90 Comments

I'm not convinced that the message has been ignored by those who would be happiest seeing their message surreptitiously worked into the official USA websites. It is preposterous to believe that this was the only solution for representing the complete Stars & Stripes to display as a logo. Nine stars and no one thought, "Hey, weren't there nine stars on early Confederate flags?" To believe that civil servants are either not smart enough to try and pull it off or so dense that none among their ranks saw a potential problem, certainly underestimates what is possible, esp in a nation increasingly polarized by race and class.

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You are free to believe what you want.

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If ever there was a snow job on the true intent of the losing traitor's flag popping up on Union websites, this is it. The use of confederate pictography--we are to believe an abbreviated version of our flag reduces 50 to 9 and not miss the deliberate attempt to suggest the infamous "we shall rise again" pledge. Please. 2017 or now, this should have been caught a long time ago and made clear it was not to be used. But apparently that didn't happen. It keeps the Rebs pumped!

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That flag has nothing to do with the Confederacy or anything else for that matter.

You said: "It keeps the Rebs pumped!"

The funny thing is that Neo-Confederates paid zero attention to this story. It was a story completely manufactured by folks on the political left.

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Why would anyone think this was a Confederate flag. It doesn't represent one in the slightest bit. My favorite flag is what some call the "Betsy Ross" flag. It has thirteen stars.

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I completely missed this controversy. Who disseminated it in the first place?

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I don't know how it started.

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I am fascinated. I had no idea this flag thing had exploded to this degree

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It went completely off the rails.

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dumbass liberals, its just the amount of pixels, we cant put 50 stars on something that small.

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Confirmation bias in action in the comments section, I see. Of all the things happening now, this is the hill people are dying on?

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Please read through the thread. I've addressed this already. Thank you.

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You should change your title, it’s misleading. The 9 star flag represents division and it’s disgusting.

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Rightttttt, because the flag didn’t fit on gov websites before? Please. Fascinating you believe your own bullshit

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I’m sorry is this pointed at me? The screenshots of the website are from 2016. I’m not making up a perspective here, I’m merely teasing fact from fiction. It’s an abbreviated flag by a lazy designer that’s been on the website for almost ten years at this point, likely longer.

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You're full of crap. The post Civil War re-union UCV Flag, used 9 stars in 3 rows. The nine stars on that flag symbolize the first nine states to seceded from the Union at the beginning of the Civil War........

How you can then disassociate this with the confederacy is BAFFLING.....

Whether you like it or not such a flag was CREATED post Civil war to represent the 9 states that sparked the Civil War. It not being as popular does not chnage this.

I know you're poo pooing on the flag people are showing you.... But WHERE do you think this flag came from? Do you think it was created after Trump won reelection?!? It came from SOMEWHERE.... the one that's for sale is some mega elaborate FAKE??!

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Can you please point me to a reference in the scholarship on Confederate veterans and the UCV in particular that supports your point other than the problematic auctioneer photo that everyone is posting?

To think that anyone would try to place a Confederate flag that represents a flag so obscure, that no one other than the most paranoid would identify as such, is truly ridiculous.

The very same flag, likely a bad low-res emoji representation of the US flag has been on these websites for a number of years. If you had read the other comments in this thread you would know that.

Now please go away.

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So what flag is it then???

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I've already addressed this question in this thread. Please read before you comment.

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THIS 9 STAR FLAG REPRESENTS THE FIRST 9 STATES TO SUCCEED FROM THE UNION AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR. THESE STATES LATER FORMED THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA. IT IS IN FACT A CONFEDERATE FLAG MY GUY.

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With all due respect, it's hard to take anyone seriously who can't use the correct language. It's secede, not succeed.

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This is from a PP for how to use USAJobs.gov from 2016 featuring website screenshots with the same banner: https://train.jobs.utah.gov/jobseeker/usajobs.pdf

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Thanks for sharing this. It's a hell of a thing to watch people get completely bent out of shape over this.

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It took an embarrassingly short ten minutes of googling to determine the icon is not a dystopian Easter egg. PDF docs live forever in search results even if they’re buried on websites. Once I knew I wanted a screen grab of the old fed sites, it was an easy keyword search.

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Right. This is not rocket science. Some of these people shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a search engine.

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Why a different flag? Why one with 9 stars and 11 stripes. So you told us what it’s not now tell us what it is…

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It looks like a low-res emoji symbol meant to represent a US flag. To be completely honest, I don't really care what it is. All I wanted to do with this post is dispel the nonsense surrounding claims that it is a Confederate flag.

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It looks like a flag that has 9 stars and 11 stripes because that is what it is. Although it is not an exact replica of any Confederate flag, you cannot say that at one point the Confederate flag did not have 9 stars because it did. What is the significance of that in 2025?

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The Confederacy used a nine-star flag from May 18 – July 2, 1861. There is not a single wartime Confederate flag that included eleven stripes. The number of stars was adjusted as additional states entered the Confederacy. I have no idea what you are looking for, but you are wasting my time. This story has been debunked over and over. Go ahead and conclude whatever it is that you need to believe.

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You’re wasting your time trying to get me to join your ignorant bliss.

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I have no interest in what you believe.

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I too have no interest in what you believe so you can stop responding to me now!

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You are the third person to share this link. There is very little reason to believe that this flag has anything to do with Confederate veterans. I've talked to a number of experts in this area and they don't believe it is what the auctioneer claims it to be. Either way, there is no reason to believe that anyone would intend to represent a Confederate flag with this image. Please read my post for further clarification. Thank you.

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Post Civil War

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I mean? Why at the bottom of that page does it say flags of the Confederate states then? #SorryNotSorry.

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I am not sure what exactly you are asking.

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The posts I am seeing are referring to this image:

https://www.historicalamericana.com/product/9-star-flag/

It seems an odd choice to go with 9 stars for the sake of saving space knowing the potential association.

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Yes, someone else already posted a link to it. I've never seen it and I have my doubts that it has anything to do with Confederate veterans. Either way, it is simply ridiculous to think that the Trump administration would change the flag on a website, to represent a Confederate flag, based on this design.

There is such a thing called Occam's Razor.

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I do not share your sentiments that it's ridiculous or even far-fetched. There was no need to change the flag on the websites. I hadn't scrolled far enough down to see someone else post this link. I did see another one but didn't look the same as the one on the sites as the one linked above. Occam's Razor indeed.

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It is NOT ridiculous to think Trump would so something petty and confrontational like this. That's why so many people who don't do their research are running with it. It *totally* seems like something he would do.

But--you are correct. Because he didn't do it--at least not in his second term he didn't. Here's a page on the wayback machine for ICE from early in the Biden administration.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210201000014/https://www.ice.gov/

It's not ridiculous that Trump would do something like this; it's completely plausible. It's just not true.

As far as whether it's a Confederate flag or a UCV one, I don't have a better claim to know than you, but I did run across this naval ensign on Wikipedia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Ensign_of_the_Confederate_States_%289_stars%29.svg/2560px-Ensign_of_the_Confederate_States_%289_stars%29.svg.png

and it's not totally unlike the thing that that fake antique flag site shows.

But whether it was or not, it's kind of moot, when you know that Biden displayed the thing for four years.

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What evidence do you have that it was changed? Do you possess before and after screenshots? Either way, there is zero reason to believe that it is a Confederate flag.

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