on this planet for generations to come; the right to rise in the world as far as your God-given talent can take you, unlimited by barriers of privilege or power.”

In the Sixties, as hundreds of thousands of American youth were radicalized by the senseless Vietnam war, resistance included acts of defiance of patriotic symbols and rhetoric. Flag burnings would sometimes combine with the burning of draft cards. But other radicals took a different stance. In 1968, in a famous speech against the Vietnam war, Norman Thomas, the aging leader of the rather moribund Socialist Party, proclaimed, “I come to cleanse the American flag, not burn it.”

“It was as a Socialist, and because I was a Socialist, that I fell in love with America,” wrote Michael Harrington, the founder of Democratic Socialists of America, in his 1973 book, Fragments of a Century. “In saying that, I am not indulging in romantic nostalgia about youthful days on the road but rather underlining a crucial political truth. If the Left wants to change this country because it hates it, then the people will never listen to the Left and the people will be right. To be a Socialist is to make an act of faith, of love even, toward this land. It is to sense the seed beneath the snow; to see, beneath the veneer of corruption and meanness and the commercialization of human relationships, men and women capable of controlling their own destinies. To be a radical is, in the best and only decent sense of the word, patriotic.”

Harrington was identifying with the many radicals and progressive reformers who proudly asserted their patriotism. To them, America promised democratic fulfillment—economic and social equality, mass participation in politics, free speech, and civil liberties, elimination of the second-class citizenship of women and people of color, a welcome mat for the world’s oppressed people. The reality of corporate power, right wing xenophobia, and social injustice only fueled progressives’ allegiance to these principles and the struggle to achieve them.

It is largely underrecognized that some of the most important and popular ways all Americans experience and express patriotism were the creation of radical writers and artists. What they created continues to inspire.

Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and Christian socialist who lived from 1855 to 1931, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892 to express his outrage at the Gilded Age’s widening economic divide. He had been ousted from his Boston church for his sermons depicting Jesus as a socialist, and for his work among the It was the Gilded Age, an era marked by major political, economic, and social conflicts. Progressive reformers were outraged by the widening gap between rich and poor, and the behavior of corporate robber barons who were exploiting workers, gouging consumers, and corrupting politics with their money. Workers were organizing unions. Farmers were joining forces in the so-called Populist movement to rein in the power of banks, railroads, and utility companies. Reformers fought for child labor laws, against slum housing, and in favor of women’s suffrage. Socialists and other leftist radicals were gaining new converts.

In foreign affairs, Americans were battling over the nation’s role in the world. America was beginning to act like an imperial power, justifying its expansion with a combination of white supremacy, manifest destiny, and the argument that it was spreading democracy. At the time, nativist groups across the country were pushing for restrictions on immigrants—Catholics, Jews, and Asians—who were cast as polluting Protestant America. In the South, the outcome of the Civil War still inflamed regional passions. Many Southerners, including Civil War veterans, swore allegiance not to the American but to the Confederate flag.

Bellamy, a cousin of Edward Bellamy, author of two bestselling socialistic books, Looking Backward and Equality, believed that unbridled capitalism, materialism, and individualism betrayed America’s promise. He hoped that the Pledge of Allegiance would promote a different moral vision to counter the rampant greed he argued was undermining the nation.

When composing the Pledge, Bellamy had initially intended to use the phrase “liberty, fraternity, and equality,” but concluded that the radical rhetoric of the French Revolution wouldn’t sit well with many Americans. So he coined the phrase, “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” to express his more egalitarian vision of America, and a secular patriotism aimed at helping unite a divided nation.

In 1891, Youth’s Companion, a magazine for young people published in Boston with a circulation of about 500,000, hired Bellamy to organize a public relations campaign to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ so-called discovery of America by promoting use of the flag in public schools.

Bellamy gained the support of the National Education Association, along with President Benjamin Harrison and Congress, for a national ritual observance in the schools, and he wrote the Pledge of Allegiance as part of the program’s flag salute ceremony.

Bellamy thought such an event would be a powerful expression on behalf of free public education. Moreover, he wanted all the schoolchildren of America to recite the pledge at the same moment. He hoped the pledge would promote a moral vision to counter the individualism embodied in capitalism and expressed in the climate of the Gilded Age.

In 1923, over the objections of the aging Bellamy, the National Flag Conference, led by the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the opening, “I pledge allegiance to my flag,” to “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” Ostensibly, it was revised to make sure that immigrant children—who might have thought that “my flag” referred to their native countries—knew that they were pledging allegiance to the American flag.

In 1954, at the height of the Cold War—when many political leaders believed that the nation was threatened by godless communism—the Knights of Columbus led a successful campaign to lobby Congress to add the words “under God.”

A year after Bellamy composed the pledge, Kathryn Lee Bates wrote the poem “America the Beautiful,” which was later set to music by Samuel Ward, the organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, New Jersey

Like Bellamy, Bates was a Christian socialist. A well-respected poet and professor of English at Wellesley College, Bates (1859-1929) was also a lesbian who lived with Katharine Coman, an economics professor. They belonged to progressive circles in the Boston area that supported labor unions, advocated for immigrants, and fought for women’s suffrage. She was an ardent foe of American imperialism.

“America the Beautiful” was initially published in 1895 to commemorate the Fourth of July. The poem is usually heard as an unalloyed paean to American virtue. But a close reading of her words makes it clear that she had something more in mind. She wrote:

America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain,
The banner of the free!

Bates hoped that a progressive movement could overcome the Gilded Age’s greed. And when sung by Ray Charles and other African American artists, listeners can’t help but be inspired by the song’s plea for brotherhood – or, as the left calls it, solidarity.

Lazarus, author of the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, was a Jewish poet of considerable reputation in her day, who was a strong supporter of Henry George and his “socialistic” single-tax program, and a friend of William Morris, a leading British socialist. Her welcome to the “wretched refuse” of the Earth, written in 1883, was an effort to project an inclusive and egalitarian definition of the American Dream.

In the Depression years and during World War II, the fusion of populist, egalitarian, and anti-racist values with patriotic expression reached full flower. The rise of fascism was countered in the US with efforts to build a center-left coalition in critical support of the New Deal and a parallel cultural upsurge.

Langston Hughes’ poem, “Let America Be America Again,” written in 1936, contrasted the nation’s promise with its mistreatment of his fellow African-Americans, the poor, Native Americans, workers, farmers, and immigrants:

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath
But opportunity is real, and life is free
Equality is in the air we breathe.

It’s a poem that encapsulates the anger and the hope integral to the American experience.

In 1939, composer Earl Robinson teamed with lyricist John La Touche to write “Ballad for Americans,” which was performed on the CBS radio network by Paul Robeson, at the time one of the best-known performers on the world stage, accompanied by chorus and orchestra. This 11-minute cantata provided a musical review of American history, depicted as a struggle between the “nobody who’s everybody” and an elite that fails to understand the real, democratic essence of America.

Broadcasts and recordings of “Ballad for Americans,” (by Bing Crosby as well as Robeson) were immensely popular. In the summer of 1940, it was performed at the national conventions of both the Republican and Communist parties. The work soon became a staple in school choral performances, but it was literally ripped out of many public school songbooks after Robinson and Robeson were identified with the radical left and blacklisted during the McCarthy period. Since then, “Ballad for Americans” has been periodically revived, notably during the bicentennial celebration in 1976, when a number of pop and country singers performed it in concerts and on TV. This might be the year to revive and revise it.

Earl Robinson wrote the melody for another important patriotic song of the World War 2 era -- “The House I Live In.” The lyric was written by Lewis Allen, the pen-name of a New York teacher, activist and poet named Abel Meeropol, who had, a few years earlier, written the anti-lynching anthem “Strange Fruit” for Billie Holiday.

The song was the centerpiece of an Oscar winning short film starring Frank Sinatra. In the film, Sinatra uses the song to instruct a group of kids who were bullying a Jewish classmate. Sinatra made the song a hit in 1945. Other versions were recorded by Robeson and by Josh White. Sinatra kept it in his repertoire for his whole career, even though he publicly associated with the Republican right (abandoning his earlier left-wing sympathies). Sinatra performed the song as the finale to a nationally broadcast celebration of the Statue of Liberty centenary, addressing it to Ronald and Nancy Reagan on the platform with him. Only a few watching were aware of the song’s origins.

Composer Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” and “A Lincoln Portrait,” both written in 1942, are now patriotic musical standards, regularly performed at major civic events. Copland was a member of a radical composers’ group as well as a gay man.

Many Americans consider Woody Guthrie’s song “This Land Is Your Land,” penned in 1940, to be our unofficial national anthem. Guthrie, a radical, was inspired to write the song as an answer to Irving Berlin’s popular “God Bless America,” which he thought failed to recognize that it was the “people” to whom America belonged.

The song reflects Guthrie’s belief that patriotism and support for the underdog were interconnected. He celebrated America’s natural beauty and bounty, but criticized the country for its failure to share its riches. This is revealed in the song’s last and least-known verse, which Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen performed at Obama’s pre-inaugural concert in 2009 in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with Obama in the audience:

One bright sunny morning;
In the shadow of the steeple;
By the relief office;
I saw my people.
As they stood hungry;
I stood there wondering;
If this land was made for you and me.

You can find Spanish and Native American versions of the song. Guthrie would have approved. Both he and Seeger, who were part of Communist circles, helped popularize socially conscious music reflecting the country’s diversity. They are now viewed as American icons.

During the 1960s, American progressives continued to seek ways to fuse their love of country with their opposition to the government’s policies. The March on Washington in 1963 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King famously quoted the words to “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” repeating the phrase “Let freedom ring” 11 times. That 19th century song seems politically neutral, but it was a defiantly anti-monarchy anthem, written as a kind of parody of “God Save the King.” An abolitionist version soon followed its initial release. Marian Anderson, the great African American contralto, sang the song on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 because the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform at its Constitution Hall due to her race.

Phil Ochs, then part of a new generation of politically conscious singer-songwriters who emerged during the 1960s, wrote an anthem in the Guthrie vein, “The Power and the Glory,” that coupled love of country with a strong plea for justice and equality. The words to the chorus echo the sentiments of the anti-Vietnam War movement:

Here is a land full of power and glory;
Beauty that words cannot recall;
Oh her power shall rest on the strength of her freedom;
Her glory shall rest on us all.

One of its stanzas updated Guthrie’s combination of outrage and patriotism:

Yet she’s only as rich as the poorest of her poor;
Only as free as the padlocked prison door;
Only as strong as our love for this land;
Only as tall as we stand.

This song later became part of the repertoire of the U.S. Army band.

In recent decades, Springsteen has closely followed in the Guthrie tradition. From “Born in the USA” to his songs about Tom Joad (the militant protagonist in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath), to his anthem about the 9/11 tragedy (“Empty Sky”), to his album Wrecking Ball (including its opening song, “We Take Care of Our Own”), Springsteen has championed the downtrodden while challenging America to live up to its ideals. In January, Springsteen wrote “Streets of Minneapolis,” which describe how “a city aflame fought fire and ice ‘neath an occupier’s boots,” which Springsteen calls “King Trump’s private army.” He wrote it in response to the second deadly shooting by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis and dedicated it to the people of that city. At the opening of Obama’s new presidential center in Chicago, Springsteen sang his song, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” which includes lines adopted from Guthrie’s song, “This Train is Bound for Glory.” The train – a metaphor for America -- carries “saints and sinners,” “losers and winners,” and “fools and kings.”

America now confronts a new version of the Gilded Age, brought upon by Wall Street greed and corporate malfeasance. Americans are upset by the unbridled selfishness and political influence-peddling demonstrated by banks, oil companies, drug companies, insurance companies, and other large corporations. They are angry at the growing power of American-based global firms who show no loyalty to their country, outsource jobs to low-wage countries, avoid paying taxes, and pollute the environment.

During the ICE raids in Minnesota a group called “Singing Resistance” emerged to encourage singing during protests. Troubadours of multiple generations sang new and classic songs of protest on stage and via You Tube.

One fascinating moment happened at this year’s Super Bowl when Coco Jones sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” For 100 years that song has been the African American national anthem. It lyrics include these lines:

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on ‘til victory is won.

To have it performed at the Super Bowl, alongside the “Star Spangled Banner,” may have been an affront to right-wingers, , but it was an inspiring moment for many other Americans. Cong. James Clyburn (D-South Carolina) has sponsored a bill to make “Life Every Voice” the national hymn.

Throughout American history, progressive movements had won major victories and also experienced setbacks. When those setbacks occur, it is understandable that people sometimes lose hope, and even give up the fight. But our history also teaches us that we can’t give up, because we must keep the struggle alive for a new generation.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Peter Dreier
Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He joined the Occidental faculty in January 1993 after serving for nine years as Director of Housing at the Boston Redevelopment Authority and senior policy advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012) and an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style" and co-author of "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2022).
Full Bio >

Dick Flacks
Dick Flacks is research professor of sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara. His books include: "Making History: The American Left and the American Mind;" "Beyond the Barricades: The Sixties Generation Grows Up;" "The Port Huron Statement: Sources and Legacies of the New Left's Founding Manifesto" His research and teaching centers on issues of political participation, commitment and protest. His weekly radio program, "Culture of Protest," has been on Santa Barbara radio for 25 years.
Full Bio >