How an Old Dutch Flag Became a Racist Symbol

REACTIONARIES are fond of defunct flags. Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old white supremacist arrested for the murder of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston last week, displays a number of them in his internet postings. On a website he created to advertise his racist beliefs (since taken down), he can be seen holding America's most commonly displayed ex-flag: the battle standard of the Confederacy, flown by the pro-slavery side in America's civil war. More interestingly, in a Facebook post, Mr Roof wears a jacket emblazoned with the former flags of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid-era South Africa. The former South African flag is the most curious of all, because it is based on a flag that is itself an ex-flag, one flown by the 17th-century Dutch republic. And in a strange twist, that former Dutch flag has since acquired reactionary and racist overtones of its own. How?