This is a long post - sorry, but I can be a bit garrulous at times.

Flags are like words - they take on new meanings in new situations, and can be used to hurt people. Words like "Nigger" or "Yid" are ok in themelves, and have been used, in their time, in a way that didn't hurt people, and wasn't meant to hurt them. "Cretin" is just a way of saying Christian, an early example of people trying to give a positive name to a stigmatised group.

When an innocent word gets picked up and used in a hateful way, there are two ways of dealing with it. Most of the time the best way is probably to stop using it.

Sometimes it happens that a word that was intended as an insult, and used it that way, can be taken up by the people it is used against, and become clean and usable once more. "Quaker" is an example. I know people in the Disabled Rights movement who have tried to do the same wioth "Cripps" - "A bunch of us Cripps went down to the bus terminal to protest about bus access". That is probably the best way to deal with it, but it can only be done by the people who are being attacked by a word, and it's open to misinterpration.

It's much the same for visual symbols, such as flags. As kat said, the swastika was used innocently in India. Elsewhere too - I've seen newsreel from China, when it was being attacked by the Japanese, and a swastika flag was used for the local equivalent of the Red Cross. But, though that is historically interesting, it doesn't alter the fact that flying a swastika flag now is going to mean Nazis are somewhere around.

The Union Jack, the Stars and Stripes, the French Tricolour - all have been used, and still are used by the same kind of vicious racists at one time or another. What can save them, maybe, (maybe)is that there are decent people who see this kind of use as an insult to symbols they value.

As for the Confederate flag - living in England most timnes I've seen it over here it just means country music, and it's probably less redolent of racism than the Union Jack is. That's because our Nazis parade around with the Union Jack.

But over there, it's something different, obviously. You've got a symbol which is linked historically to the defence of the slave system. (Of course the same is true of the Stars and Stripes, for the first three generations.) And it is also linked with a struggle by a relatively weak country against an attack by its stronger neighbour, and a whole history since, with a lot of good things mixed in with the bad - much the same as the rest of the USA.

Ideally there's be new flags for countries with a record of oppression and racism, flags like the new South African flag, which is probably the prettiest in the world, and the lovely Native Australian flag.

But if you take something from people by force, they're likely to value it even more. If the only people waving the Union Jack were National Front and "Loyalists", they'd start looking like patriots to some people who might not share their warped visions. Including people who at present feel insulted when "their flag" is used by bigots and racists, just as I am sure that there must be some Southerners who are angry and insulted when they see "their flag" being used by racists.