How Election Deniers Claimed the Upside-Down Flag

It has been a well known image of misery for the reason that nation’s founding, when sailors turned the American flag the other way up to sign that their ships had been sinking, on fireplace or trapped in ice.

However over time, the upside-down American flag turned an emblem brandished extra typically by protesters throughout the political spectrum to sign that they believed the nation itself was in grave peril.

After President Biden received the 2020 election, supporters of former President Donald J. Trump rallied across the inverted flag, displaying it at their properties, on their vehicles and on social media to indicate that they believed Mr. Trump’s lie that the election was stolen. Some started doing so earlier than the votes had been even counted.

Now, the observe has burst into the nationwide dialog after The New York Occasions reported on Thursday that it had just lately obtained photos of an upside-down flag flying exterior the house in Alexandria, Va., of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in January 2021. On the time, the Supreme Court docket was nonetheless contending with whether or not to listen to a 2020 election case.

Justice Alito stated in an e mail to The Occasions that he had “no involvement in anyway within the flying of the flag.”

“It was briefly positioned by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard indicators,” he wrote, referring to his spouse, Martha-Ann Alito.

Flying an inverted flag was as soon as a name for assist at sea.

Earlier than it turned an emblem of political protest, flying a nation’s flag upside-down was one of many solely methods for sailors to name for assist.

The observe appears to have originated within the British Isles within the seventeenth century, seemingly in the course of the Anglo-Dutch wars, in keeping with the North American Vexillological Affiliation, a gaggle devoted to the research of flags.

Ted Kaye, the affiliation’s secretary, stated he had seen 18th-century engravings of the American flag flying the other way up on lifeboats and on New England whaling vessels locked in ice. “It was the simplest approach to sign misery with out having any particular flag,” Mr. Kaye stated, “and misery is probably the most pressing sign that one would possibly need to ship from a ship.”

That which means was mirrored within the U.S. flag code, an official set of pointers for the flag, which was first printed within the Nineteen Twenties. It reads: “The flag ought to by no means be displayed with the union down, besides as a sign of dire misery in cases of maximum hazard to life or property.”

The conference endured for many years. In 1974, a 67‐yr‐previous clam digger named Julius Novickis flew the inverted flag after he suffered a stroke on a barren island off Nassau County, on Lengthy Island, and efficiently summoned a police helicopter.

It has been used to protest slavery and the Vietnam Battle.

The upside-down flag additionally has a protracted historical past as a political emblem.

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau delivered a scathing antislavery speech whereas standing beneath an upside-down American flag on a stage with Sojourner Fact and William Lloyd Garrison, who held up a duplicate of the Structure and set it on fireplace to jeers and groans from the viewers, in keeping with “Henry David Thoreau: A Life,” by Laura Dassow Partitions.

Within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, protesters carried the flag upside-down as an emblem of opposition to the Vietnam Battle, stated Marc Leepson, the creator of “Flag: An American Biography.” Some put flag stamps the other way up on their letters, sending a subtler antiwar message, he stated.

A backlash generally ensued.

In his first marketing campaign for Congress in 1972, John F. Kerry, the Vietnam veteran turned antiwar activist who went on to develop into a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, presidential nominee and secretary of state, was bitterly attacked for having printed a e-book, “The New Soldier,” with a canopy that confirmed a gaggle of bearded veterans holding the American flag the other way up.

The Kerry congressional marketing campaign tried to clarify the flag’s place because the worldwide sign of misery. He misplaced that election.

Robert Justin Goldstein, a professor emeritus of political science at Oakland College in Rochester, Mich., stated that earlier than Supreme Court docket dominated in 1989 that burning the American flag was protected beneath the First Modification, some People had been prosecuted for turning the flag the other way up.

It was thought of desecration of the flag, he stated.

In newer years, the inverted flag has been displayed by Tea Occasion activists who opposed the re-election of President Barack Obama and by protesters demonstrating after Michael Brown, a youngster, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. In 2020, an Related Press picture of a protester carrying a U.S. flag the other way up subsequent to a burning constructing in Minneapolis circulated extensively, capturing the fireplace and fury in that metropolis after the homicide of George Floyd by the hands of cops.

It’s now related to the ‘Cease the Steal’ motion, which denies Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.

In 2020, the upside-down flag turned extra firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory, stated Alex Newhouse, a researcher on the College of Colorado, Boulder.

“It’s very, quite common in MAGA communities and QAnon communities,” he stated. “It caught on amongst hard-core MAGA folks within the ‘Cease the Steal’ ecosystem in 2020.”

Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana Research and American Research at Brown College, stated that flying the flag upside-down “appears to have develop into part of our hyperpartisan symbolic encompass, particularly on the fitting, the place it symbolizes the approaching loss of life of the nation and a name to arms.”

Different symbols embrace thin-blue-line flags, a pro-police image, and a Punisher cranium, primarily based on the comic-book vigilante, he stated.

“I’m certain if a Navy skiff hung its flag upside-down, anybody who noticed it might assume calamity and are available working to assist,” he stated in an e mail. “However the which means of issues can also be sticky. As soon as the flag is related to the fitting’s name to arms, it’s more likely to adhere for a very long time.”

Jodi Kantor contributed reporting and Alain Delaquérière contributed analysis.