in other words
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2020
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The Gadsden Flag is a Symbol. But Whose? continued from page 6
cattle, Bundy called on militias for help.
They came, their members bearing .50
caliber machine guns and Gadsden flags.
“I really don’t want violence toward (the
government),” Jerad Miller told a TV re-
porter. “But if they’re gonna come bring
violence to us? Well, if that’s the lan-
guage they want to speak, we’ll learn it.”
Six weeks later, the Millers
walked into a Las Vegas pizza parlor and
shot two police officers. They draped
one of the bodies in a Gadsden flag and
a swastika, pinning a note to the other:
“This is the beginning of the revolu-
tion,” it read.
In 2017, a man named Jeremy
Christian thrust Nazi salutes into the
spring air at an alt-right march in Port-
land, Oregon, while all around him peo-
ple waved Gadsden flags. Weeks later,
Christian lobbed racial slurs at two teen-
age girls on a crowded commuter train.
When three other passengers confronted
him, Christian slashed their throats with
a knife, killing two of them. In court,
where he would be convicted of murder,
Christian was photographed holding up
a small Gadsden flag.
“It’s become a symbol of anti-
government, Patriot and militia mem-
bers,” Travis McAdam, program direc-
tor at Montana Human Rights Network,
told me. The revival and repurposing of
the Revolutionary symbol makes sense
to McAdam: “So many of the militia
folks that are out there view themselves
as the modern-day version of this coun-
try’s founders.”
THE YEAR WAS 2020, the month was
April. America was 244 years old,
and the struggle for control over
an American symbol of freedom
was far from over. From Olympia,
Washington, to Lansing, Michigan,
Gadsden flag-carrying protesters
railed against COVID-19 stay-at-
home orders handed down by state
governments. Ammon Bundy, son of
the Nevada rancher, even sermon-
ized about the flag in Emmett, Idaho,
where he had gathered a group of
people who deemed the virus harm-
less and the restrictions tyrannical.
“On the Gadsden flag we
have a snake, and it says, ‘Don’t
tread on me.’ We’re gonna flip that
Vernonia’s Voice is
published on the 1 st and
3 rd Thursday. Look for our
next issue on June 18.
around. What we want to become, what
we will become, we are going to be like
a den of rattlesnakes,” Bundy said. “We
will be so venomous if our rights are
even threatened one bit!”
The way the flag was being em-
braced by extremists reminded Morige-
au, the Montana representative, of the
fight to remove the Confederate monu-
ment in Helena — as if it was another
chapter in the same book. Like that mon-
ument — erected long after the war’s
end, far from any Civil War battlefield
— the Gadsden flag has come to func-
tion as an extremist dog whistle: “Things
can take on new meaning. It can be used
as a tool,” he said. “Some people are try-
ing to take liberty and defiance to the ex-
treme.”
“There’s a moment where we
have to step up, too, and talk about the
real history on this and not let these
people… make it a symbol of hate,” he
told me. “I might just go buy a damn flag
now and put a sticker on my car because
of this conversation.”
Later that day, Morigeau texted
me an Amazon link for a $6.99 vinyl
Gadsden flag sticker. “A great way to
showcase your political views!” the de-
scription read. By the next week, he’d
affixed it to the window of his pickup.
He texted me a photo, along with a note:
“I’m not going to let the Tea Party re-
purpose a flag and tread on its universal
meaning.”
In Montana, conversations
about the flag often do come down to
car decorations. In 2017, Montana be-
came the only state in the West to offer
residents the option to put a bright yel-
low “Don’t Tread on Me” specialty li-
cense plate on their vehicle. As of March
2020, nearly 2,800 Montanans had one.
The plate was the creation of a Billings
nonprofit called the 1776 Foundation,
which is focused on upholding “tradi-
tional American values, historic civil
liberties, the Montana Constitution and
the Constitution of the United States of
America.” The organization — which
did not respond to multiple requests for
comment from High Country News —
earned $61,000 from the plates in 2019
alone.
The nonprofit is the work of Ja-
cob Eaton, a combat veteran and cam-
paign manager for Republican Rep.
Greg Gianforte’s gubernatorial run.
Eaton served as the executive director
of the Montana GOP until 2008, when
he stepped down in a flurry of contro-
versy after unsuccessfully challenging
the validity of 6,000 voter registrations
— particularly of Indigenous people and
residents of liberal-leaning counties —
in federal court. The state GOP backed
off, but not before U.S. District Court
Judge Donald Molloy took a swing at
Eaton: “One can imagine the mischief
an immature political operative could
inject into an election cycle,” he wrote,
“were he to use the statutes, not for their
intended purpose of protecting the integ-
rity of the people’s democracy, but rather
This article was originally published
in the June 2020 High Country News.
Leah Sottile is a correspondent at High
Country News. She writes from Port-
land, Oregon.
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to execute a tawdry political ploy.”
Around the state, the Gadsden
plates are perceived as a symbol loaded
with conflicting messages — even to
those who know the emblem’s history.
A member of a proud military family,
William “Bill” Snell Jr., who lives in
Billings, Montana, and is an enrolled
Crow tribal member, grew up respecting
the Gadsden flag. And even though his
reverence for the flag is lifelong, Snell
says he would not fly one — or put the
plate on his car. “I think people would
label me. And I really don’t need that,”
he said. “I would definitely fly some oth-
er flags, including tribal flags, but that
particular flag I probably wouldn’t, just
because of the misinterpretation it might
bring to me and my family.”
Still, his attitude toward the flag
might help explain its persistence, and
its ominous warning. “It demonstrates
strength; it demonstrates authority,”
Snell said. “To me, it indicates that whole
philosophy that everything is good, but
don’t mess with us in a bad way. … If
you see a nail, don’t step on it. Because
there’s a consequence. There’s always a
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