It has been a well known image of misery because the nation’s founding, when sailors turned the American flag the other way up to sign that their ships have been sinking, on fireplace or trapped in ice.
However over time, the upside-down American flag grew to become a logo brandished extra usually by protesters throughout the political spectrum to sign that they believed the nation itself was in grave peril.
After President Biden received the 2020 election, supporters of former President Donald J. Trump rallied across the inverted flag, displaying it at their houses, on their vehicles and on social media to point out that they believed Mr. Trump’s lie that the election was stolen. Some started doing so earlier than the votes have been even counted.
Now, the observe has burst into the nationwide dialog after The New York Instances reported on Thursday that it had just lately obtained photos of an upside-down flag flying outdoors the house in Alexandria, Va., of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in January 2021. On the time, the Supreme Courtroom was nonetheless contending with whether or not to listen to a 2020 election case.
Justice Alito stated in an e-mail to The Instances that he had “no involvement in anyway within the flying of the flag.”
“It was briefly positioned by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard indicators,” he wrote, referring to his spouse, Martha-Ann Alito.
Flying an inverted flag was as soon as a name for assist at sea.
Earlier than it grew to become an emblem of political protest, flying a nation’s flag upside-down was one of many solely methods for sailors to name for assist.
The observe appears to have originated within the British Isles within the seventeenth century, possible in the course of the Anglo-Dutch wars, in accordance with the North American Vexillological Affiliation, a gaggle devoted to the research of flags.
Ted Kaye, the affiliation’s secretary, stated he had seen 18th-century engravings of the American flag flying the other way up on lifeboats and on New England whaling vessels locked in ice. “It was the simplest solution to sign misery with out having any particular flag,” Mr. Kaye stated, “and misery is probably the most pressing sign that one may wish to ship from a ship.”
That that means was mirrored within the U.S. flag code, an official set of pointers for the flag, which was first printed within the Twenties. It reads: “The flag ought to by no means be displayed with the union down, besides as a sign of dire misery in situations of maximum hazard to life or property.”
The conference endured for many years. In 1974, a 67‐yr‐outdated clam digger named Julius Novickis flew the inverted flag after he suffered a stroke on a barren island off Nassau County, on Lengthy Island, and efficiently summoned a police helicopter.
It has been used to protest slavery and the Vietnam Warfare.
The upside-down flag additionally has a protracted historical past as a political emblem.
In 1854, Henry David Thoreau delivered a scathing antislavery speech whereas standing underneath an upside-down American flag on a stage with Sojourner Fact and William Lloyd Garrison, who held up a replica of the Structure and set it on fireplace to jeers and groans from the viewers, in accordance with “Henry David Thoreau: A Life,” by Laura Dassow Partitions.
Within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, protesters carried the flag upside-down as a logo of opposition to the Vietnam Warfare, stated Marc Leepson, the creator of “Flag: An American Biography.” Some put flag stamps the other way up on their letters, sending a subtler antiwar message, he stated.
A backlash typically ensued.
In his first marketing campaign for Congress in 1972, John F. Kerry, the Vietnam veteran turned antiwar activist who went on to change into a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, presidential nominee and secretary of state, was bitterly attacked for having printed a guide, “The New Soldier,” with a canopy that confirmed a gaggle of bearded veterans holding the American flag the other way up.
The Kerry congressional marketing campaign tried to elucidate the flag’s place because the worldwide sign of misery. He misplaced that election.
Robert Justin Goldstein, a professor emeritus of political science at Oakland College in Rochester, Mich., stated that earlier than Supreme Courtroom dominated in 1989 that burning the American flag was protected underneath the First Modification, some People have been prosecuted for turning the flag the other way up.
It was thought of desecration of the flag, he stated.
In newer years, the inverted flag has been displayed by Tea Celebration activists who opposed the re-election of President Barack Obama and by protesters demonstrating after Michael Brown, a teen, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. In 2020, an Related Press picture of a protester carrying a U.S. flag the other way up subsequent to a burning constructing in Minneapolis circulated extensively, capturing the hearth and fury in that metropolis after the homicide of George Floyd by the hands of cops.
It’s now related to the ‘Cease the Steal’ motion, which denies Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.
In 2020, the upside-down flag grew to become extra firmly established as an emblem of Trump supporters who denied the legitimacy of Mr. Biden’s victory, stated Alex Newhouse, a researcher on the College of Colorado, Boulder.
“It’s very, quite common in MAGA communities and QAnon communities,” he stated. “It caught on amongst hard-core MAGA folks within the ‘Cease the Steal’ ecosystem in 2020.”
Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana Research and American Research at Brown College, stated that flying the flag upside-down “appears to have change into part of our hyperpartisan symbolic encompass, particularly on the appropriate, the place it symbolizes the approaching dying of the nation and a name to arms.”
Different symbols embrace thin-blue-line flags, a pro-police image, and a Punisher cranium, primarily based on the comic-book vigilante, he stated.
“I’m certain if a Navy skiff hung its flag upside-down, anybody who noticed it will assume calamity and are available working to assist,” he stated in an e-mail. “However the that means of issues can be sticky. As soon as the flag is related to the appropriate’s name to arms, it’s prone to adhere for a very long time.”
Jodi Kantor contributed reporting and Alain Delaquérière contributed analysis.