- American Insurrection
Decoding the hate symbols seen at the Capitol insurrection
From Viking hammers to flags of fictional countries, many rioters shared an inside visual handshake to acknowledge their white nationalist identity. Here’s where it came from.
When the insurrectionists came at the Capitol, they came with symbols.
Some were immediately identifiable by most Americans watching the chaos unfurl on their screens. The Confederate flag, first swung on the country’s battlefields by secessionist states who saw their future in the enslavement of others; the gallows and noose, shorthand for the terrorization of African-Americans under Jim Crow as well as quick and dirty frontier justice.
But there were other symbols, obscure visual handshakes that acted as a wink and a nod among the motley crews of Trump supporters, conspiracy theorists, and white supremacist groups that wreaked havoc and death upon the nation’s capital on January 6. Whether paraded on flagpoles or tattooed on the skin of seditionists, these symbols shared
