The importance of noticing performative actions

With the maelstrom of breaking news it's easy to miss moments like this one, in which the U.S. Small Business Administration flew a flag associated with Christian Nationalism outside its headquarters for most of a day.

Yesterday Wired reported that on June 11, SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler raised two new flags outside the agency's downtown DC headquarters: a new American flag and an "Appeal to Heaven" flag, which contains those words and a pine tree, just beneath. The pine tree flag was removed by the end of the day, but is pictured in a post by Loeffler on X that SBA re-posted and is still visible on both feeds:

The photos do not appear on SBA's Facebook or Instagram feeds, which contain much different, how-to-oriented content than its X feed, which largely consists of posts promoting President Trump's spending bill. Check them out and compare if you have a minute.

Appeal to Heaven flags were brandished by several rioters on January 6 (see middle image at the top of this issue). When one was spotted outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's beach house as reported last May, Associated Press journalists, with the help of flag scholar Ted Kaye, wrote about its origin:

Six schooners outfitted by George Washington to intercept British vessels at sea flew the flag in 1775 as they sailed under his command. It became the maritime flag of Massachusetts in 1776 and remained so until 1971, he said.

According to Americanflags.com the pine tree on the flag symbolized strength and resilience in the New England colonies while the words “Appeal to Heaven” stemmed from the belief that God would deliver the colonists from tyranny.

Researchers who study Christian Nationalism say the flag has become a symbol of that movement, which seeks to eliminate separation of church and state and infuse religious doctrine into all aspects of American society. Here's a screenshot of the home page of appealtoheaven.org:

An Appeal to Heaven flag can also be seen outside House Speaker Mike Johnson's office, and one flew outside San Francisco's City Hall until just after the Alito story broke, when it was removed.

Why should we care about moments like this?

With government officials being detained and a growing conflict with Iran, SBA's move may seem inconsequential.

Yet noticing moments that appear to be orchestrated solely for their attention-grabbing potential is critical to understanding how those in power are using communications channels to their advantage. MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote about the war for our attention in his book Siren's Call, and discussed it with the Atlantic's Hanna Rosin in January.

Some who noticed the flag incident took action – by posting critical comments on SBA's Facebook feed, even though the flag wasn't pictured there:

We encourage you to join us in asking "why" when odd actions like this occur, and talking about them with people you know. Why would officials hoist a controversial flag outside a government agency, only to take it down hours later? Was it simply for that day's social media content, or as a dog whistle to the far-right religious base that supports President Trump? Or both?

The goals here are healthy skepticism and thoughtful vetting, since we may never know for sure.

We talk about – and practice – "prebunking" in our workshops, but what is it, really? And how does it work?

Next Thursday, June 26, from noon-1 pm EDT we'll hear from philosopher, author and founder Andy Norman, who will share about the emergent theory that giving people a heads-up about falsehoods can help promote healthy skepticism in the future.

Register for the talk here – it's free, and the last speaker series event before a summer hiatus.

For those who joined the talks, thank you! We hope you learned a few things, and the series has certainly exceeded our expectations. We'll pick it back up in September.

What we're reading

• A recent Pew Research Media Tracker survey shows that the gap between the media outlets Republicans and Democrats trust has continued to grow. In a not-too-surprising example, of the 30 outlets mentioned Fox News was the least trusted among Democrats and the most trusted among Republicans. Here's Jon Gingerich's report in O'Dwyer's (thanks Tony Cheevers for flagging it).
• A random YouTube channel called Pak Gov Update has switched from sharing videos about pension schemes in Pakistan to posting videos about Sean "Diddy" Combs with fake quotes from other artists like Jay Z. Revealed by Indicator's Craig Silverman, it's one of 26 YouTube channels "that have used a mix of false claims and AI slop to cash in on the Diddy trial."
• Check out The Flip Side, which takes a story like the horrific shootings in Minnesota and shares points "from liberal and conservative media in a 5-minute digest." Here's a referral link in case you want to sign up.