I do not believe we in the UK have anything at all to learn from Americans about what that flag signifies. We have our own set of significations for it, which are not yours and which are almost entirely innocuous. If we were to start taking it as seriously as you do, we would simply be handing a weapon to the fascists - they can't now use it as a triumphalist symbol, but if it were made as problematic as it is to people like Stringsinger, they could.

The situation with the Union Jack is almost exactly parallel. In the US, it has no very evil connotations. In Britain, it is almost never used by private citizens except as a fascist emblem, and non-white people in Britain have every reason to react to it as Jews do the swastika - it stands for being spat on and beaten in the street, gang attacks and firebombs. So should we demand that Americans stop it being displayed in public over there? No way. Make a big deal of it, and it would simply provide one more emblem for the American racist right to use, and for their victims to be afraid of.

The most freaked-out I've ever seen anyone get over a symbol display was a friend of mine when we'd climbed to the top of a Scottish mountain. One of the other walkers at the top had a t-shirt from some organization like Greenpeace, with a tree on it. She was terrified it was a cedar. For her, the cedar symbol meant the Falangist militia in Lebanon, the guys behind the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and the fear had followed her right across Europe and to the top of a hill 2000 miles away on a bright summer day. So, do we ban people wearing emblems of trees, anywhere? (She wouldn't argue that herself).

We've trivialized the Confederate flag to death. Dead is good.