In This Article, I Mention the Confederate Flag. Please Don’t Ban Me.

Have proponents of #TakeDownTheFlag gone too far in their attempt to sanitize society?

After the horrific hate crime that took place in Charleston, South Carolina last week in which the terrorist Dylann Roof fatally shot 9 members of a historically black church, the hashtag #TakeDownTheFlag began to trend. #TakeDownTheFlag is a movement dedicated to removing the Confederate Flag, a symbol that some see as racist, from public spaces — Southern state capitol buildings among them.

While some Southerners contend that removing the flag is an affront to the history, tradition, and pride of the South — not just the history of slavery, but the history of those who gave their lives defending what they believed in politically and socially — proponents of #TakeDownTheFlag suggest that it is a governmentally-endorsed symbol of racism that blatantly worsens and exacerbates poor race relations in the United States.

The idea of removing the flag from state buildings and other public spaces it’s popped up (sporting events, to give an example) seems essential to helping the United States begin to heal its deep racial wounds. Black Americans have a right to feel safe in their communities — and that’s one of those sentences that I feel dumb even having to type. To hang a flag in public institutions and in public spaces that is a reminder of a racial struggle and of the institution of slavery moves past the realm of offensive into the absurd.

That said, as people are wont to do, we have taken this too far. As I go through this, one must remember the seminal difference at play here: the removal of a state-sponsored flag from public spaces is much different than censoring that flag’s existence. The former makes sense and has come perhaps a hundred or more years too late. The latter challenges what free speech ought to mean — as many things in 2015 have done.

One writer suggests that “‘Gone With the Wind’ should go the way of the Confederate Flag.” Whether or not this author means to a museum or to a banned books list is left nebulous, but each are frightening propositions. To ignore or censor a book (or anything) is, frankly, absurd. To ignore seminal texts, and to ignore them irrespective of their place in history, is criminally ignorant.

So, when Apple decided to remove all games featuring a Confederate Flag from their App Store earlier today, I was appalled. Now, of course, Apple is a private company and I do not mean to conflate a private entity with the government. Apple deciding that such and such may not exist on their platform is not a threat to First Amendment free speech, which is something that is given or taken by the government. Nonetheless, Apple writes that: “‘we have removed apps from the App Store that use the Confederate flag in offensive or mean-spirited ways, which is in violation of our guidelines.’” Who decides what’s mean or offensive? Is there an objective list or are we winging this one? According to sources close to Apple, “the developers will have to either remove or replace the Confederate flag” if they want their games back on the App Store (quotes in this paragraph from above source). It almost feels too easy to make the obvious connection to 1984. It feels too stereotypical. Too cliched.

But what it really is is frustrating. I know that Apple isn’t ushering in a new wave of fascist dictatorships in America with their decision. But it is a decidedly un-progressive, reactionary thing to do. This is literally a decision that a major company is making to ban mentions and representations of United States history. Will the App Store be banning World War II games tomorrow? How offended must a group be to get Apple to unilaterally remove Apps of a certain type? Civ 5 is on the App Store and, to my knowledge, I can play as George Washington and lead an army to slaughter Hiawatha and his Iroquois nation. Is this grounds for removal of this game from the App Store? Will we be removing Confederate Flags from US History textbooks? Will the AP Exam be forced to pass over it for fear of offending? Should we perhaps take this opportunity to cut out all the nasty bits of history?

Banning things because we don’t like them, because they offend us, or because they hurt us is not an acceptable way to go through life. It is — and I do not use this word lightly — a fascistic approach to liberalism. Banning words, flags, books, and video games does not make racism go away. Banning The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn does not make the word “nigger” go away or erase the institutional and historical racism attached to it.

And again, there will be those who say that none of these things — the book censorship, the game censorship — impinges on free speech as it is promised in the Constitution. And that’s correct. But it’s almost a non sequitur, because it coyly ignores what’s really at stake here — a socially reinforced censorship; a promise of ostracization; a strictly regulated marketplace of ideas; deep social penalties for doing something that is not deemed conducive to the causes of of sensitivity, anti-bigotry, and egalitarianism.

People ban things because they are afraid of those things. When it comes to fighting things like racism, we don’t need to be afraid. We know that the path of history bends toward progress and we know that, in fighting hard for equality, we are on the right side of history. Giving into the fear and contorting progressivism into a form of social totalitarianism securely insulated by the outwardly-liberal moralizing platitudes that define 2015 is the quickest way to delegitimizing a movement that is so sorely needed.

1984 was not an instruction manual. You do not to get to erase things you disagree with because you believe you are correct. That is not the world we live in, and it is not a world we should want to live in.