It has been a well known image of misery for the reason that nation’s founding, when sailors turned the American flag the wrong way up to sign that their ships have been sinking, on hearth or trapped in ice.
However over time, the upside-down American flag grew to become an emblem brandished extra typically by protesters throughout the political spectrum to sign that they believed the nation itself was in grave peril.
After President Biden gained the 2020 election, supporters of former President Donald. J. Trump rallied across the inverted flag, displaying it at their houses, on their automobiles 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 Occasions reported on Thursday that it had just lately obtained pictures 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 mentioned in an electronic mail to The Occasions 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, seemingly in the course of the Anglo-Dutch wars, in response to the North American Vexillological Affiliation, a bunch devoted to the examine of flags.
Ted Kaye, the affiliation’s secretary, mentioned he had seen 18th-century engravings of the American flag flying the wrong way up on lifeboats and on New England whaling vessels locked in ice. “It was the best solution to sign misery with out having any particular flag,” Mr. Kaye mentioned, “and misery is essentially the most pressing sign that one may need to ship from a ship.”
That which means was mirrored within the U.S. flag code, an official set of tips for the flag, which was first revealed within the Nineteen 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 utmost hazard to life or property.”
The conference endured for many years. In 1974, a 67‐12 months‐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 an extended 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 Reality and William Lloyd Garrison, who held up a replica of the Structure and set it on hearth to jeers and groans from the viewers, in response to “Henry David Thoreau: A Life,” by Laura Dassow Partitions.
Within the Sixties and ’70s, protesters carried the flag upside-down as an emblem of opposition to the Vietnam Warfare, mentioned Marc Leepson, the writer of “Flag: An American Biography.” Some put flag stamps the wrong way up on their letters, sending a subtler antiwar message, he mentioned.
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 turn into a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, presidential nominee and secretary of state, was bitterly attacked for having revealed a e-book, “The New Soldier,” with a canopy that confirmed a bunch of bearded veterans holding the American flag the wrong way up.
The Kerry congressional marketing campaign tried to clarify 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., mentioned 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 wrong way up.
It was thought of desecration of the flag, he mentioned.
In newer years, the inverted flag has been displayed by Tea Occasion activists who opposed the re-election of President Barack Obama and by protesters demonstrating after Michael Brown, a young person, was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., 2014. In 2020, an Related Press picture of a protester carrying a U.S. flag the wrong way up subsequent to a burning constructing in Minneapolis circulated extensively, capturing the fireplace and fury in that metropolis after the homicide of George Floyd by the hands of law enforcement officials.
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, mentioned Alex Newhouse, a researcher on the College of Colorado, Boulder.
“It’s very, quite common in MAGA communities and QAnon communities,” he mentioned. “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, mentioned that flying the flag upside-down “appears to have turn into part of our hyperpartisan symbolic encompass, particularly on the appropriate, the place it symbolizes the upcoming dying of the nation and a name to arms.”
Different symbols embody thin-blue-line flags, a pro-police image, and a Punisher cranium, based mostly on the comic-book vigilante, he mentioned.
“I’m certain if a Navy skiff hung its flag upside-down, anybody who noticed it might assume calamity and are available working to assist,” he mentioned in an electronic mail. “However the which 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.
