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1) Tim Walz didn’t turn the Minnesota flag Somalian
In 2022, two Minnesota legislators helped reignite a long-standing debate over the state’s flag, which featured both a farmer and a Native American, the state’s seal.
According to reports at the time, the legislators were responding to students who thought the flag felt too cluttered.
But its flag also long faced complaints from Native Americans who felt the image—with a farmer working his field while watching as a Native American rode by on horseback—furthered Native American stereotypes and highlighted white colonizers pushing them off their land.
The bill passed and the state legislature created a committee to pick new designs, six of which made it to the final round before the final two-toned blue flag—in the shape of Minnesota and with an eight-pointed star referencing indigenous art—was chosen.
What, you might ask, does this have to do with Vice President Kamala Harris’ choice of running mate?
Well, nothing.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) wasn’t directly involved in the effort. The legislature picked the committee and the committee picked the flag. Walz, as governor, appointed three members of the public to the 13-person committee, and filmed a video showcasing it after it was chosen.
But people online are now decrying Walz for secretly surrendering the identity of hard-working white Americans to … Somalia.
“HARRIS/WALZ – THE HAMAS WING OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY: Watch Tim Walz swap out the 150 yr old Minnesota flag with one resembling Somalia. The controversy about a native American riding a horse was utterly ridiculous. The new flag is a complete insult. This sickens me,” read a post on Gab sharing the clip of Walz.
“Let us not forget, that Tim Walz is the CUCK who raised the third-world banner of Somalia over the State of Minnesota!” penned the National File.
When it debuted, the flag got some extremely misguided criticism from the far-right.
Minnesota has America’s largest population of Somalians, and conservatives have been apoplectic ever since citizens there elected Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to be the first-ever Somalia-American to serve in Congress.
And one suggested potential version of the flag—which wasn’t chosen—has similar stripes to the flag of Puntland, an autonomous state in Somalia, where Omar is from.
That design wasn’t picked. The one that was, by a commission without a single Somali member secretly influencing it, was designed by a white guy.
And the final design doesn’t look like the Somalia flag either, unless you consider any flag with a star and the color blue to be a secret tribute. But posters aren’t flaming Betsy Ross.
2) Tim Walz … pregnant ?
And now that the Democratic ticket for 2024 has been finalized, Republican lines of attack against it are coming into focus. And they’re leaning all in on transgender people.
Walz pushed a progressive agenda as governor, enacting the kind of laws that, when cherry-picked for items to stoke outrage, are ripe for the trans-obsessives to … obsess over.
It began with an attack on Walz’s placing tampons in both the women’s and men’s bathrooms of schools—prompting the moniker Tampon Tim, which trended on numerous sites.
And because of the sentiment around that, that some trans teenage men could get periods, they’ve also been plopping his face on the pregnant male emoji.
The pregnant male emoji has been a source of right-wing outrage since its debut in 2022, bucking cisgender conceptions of traditional family roles.
But blogs about it note it could also be used to represent “a man who’s eaten too much food,” which could, in a way, represent Walz, too.
3) They Backlash
In recent months, political pundits have noticed an uptick in conservative Republicans directing their diatribe against an unspecified “they.” “They” tried to assassinate Trump, “they” want to sink the economy.
While most linguists understand it as a way to more harshly frame Democrats and larger forces the party is upset with—deep state operatives and the Rothschilds or whatever—the use of it recently drew backlash from the farthest right QAnon supporters, who are upset that the party won’t name the actual enemy.
Citing a recent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) post where she said “they can’t control the stock market, they can control information, they can control the elections,” @NeonRevolt, a popular conspiratorial poster on Gab, fired back.
“It won’t change until you specify a ‘they’ beyond vague, oblique references to some disembodied power,” arguing that Republican use of it was intentional obfuscation of the real powers that be.
(Namely, this being Gab, Jews.)
“this is absolutely the truth,” wrote one.
“YES, WHO IS ‘THEY’ MTG that you are so afraid to name?”
Others thought her fear of naming them showed she was compromised.
“She supports them. This is just her way of saying something without saying anything.”
“Does she not comprehend that she is one of the ‘they’?” wrote another.
But not everyone was on board, claiming the framing helped adopted people to the movement without alienating them.
“’They’ is a good way for her to attempt to raise curiosity in millions, without getting the social media account shut down … Curiosity is more powerful than being outright told what to believe.”
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