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posted by martyb on Thursday June 11 2020, @01:27PM   Printer-friendly
from the A-See-Change dept.

Many sources are reporting what we can read at ABC News,

NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its races and properties on Wednesday, formally distancing itself from what for many is a symbol of slavery and racism that had been a familiar sight at stock car events for more than 70 years.

The move comes amid social unrest around the globe following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis. Protests have roiled the nation for days and Confederate monuments are being taken down across the South — the tradtiional fan base for NASCAR.

[...] The issue was pushed to the fore this week as Bubba Wallace, NASCAR's lone black driver, called for the banishment of the Confederate flag and said there was "no place" for them in the sport. At long last, NASCAR obliged.

"The presence of the confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry," NASCAR said. "Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties."

[...] The move was announced before Wednesday night's race at Martinsville Speedway where Wallace, an Alabama native, was driving a Chevrolet with a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme. Wallace got a shoutout on Twitter from several athletes, including NBA star LeBron James, for using the paint scheme in the race.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @03:02PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @03:02PM (#1006312)

    It's so interesting how quick society is to repeat the mistakes of other nations throughout time.

    The path of the US is currently very much mirroring China and many other nations throughout time. I don't mean just in the destruction of cultural artifacts and efforts to effectively eliminate or rewrite history, but also in things like the social inquisition. As Mao took power he labeled 5 groups as the 'black categories'. [wikipedia.org] These were the landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad-influencers, and rightists. Those were the primary categories through it also extended to traitors, spies, capitalists, and intellectuals.

    Those who fell into the black categories were subject to public sessions of humiliation, "reeducation", and what would quickly go on to become much worse with people being subject to torture, imprisonment, and execution. They framed it as a form of reparation for past misdeeds - the betterment of society and people in general. Of course soon thereafter China would descend into chaos with the starvation of tens of millions as the result of dramatic production decline and other brilliant ideas [wikipedia.org] from Mao including try to genocide all sparrows. He saw they were eating the grain so ordered and rewarded society for their elimination which the Chinese excelled at. The sparrows ate the grain, but they ate even more insects. Lacking a natural predator, insects blossomed and China saw huge losses of grain as consequences. Ahhh the foresight of communist governments.

    And once all of this stuff blew up China would end up going hard in the opposite direction which brings us to where they are today.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:00PM (#1006352)

    Or we are mirroring Germany which told nazi twats to fuck right off. Symbols of hate and oppression are not valuable items worthy of special protections. Fly the flag on your house, stick it in your pickup truck window, but expect many places to kick you out instead of waiting for some bad shit to go down.

  • (Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:08PM (2 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday June 11 2020, @04:08PM (#1006362) Journal

    A private organization deciding what flags they want to decorate a track with is the EXACT SAME as fascicm!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:29PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:29PM (#1006439)

      NASCAR had already stopped putting up the Battle Flags themselves, back in 2015 when the first NASCAR official wanted to ban such flags.

      But this is them banning even the fans from flying them. For anyone who doesn't realize, it's not just fans sitting in the stands around the tracks. There are also fans in the infield area (inside the track) in some speedways, who pull in with their cars, trucks, and RVs to set up party areas. At some places they're there for days before the race. NASCAR is saying even there the Battle Flag will be banned. Which, depending on the track, may not be legal since at least some of the tracks, IIRC, are publicly owned.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:19PM (#1006473)

        Publicly owned, but used for a private event. Doubt a judge would rule in your favor.

  • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:04PM (6 children)

    by epitaxial (3165) on Thursday June 11 2020, @05:04PM (#1006420)

    You're comparing a communist leader who killed millions to an organization that drives cars around a track one day a week?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:20PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:20PM (#1006474)

      I'll excuse DeathDonkey since I think he has no ability to think for himself, but I will engage with you on the off chance you are not intentionally straw manning.

      And no, obviously what any single entity does does not really matter (so long as they are not centrally in control of e.g. the nation). However, we as a *nation* are embarking on an eerily similar path, paved with self righteousness, that many other nations have followed and frequently ended in awful things. Things do not happen overnight. Mao himself was the effective leader of the communists for about 20 years before he finally was able to grasp and consolidate power to start unleashing his 'vision' which found many of those who thought themselves his allies seeing the end of their lives alongside past enemies - another recurring theme.

      'Cultural purification' is generally a precursor to fascism, if we're not going to call it fascism to begin with. The problem with fascism, and the one that people miss when reading about history, is that it's not like one guy enforcing his fascist ideology on an otherwise reluctant mass. When the Nazis had their book burnings, it wasn't a somber affair people were required to witness - it was a celebration happily attended by massive crowds. They felt they were the righteous, those on the right side of history getting rid of amoralities of the past. And almost none of them had any clue what a monster the man they were supporting would ultimately turn into.

      ...You do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the following for the world to know - Here the intellectual foundation of the [former government establishment] is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise.

      That was Joseph Goebbels speaking to a group of German university students enthusiastically participating in a book burning.

      And keep in mind that book burnings are an anachronism. Books at the time were the primary means of mass communication. All political figures of the past wrote books - not to make money, but to share their ideas and views with others. Books in modern times are directly analogous to the internet which we have already been increasingly actively working to purge of wrongthink.

      Anybody who can try to step outside their own biases can see we're on a very dangerous trajectory. That doesn't necessarily mean it will take us where it has taken others, but it does mean that we should have some degree of introspection on what is happening rather than just applauding things until we suddenly start to wonder how we ended up in a place we never intended or thought we might end up at. Because by the time you do enter into an era that most would consider to indeed be fascist, it will be much too late to change things.

      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:43PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @06:43PM (#1006496)

        You're comparing a Nazi leader who killed millions to an organization that drives cars around a track one day a week?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:41PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 11 2020, @10:41PM (#1006639)

          I'm not the AC you're replying to. But this sort of response, which is all over the net these days, is what has gradually led me to the conclusion that there is no point in trying to talk to each other anymore. No one listens, no one gives any benefit of the doubt to another, and too few are interested in thinking rather than spewing snark.

          Trying is an utter waste of time.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @01:06AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @01:06AM (#1006701)

            When there is something worth responding to I will do so. If it is just apologetics and "no anti-fascists are the real fascists" then not worth discussing. Not to mention the hypocrisy, cultural purification lololol whiny bigots.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @07:48AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @07:48AM (#1006791)

              Yes, of course the only views worth giving any weighting to are the ones you already whole heartedly agree to, or perhaps, at most, modest variations of such. Everything else is not only not worth discussing but should be actively squelched.

              Out of curiosity, do you know what fascism is? How would you define it?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @07:55AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 12 2020, @07:55AM (#1006792)

            This is the thing that makes me think the powers that be have won. Self righteousness is behind all of the worst travesties in this world. People seem to lack the ability to understand that the 'bad guys' throughout history didn't see themselves as the bad guys, in general. They were always the heroes of their own story making a better world for everyone, even if that might involve some short term nastiness.

            But the thing people fail to realize is that these Machiavellian schemes almost never work out. However, the means people engage in in the present to try to achieve their ends do. So you get all of the nasty scheming without any of the amazing world for everybody outcomes at the end. If people were capable of judging their own immediate actions, the world would be a vastly better place. But instead they always rationalize the most awful of behaviors in ways that mankind has always done.