appeal to heaven flag

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trifecta

maga mike, alito, leo

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an 6 25

A controversial flag associated with far-right causes was recently seen prominently displayed on a federal building, according to a new report.

In a Tuesday article, WIRED reported that the "Appeal to Heaven" flag was seen displayed on the flagpole of the Small Business Administration (SBA) earlier this week, just below the American flag. That flag — which depicts an evergreen tree with the text "An Appeal to Heaven" – was seen at the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and was also flown outside the vacation home of Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito in 2024.

SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler, who was a former Republican U.S. senator from Georgia who ultimately lost her seat to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in 2021, posted a photo of the flag flying above the SBA building on her official X account last week.

"Today at SBA’s Flag Day Ceremony, we proudly raised a new AMERICAN MADE flag over our headquarters in Washington," she tweeted. "It is a privilege to serve under its Stars and Stripes - on behalf of the 34 million small businesses who represent the best of America."

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Multiple SBA staffers anonymously confided to WIRED that they were personally caught off guard by the flag's display, and argued that the flying of a far-right political symbol above their building gives the false impression that the workers inside subscribe to the beliefs associated with it.

“It was pretty jarring to walk out of work and see that flag on the building, and it’s frustrating because it makes it seem like the agency as a whole supports what it has come to stand for, when that’s just not true,” one staffer said. “We’re proud to do work that supports, or at least is supposed to support, all Americans. The decision to raise that flag isn’t one that reflects the views of everyone at SBA.”

"That the Appeal to Heaven flag is being flown on a government building alongside the American flag should be shocking to anyone who doesn't wish to live in a theocracy,” George Washington University extremism researcher Jon Lewis told WIRED. “The contemporary usage of the Appeal to Heaven flag is synonymous with Christian nationalism, full stop."

Click here to read WIRED's full report (subscription required).

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an 6 24

in 1929, the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte gave us “The Treachery of Images.” The work is probably better known as “This is Not a Pipe,” because that’s what it says in French beneath the depiction, against a neutral background, of the kind of smoking pipe ubiquitous in the early half of the last century. It’s an image that will be recognized by even the most casual student of modern art or popular culture. The painting is part of the permanent collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which tells us the work is “a treatise on the impossibility of reconciling word, image, and object.”

Volumes have been written on the meaning of that painting, but my favored interpretation is in Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics.” First published in 1993, McCloud created a roadmap to understanding comics and provided a pictorial vocabulary to talk about them. Magritte’s pipe was an icon, not the thing itself, and the images we normally think of as symbols are a special category of icon — flags, religious symbols, company logos — used to represent “concepts, ideas and philosophies.” These non-pictorial icons, McCloud said, unlike Magritte’s pipe, represent invisible ideas.

With that preface we now turn to the Alito flag treachery.

At issue are the invisible ideas represented by flags flown at the homes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, in 2021 and 2023. If you don’t know about these stories, then you must have either been in a hermit’s cave for the last few weeks, or as clueless about current politics as Justice Alito himself claims to be.

In 2021, at the Alitos’ home in Alexandria, Virginia, Martha-Ann flew for a period of days an upside-down American flag. The inverted flag had been adopted by the “Stop the Steal” election deniers, and some of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists had carried them during the breach of the U.S. Capitol. At the time of the Alito flag display, about a week after the Capitol attack, the Supreme Court was hearing a 2020 presidential election case.

In the other incident, an “Appeal to Heaven” flag was flown at the Alitos’ beach house in New Jersey. Also known as the Pine Tree flag, the Revolutionary War-era device has been co-opted by extremists as a symbol of Christian nationalism.

In both instances, Alito has attributed the display of the flags to Martha-Ann. She told a Washington Post reporter the inverted American flag was an “international signal of distress” raised during a dispute with neighbors. The neighbors apparently had displayed yard signs critical of Donald Trump. The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was also flown by Martha-Ann, according to Justice Alito in a recent letter in which he declined requests from Democratic lawmakers to recuse himself from upcoming election cases involving Trump.

“My wife is fond of flying flags,” he wrote. “I am not.”

Martha-Ann flies a variety of flags, including those for sports teams and seasonal events. Justice Alito was not aware of the upside-down American flag, he said, until it was drawn to his attention.

“A soon as I saw it, I asked her to take it down,” he said, “but for several days, she refused.”

It came down, according to the Washington Post, when in 2021 a reporter asked the Alitos about it and an angry Martha-Ann replaced it with “a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden.”

In the letter, Justice Alito said he was not familiar with the “Appeal to Heaven” flag when his wife flew it at the vacation home.

“She may have mentioned that it dates back to the American Revolution,” he said, “and I assumed she was flying it to express a religious and patriotic message. I was not aware of any connection between this historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement,’ and neither was my wife.”

The use of a historic flag by a new group does not “drain” the flag of other meanings, he asserted.

Because my knowledge of the U.S. Flag Code is rusty and my background on flags of the Revolutionary War non-existent, I turned to an expert for information and perhaps a little insight into the invisible ideas represented by flags.

Peter Ansoff is the past president of the North American Vexillological Association and has written what may be the definitive paper on the historic origins of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag. He’s also a history buff who lives in Falls Church, Virginia, about 20 miles from Alexandria. Up front, I need to stress that in my conversation with Ansoff, he did not take one side or another of the Alito controversy.

But he does recognize the power of flags to stir passion.

“That’s why I find flags so fascinating,” he told me. “They’re these pieces of colored cloth, but they stir up very strong emotion, and they generate legal cases and revolutions and all kinds of things. It’s not the physical flag, but what the flag is perceived to represent. Different people can look at it and see different things.”

While there is no extant historical example of an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, Ansoff said, it appears to have first been used on floating Continental batteries — barges equipped with guns — in Boston. The design may have been inspired by the “Liberty Tree” in Boston, an elm from which British officials were hanged in effigy during the Stamp Act resistance. A contemporary artist’s depiction of the flag seems to include a tree that looks more like an elm than a pine, Ansoff said, and the words are indecipherable. The flag may have included the “Appeal to Heaven” legend, which is a reference to the philosopher John Locke, who wrote about the right to revolt against an oppressive government.

The second use of the flag was in 1775, by at least two vessels that were part of George Washington’s cruisers, which were commercial ships fitted out as privateers. There was no Continental Navy yet, and the flags were used to identify the cruisers to one another. When one of the ships — a brig christened the Washington — was captured by the British, apparently without firing a single shot in self-defense, the flag was sent to King George III as a war prize. Ansoff said it is unknown what happened to the “Rebel Flag” after that. It might be in somebody’s attic in England, he said, just waiting to be discovered.

The third use of the “Appeal to Heaven” flag was in 1776 by the Massachusetts State Navy, although the Continental or American flag seems to have been more common. The pine tree, Ansoff said, had already been well established as a symbol for New England.

“Appeal to Heaven” was a commonly used phrase among revolutionary war leaders, Ansoff said, because of Locke’s popularity with colonial separatists.

“The context of what (Locke) was saying is that he was describing the proper function of government as protecting the rights of individual citizens,” he said. “And when the government stops doing that, then it’s the right of citizens to rise up and appeal to heaven for their cause because there is no earthly authority to turn to.”

Ansoff said he did not know if this expressed a religious sentiment or a request for divine intervention, or was simply a way of saying that all appeals had been exhausted.

The public perception of the meaning of flags can change over time, he said.

“A case in point is the Gadsden flag,” he said, referring to the yellow flag with the coiled rattlesnake and the “Don’t Tread on Me” motto. “That one has gone through a process that’s similar to what’s happening with the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag now. It played a very minor role in the American Revolution, there were only two ever made, but people latched onto it because of this idea that the government is oppressing us. This identification is not with the real Revolutionary War, but sort of a mythical war.”

As to the upside-down American flag, he said its use came from the naval tradition of signaling to other vessels that urgent help was needed because you were sinking, on fire, or had experienced some other calamity. A number of paintings from the period depict such maritime emergencies.

The use of the inverted flag as a signal of actual distress was incorporated into the 1923 Flag Code, he said, which was written by the American Legion and other non-governmental “patriotic” organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Ku Klux Klan. The code was based mostly on a U.S. Army circular from World War I. It was adopted by Congress in 1942, but has been tweaked ever since.

The biggest change in flag law came in 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag was a constitutionally protected form of speech.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag was popularized by evangelical preacher Dutch Sheets, a spiritual warrior of the New Apostolic Reformation, who said it was a symbol of God’s plan to restore America to its Christian founding. In 2015, he wrote “An Appeal to Heaven,” in which he promoted the flag as a symbol of Christian nationalism and urged readers against embracing “any theology or creed that allows God to lose!” Sheets reportedly visited the White House hours before the Jan. 6 attack.

Alito was almost certainly evasive when he claimed, in his recent letter, that he did not know the “Appeal to Heaven” flag had been adopted by election deniers. His denial echoed that of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, who said the flag — which he flies outside his office at the Capitol — was of historical interest and that he did not know it was associated with the “Stop the Steal” movement.

But assume, for a moment, that both Alito and Johnson are telling the truth, that they were ignorant of the flag’s adoption by election-denying insurrectionists. If ignorance is almost never a legal defense, can it be an ethical one? Shouldn’t a reasonable person expect a justice of the Supreme Court or the speaker of the House, who is second in line of presidential succession, to be familiar with the political context of our times?

The problem here is that it’s difficult to get a grip on the invisible ideas represented by flags and other symbols. They exist in the minds and swell in the breasts of the beholders. The American flag is not the country, but it is something more than Magritte’s pipe. The evolution of an object from signal (or sign) to symbol is the story of human language and our capacity for abstract thought, and we imbue a favored few symbols with the very qualities that are central to our humanity. In some religions, a wafer becomes the body and blood of Christ. In the Flag Code, when the American flag is no longer serviceable because of wear or other disfigurement, it is to be “destroyed in a dignified way, preferably by burning.” We cremate the flag as we cremate our dead.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag, in its proper historical context, never made it beyond being a practical and literal sign to allied vessels. It is used much the same way now, in signaling sympathy or encouragement to other theocrats. Whether hanging outside an office in the House or topping a flag pole at a vacation home in New Jersey, it invites those of like mind.

Following Sept. 11, the American flag came to represent a unified patriotism and resolve felt by many of us. Those feelings were tempered among some, perhaps, by great wrongs done in the past in our name. Slavery comes most readily to mind. What emotions does the “Appeal to Heaven” flag stir in Alito and Johnson? Are we to believe none?

Martha-Ann Alito is certainly an individual with her own rights to free speech, as Justice Alito points out in his letter. But a reasonable person would conclude that she has considerable influence on her husband, even if he does not care much for flags himself. It would also be reasonable to expect Alito to recuse himself from any case involving Trump or the 2020 election as a way of avoiding any appearance of a conflict of interest.

When your spouse is involved in screaming matches with your neighbors over politics, that is a sure sign of confliction. A lesser judge would be expected to recuse, but Supreme Court justices answer to no earthly authority. Except, perhaps, in the cases of Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas, their wives.

:{Heaven help the rest of us.

We remain, as we were on Jan. 6, at a perilous juncture in American history. So many flags! At the Capitol that day there was a symbol for every dangerous invisible idea — a Confederate flag being carried through the corridors of the Capitol, the Pine Tree flags, the Gadsden flags, modified Nazi flags, the America First flags. I suspect these flags will proliferate now that a former president and presumptive major party nominee is a convicted felon. No political grievance will be left behind. Every loathsome invisible idea drawn together in one place, an insurrection of incoherent ideologies, all representing a failure of imagination, a weak grasp of history and contempt for democracy.

It is time to leave all of these lesser flags behind. Keep your garden and novelty flags, the butterflies and the jack-o-lanterns, your state flags and those of your favorite sports team. But abandon the use of minor historic flags as signs of current political intent. We must come together under one flag, the American flag, flown right-side up, and put aside these invisible ideas of competing allegiances.

*Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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May 24, 2024 rww

Frederick Clarkson and André Gagné @ Religion Dispatches: A Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation

The story of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) lives at the epicenter of the intersection of politics and religion in the US—and reporting about it is as essential as it is challenging.

Kathryn Post @ Religion News Service: How is the ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag spotted at Alito’s house linked to Jan. 6?

‘Throughout the Trump presidency, the flag became a symbol for Trump, for Christian America, for this insurgent Christian nationalism,’ says scholar Matthew Taylor.

Julianne McShane @ Mother Jones: Moms for Liberty Is Coming for the Swing States

The group will launch more than $3 million in ads attacking Biden in several battleground states—but they will not say who’s paying for it.

Roger Sollenberger and Mini Racker @ Daily Beast: GOP Senate Candidate Spent Thousands in Donor Funds on Strip Clubs, Luxury, and Mysterious Wire Transfers

Star athlete and conspiracy theorist Royce White just landed the Minnesota GOP’s endorsement for Senate. They must not have seen his previous campaign expenses.

Jason Wilson @ The Guardian: At least 66 members of far-right group in rural Oregon standing for office

At least 66 members of an anti-government group founded by far-right militia figure Ammon Bundy have attempted to win local positions of influence in the Republican party in Oregon, the Guardian can reveal.

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an 5 24

the bombshells over the past few weeks revealing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flew flags associated with the January 6, 2021 insurrection and Christian nationalism over two of his homes were followed by a report that Leonard Leo, the right-wing legal activist behind Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, also flew one of those flags.

The “Appeal to Heaven” flag has a “close association with both far-right Christian nationalists and the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6,” Rolling Stone reported last week, adding it “raises serious questions about Alito’s ability to rule impartially.”

“The conservative court on which Alito sits is largely the product of right-wing dark-money overlord Leonard Leo, and — wouldn’t you know it — Leo flew the same ‘Appeal to Heaven‘ flag outside of his house in Maine,” Rolling Stone also reported.

On social media Rolling Stone noted: “Justice Samuel Alito is under fire for flying the far-right ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag outside his home. Turns out Supreme Court puppetmaster Leonard Leo has flown it too, according to an image provided to Rolling Stone.”

Rolling Stone editor Andrew Perez on Memorial Day via social media added: “Some of Leo’s neighbors send pics from his house today — he is back to flying this flag.”

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Alex Aronson is the former Chief Counsel, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) who now serves as Executive Director of the non-profit organization Court Accountability.

“Leo’s decision to re-hoist this theocrat flag is two things at once,” Aronson wrote on Monday. “1) an arrogant Alito-esque display of impunity, and 2) recognition of a strategic misstep in ever removing it, as he and his goons now lean into the gaslighting claim that it’s an innocent revolutionary banner.”

In 2019, even before Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett to the nation’s highest court, The Washington Post reported, “few people outside government have more influence over judicial appointments now than Leo.”

Leo has served on the Board of Governors of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a highly-secretive right-wing organization that has been described as a “pluto-theocracy.” In 2021 Americans United for Separation of Church and State called CNP “The Scariest Christian Nationalist Group You’ve Never Heard Of.”

CNP’s members have included far-right activist Charlie Kirk and the heads of at least a half-dozen groups that appear on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate or extremist groups.

Last year ProPublica branded Leo as “The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority” who “built a machine that remade the American legal system.”

Leo also served as a vice president for the Federalist Society for many years, and has worked to support the nominations of every right wing justice on today’s Supreme Court, including Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

See the social media posts above or at this link.

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rww --> https://www.azmirror.com/2023/06/05/janae-shamp-az-senator-proudly-flies-flag-adopted-by-fringe-far-right-extremists/

West Valley Republican state senator proudly displays a flag tied to Christian nationalism and other extremist movements on her desk on the floor of the Arizona Senate, though she says she has embraced the symbol for its historical meaning and doesn’t care that “fringe groups” have adopted it.

The white flag with a pine tree on it and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven”was originally used by George Washington and the Continental Army. It was later adopted by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as its naval and maritime flag from 1776 until 1971, when it was replaced by a similar flag that did not include the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven.”

In recent years, the flag has been adopted by evangelical Christians and Christian nationalists, who see the flag as a rallying call. Christian nationalists believe that the United States is Christian nation that should base its laws and practices around the teachings of Christianity. For followers of the movement, the flag symbolizes what they view as America’s Christian roots.

The flag has also been embraced by far-right extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and some neo-Nazi groups.

Arizona Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, rejected the notion that her use of the flag indicates anything beyond her commitment to fighting to protect “our liberty and freedoms” from “the too many wanna be kings who inhabit elected office and (government) bureaucracies.”

“Something that has had a particular meaning for 250 years retains its original meaning, no matter which fringe group might seek to co-opt it,” Shamp said in an emailed response to questions about the flag. “I hope and pray that my fight enjoys a similarly favorable outcome as (George) Washington’s original struggle, and that I will succeed in restoring at least some small measure of liberty before I’m done.

“That’s why I fly the flag. I don’t know who else uses it or for what.”

Shamp did not respond to questions about whether she embraced the beliefs of Christian nationalism, and said she doesn’t know anything about Christian dominionism, a closely related belief system. She called the Arizona Mirror’s line of inquiry “lazy” and “an attempted hit.”

“I work everyday with people of all faiths and even some who hold no particular faith or even no faith at all. That’s how America works,” she wrote. “So anybody stupid enough to try to put me into some sort of discriminatory box deserves the public ridicule they’ll get for trying to convince people of something so obviously wrong.”

To investigative journalist, author and researcher David Neiwart, who has written extensively about the far-right and conspiracy theorists, the lines between many different groups have begun to blur as a “universe” of far-right groups from QAnon, militias, white supremacists and others have gained political influence, particularly among conservatives.

:{Most of them, however, share a few things in common, he said, including beliefs in “right-wing authoritarianism” and the alleged supremacy of Christianity.:{}:

And after looking at the various people:{ and }:{ Shamp has supported over the years, including various extremist and Christian nationalist figures and causes, Neiwart said it’s clear to him that Shamp ascribes to those beliefs. }:

“She is definitely a Christian nationalist, she is definitely QAnon, and a fully enraptured Trumpite,” Neiwert said.

Christian nationalism and Christian dominionism

While a surge in Christian nationalism in recent years has garnered media attention — due in part to high-profile conservatives like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has explicitly declared herself a Christian nationalist, and the backing of influential leaders like white nationalist Nick Fuentes — Christian dominionism has similarly been on the rise, though with much less fanfare.

WhileChristian nationalism centers on the idea that God intended America to be a Christian nation — one without religious pluralism — and that Christians should control all levels of government and society, Christian dominionism holds that Christians should take total control over most aspects of society.

One of the more popular Dominionist beliefs is in the so-called “Seven Mountain Mandate,” which draws from the biblical book of Revelations and requires Christians to invade the “seven spheres” of society: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. In doing so, American life can be reshaped to hew to conservative Christian values.

The idea has been embraced and promoted by people like Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk and Paula White, the televangelist who served as a “spiritual advisor” to Donald Trump while he was president.

According to Neiwart, the key difference between Christian dominionism and nationalism is that dominionists want everyone under Christian rule, while nationalists think everyone should convert to Christianity.

“Christian nationalists take it a step further than Christian Dominionists,” Neiwart said, adding that a dominionist wouldn’t care if a Muslim was present, “they just want them under the thumb of Christian leaders.”

One of the biggest promoters of Christian nationalism and dominionism has been disgraced Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who has claimed that he is waging “spiritual warfare” and building an “army of God.” Flynn is alsoknown to associate with other known Dominionist groups.

Shamp is a fervent supporter of Flynn’s, and has posted praise of Flynn often on social media. The recent COVID-19 special committee she co-chaired was sponsored in part by an organization that Flynn co-founded.

“I get goosebumps every time General Flynn talks about our great Nation!” Shamp said in a December 2021 post accompanied by a video of Flynn.

At a Trump rally in Florence in January 2022, Shamp told Business Insider that the “No. 1 person standing up for ‘we, the people’ is probably Gen. Michael Flynn.”

She explained that Flynn was helping fight for the “grassroots, for citizens to get involved, for us to take our country back” from the “political elite.” Flynn later endorsed Shamp in her bid for the Arizona Senate.

Shamp, a conservative from Surprise, has also been found to have shared a number of QAnon posts on her Facebook, including some linked to Neo-Nazis and antisemites.

The flag and extremism

The flag, which Shamp displays on her desk and in her Twitter banner image, has also been connected to extremist groups and violent events. During the violent events of Jan. 6, the flag was seen being carried by a number of individuals.

It has also been adopted by groups that support the likes of Fuentes, who during protests over mask mandates and COVID vaccines, flew the flag, as well as at their annual gatherings, according to Neiwart.

That is what in part makes it hard to know who exactly was flying the flag at the riots on Jan. 6, far-right extremists or Christian nationalist types, Neiwart said, but that doesn’t change one underlying thing.

“I would say Christian nationalism as a phenomenon is one of the real undergirding movements involved in the insurrection,” Neiwart said, adding that the militias and other groups such as the OathKeepers all had underlying Christian nationalist roots or beliefs. “All these Christian patriots that formed these militias are Christian nationalists as well.”

Shamp’s flag is not the first time the flag has appeared in the Arizona Senate, either.

Last year, the Secular Coalition of Arizona pointed out that a small version of the flag was being displayed on the security desk in the Arizona Senate; it was later removed. A spokeswoman for the Arizona Senate Republican caucus did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what policies, if any, the Senate has regarding the display of flags.

A larger version of the flag was displayed in the second-floor lobby of the Arizona House of Representatives last year, as well. Again, after the Secular Coalition of Arizona inquired about the flag, it was quietly removed. The flag had previously been displayed in the chamber in 2017.

The Secular Coalition of Arizona sees the flag as a violation of the constitutional doctrine requiring a separation of church and state.

For Neiwart, the appearance of the “An Appeal to Heaven” flag in Arizona, and statehouses across the country, is troubling.

“It is a pretty clear sign that this stuff has been mainstreamed and that is not a good thing,” he said. “I don’t think Americans typically awake to an existential threat until it creates a disaster of monumental proportions.”

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