Nothing strikes greater fear and loathing into our communist rulers than the sight of the Confederate Battle Flag. So it was on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of patriots besieged the US Capitol to protest fraud in the 2020 election. Two of those Mostly Peaceful Protesters, David Alan Blair and Kevin Seefried, recently landed sentences essentially for carrying the Battle Flag. The time is coming—if it’s not already here—when merely owning one, let alone holding it aloft during a protest, might well invite a prosecution.
David Alan Blair, protesting the destruction of Confederate monuments on January 6, 2021
According to sources inside the court, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, a black Obama appointee, took particular umbrage with Blair’s Confederate flag, as if it were an exacerbation of his alleged crime rather than protected political speech.
Maybe that was because Blair, who came from Clarksburg, Maryland, attended the January 6 event with a greater clarity of purpose than many of his peers.
Blair, who did not enter the Capitol, wore a skull mask and carried the flag on a lacrosse stick. As he explained in court, he took the flag to defend Southern heritage and protest the sick mobs that destroyed Confederate monuments during the Floyd Hoax Riots of 2020, not the least the crown jewel of them all, the R.E. Lee Memorial in Richmond, Virginia.
“I’m tired of our history being erased in this country,” Blair told the court.
When Blair confronted U.S. Capitol Police, who had beaten women, pepper-sprayed the elderly, refused assistance to heart-attack victims, and shot and killed unarmed military veteran Ashli Babbitt, he told them, “Hell. naw. Quit backing up. Don’t be scared. We’re Americans.”
After some unnecessary shoving by a Capitol Police officer, Blair checked him with the lacrosse stick that held his flag. The response: an over-the-top beating that split open his skull, requiring stitches at the hospital.
In March, Blair pleaded guilty to a single count of felony disorder for which Cooper sentenced him last week to “to five months behind bars, 18 months of supervised release and a $500 special assessment, in addition to the $2,000 in restitution he agreed to pay as part of his plea deal.”
Incredibly—despite that fact that Blair never entered the Capitol—
Cooper, however, said he thought Blair came to D.C. “primed for a fight.”
“I suspect you didn’t go there to go on the lawn,” Cooper said. “I suspect you went there to go to the Capitol.”
Cooper also ordered Blair to appear for a re-entry hearing following his term of incarceration so he can monitor his progress. He urged him to use the time behind bars to consider what led him to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“Be careful what you’re reading on the Internet,” Cooper said.
[‘You came primed for a fight’ | Judge sentences MD man to 5 months behind bars in Capitol riot case, by Jordan Fischer, WUSA, July 13, 2022. Emphasis added]
Is Judge Cooper going to “suspect” at the “re-entry hearing” that David Blair has not renounced his commitment to his Southern heritage? (He’s descended from Wade Hampton.) What then? How does this differ from Maoist political re-education?
The Battle Flag had “a definite effect on the case,” Blair’s attorney, Terrell Roberts, told me by email, “and not for the good. To most folks in D.C., carrying a Confederate flag branded David as a racist or worst.”
Roberts said the protest inside the Capitol had subsided by the time cops tried to push Blair and other protesters off the West Lawn, but even then, Blair was unaware that protesters had entered the building. “He did not move from his position on the West Lawn because he decided to stand his ground and not move any distance more because he thought he had a right to be there to protest,” Roberts said.
Because Blair suffered “three baton blows to his skull that resulted in serious head lacerations and a concussion,” Roberts told me he will represent the Trump supporter in an Excessive Force lawsuit.
If the flag partly inspired Cooper’s sentence, then the obvious question is when free speech—in this case, again, carrying a symbol some people don’t like—became punishable. After all, burning Old Glory certainly isn’t a crime, as the J20 protests after POTUS 45 Trump’s inauguration showed us.
Blair starts serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, on November 17.
But the most communist Journofa ink of all has been spilt over the man, the myth, the legend Kevin Seefried: a simple, peaceful protester who the Left describes as the first Confederate to “breach” the U.S. Capitol, accomplishing a feat which no Confederate could during the actual American Civil War.
Consider the headlines from the Regime Media:
Note that the leftist MSM did not call Seefried a “Laurel Man” or “Delaware Man,” which is what they would call an illegal alien who murdered a little girl in the Blue Hen State.
Far from the violent “insurrectionist” the Left has made Seefried out to be, photos portray him as a Forest Gump–like everyman who stumbled into an historic event, inadvertently desecrating the Left’s seat of absolute tyranny with his horrible, “racist” symbol of rebellion. Amusingly, Seefried and another man in a red baseball cap ran into the son of a Jewish New York judge who wore animal pelt like an extra in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome [Aaron Mostofsky, pelt-wearing son of a Jewish NY judge, jailed for January 6 role, by Michael Kunzelman, Times of Israel, May 7, 2022].
Aaron Mostofsky, pelt-wearing son of a Jewish NY judge, jailed for January 6 role https://t.co/AGPWHAeGN0
— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) May 6, 2022
A political unknown not from Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi, but instead from Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, Seefried could have been a powerful symbol of resistance if conservatives had embraced him. But of course they ran away. Instead, the Left has been free to depict Seefried as the archetypal “insurrectionist.”
Seefried was recently convicted of felony “obstruction of an official proceeding” and four misdemeanors: “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a Capitol Building; disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building,” according to a Justice Department press release. He will be sentenced in September He faces up to three years behind bars along with fines [Delaware Men Found Guilty of Charges For Actions Related to Capitol Breach, Justice.gov, June 15, 2022].
Now, consider what Seefried’s attorneys thought they had to emphasize:
During the trial, defense lawyers argued the Seefrieds did not intend to interfere with the electoral count and that the Confederate flag was not a symbol of hate to Kevin Seefried. They told jurors that Kevin Seefried did not complete the 9th grade and didn’t know much about history. …
In closing remarks, defense lawyers argued that the government did not show any evidence that Kevin Seefried “knew that there was anything to obstruct.” They said that the “Stop the Steal” rally “brought individuals here for a completely innocent reason” and that there had to be evidence of Seefried’s intent, independent of the rally.
Defense attorney Eugene Ohm contended that it was “important” to Kevin Seefried “that he isn’t seen as a person walking around, marching around spreading hate, because that’s not who he is,” and he asked the court to take into consideration the fact that Seefried was among the first of the hundreds who face Jan. 6 charges to turn himself in.
[Kevin Seefried, who brought Confederate flag inside Capitol on Jan. 6, found guilty of obstruction of Congress, by Scott McFarlane, Paulina Smolinski, Robert Legare, Erin Donaghue, CBS News, July 15, 2022. Emphasis added]
As of now, the Garland Raiders who have been conducting this modern-day Reign of Terror have not grabbed the unidentified man who mounted the equestrian statue of Yankee General Ulysses Grant outside the Capitol. His pose with the battle flag resulted in one of the most enduring images of the protest. Message sent: We resist—just like the boys in gray and butternut did.
Later, the unidentified Pale Rider posed with Patriot Front activist Bryan Betancur:
As pointed out by flabbergasted and apoplectic urbanite Scott MacFarlane of CBS News, there was no dearth of protesters on January 6th, known and unknown, carrying the Battle Flag:
It also was ubiquitous at pro-Trump rallies and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., throughout the summer of 2020 and into early 2021. I saw them many times with my own eyes. It sends a message: Don’t push too far.
Although our Ruling Class hasn’t noticed, the Confederate Battle Flag is emerging as a symbol of resistance against tyranny both at public protests and events of historical significance. A Battle Flag was flown during the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
A Confederate flag flies in Germany during the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989
At least one Confederate flag was visible in Warsaw, Poland, when President Trump visited there in 2017.
Wait a sec, is that a confederate flag, at the Trump speech, in freakin #Poland? What?! Man, every day just gets more and more bizarre pic.twitter.com/0om5cBbim7
— DJ Z-TRIP (@ztrip) July 6, 2017
Confederate flags became a symbol of the Canadian Truckers’ revolt against COVID tyranny in 2022.
Trucker Protest attendee in Ottawa, Canada flies the Confederate Flag in resistance to vaccine tyranny
It’s time for the Right to stand up and defend itself, and this country’s history and heritage, not least that of the South.
Let’s honor our Southern heroes and let their names and their sacrifices not be forgotten when the victory bell at last rings again for the Free, the Fair and Brave American nation over the forces of Leftist repression and totalitarianism.
Jason Kessler (email him) is a journalist and civil rights activist with bylines in VDARE.com, Daily Caller, and GotNews as well as his own site JasonKessler.us. Follow him on Telegram, Gab, and Twitter.
