Counter-Currents
The Star-Spangled Banner:
A Protest Song for Nationalists?
Robert Hampton
1,100 words
Several January 6 protesters remained locked up without just cause in a Washington D.C. prison. To voice their protest, they belt out the Star-Spangled Banner from their jail cells every night. The national anthem may make for an odd protest song for Americans incarcerated by the government represented by said tune. But increasingly the national anthem is associated exclusively with the Right. Liberal elites prefer the black national anthem over it, and its “problematic” nature is increasingly noted. A song that right-wingers may have scoffed at as the anthem for the Empire of Nothing now represents the resistance to the Empire.
The Trump supporters locked away in a DC jail are not the only ones to embrace the Star-Spangled Banner as their protest anthem. Parents protesting Critical Race Theory in their children’s schools have also sung it at school board meetings.
There are very few shared songs in America, outside of a few pop songs. The Star-Spangled Banner — for all its kitsch and association with sports events — is arguably the one song nearly all Americans know. It is the national anthem after all; people should know it. But even with the American Right, we don’t have our own songs. Well, maybe if you discount Toby Keith’s jingoistic ditties about putting a boot in a terrorist’s ass and worshipping the troops. Historic American songs — such as the Battle Cry of Freedom — aren’t passed down well, and many of them smack of triumphal liberalism. The Battle Cry of Freedom is all about crushing the rebellious South, for instance. There are great rebel songs — such as “Dixie” and “I’m A Good Ol’ Rebel — but those are too region-specific. Most white Americans don’t have Confederate ancestors, and most of them don’t know these songs.
We’re left pretty much with the Star-Spangled Banner and the Pledge of Allegiance. The good news is that the regime and its lackeys don’t particularly like the national anthem anymore. The height of patriotism is now protesting the anthem during sporting events. The media fawns over every athlete who takes a knee while the anthem plays and hates anyone who does join in the protest.
The anthem itself is problematic. Its author, Francis Scott Key, was a slave owner. An unsung verse of the anthem is considered “racist.” It reads:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
That (based) verse is now highlighted to argue the anthem is racist. When Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry wanted to defend her “protest” of the anthem, she cited this racist verse for why she should show no respect for it. “The third verse speaks about slaves and our blood being slang and pilchered all over the floor. It’s disrespectful and it does not speak for Black Americans,” she told an interviewer.
Francis Scott Key
These reasons are why some Americans want to replace the national anthem. In 2017, the California NAACP demanded the state dump the Star-Spangled Banner. This year, a petition was started to change the anthem because it promotes elitism and racism. Powerful lawmakers proposed a bill this year to make the black national anthem — “Lift Every Voice and Sing” — the nation’s “hymn.” It wouldn’t necessarily replace the anthem, but it would stand as equal to the Star-Spangled Banner. Like Juneteenth’s relationship with July 4th, this act would likely lead to the eventual usurpation of the black anthem over the national anthem. No one has to worry about the racism of the black national anthem.
The NFL recently announced it would play “Lift Every Voice and Sing” alongside the national anthem at all of its big games, making permanent its 2020 Black Lives Matter tributes. Regardless of whether the legislation passes, sports fans will see the two anthems as equal. In consequence, the Star-Spangled Banner becomes the white national anthem.
Its critics do bring out its great aspects. It’s a song that commemorates an American victory over foreign invaders allied with black runaways. It celebrates martial glory and battlefield deeds. It’s much better than most alternatives, which celebrate America just because it has democracy or “it was made for you and me.” The Star-Spangled Banner honors the achievements and struggle of white Americans to stay free of foreign occupation. That’s a thing we certainly can get behind. And nationalists should include the unsung verses into our renditions. Just imagine thousands of white Americans belting out: Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution / No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”
There is a complicated nature to America’s national symbols. Ever since the Cold War, they’ve represented the New America — the one nation supposedly built on an idea. Pledging allegiance to the flag meant you swore to uphold the dogmas of the New America. You didn’t see race; you only saw red, white, and blue. You believed that within every person in the world there was an American waiting to get out. You swore that America is a nation of immigrants, and the Founders always intended the nation to be multicultural. This is what our anthem and flag stood for. This is why we turned every sporting event into a cringeworthy spectacle of jingoism. The Super Bowl was America, and you better love it or leave!
But now a different America is foisted upon us. The flag, anthem, and our Founding Fathers are all racist and shunted aside. Now we can only honor random POC who supposedly made our country through the invention of the super soaker and peanut butter. We salute black athletes who spit on our heritage and celebrate a holiday designed to make everyone hate whites. The new patriotism requires one to despise the old. White Americans, who see themselves in the anthem and the flag, don’t want to get rid of the old patriotism. That’s their identity.
While the old identity certainly didn’t stress white identity, the new framing of traditional patriotism does. Old Glory is now a white flag, and the Star-Spangled Banner is the white anthem. There comes a risk that the system will come to its sense and reclaim these symbols as their own, but they’re too content with gay pride and BLM iconography at the moment.
These symbols represent the historic American nation. It’s what the people will rally around to fight back against the Empire of Nothing.
* * *
Counter-Currents has extended special privileges to those who donate $120 or more per year.
- First, donor comments will appear immediately instead of waiting in a moderation queue. (People who abuse this privilege will lose it.)
- Second, donors will have immediate access to all Counter-Currents posts. Non-donors will find that one post a day, five posts a week will be behind a “paywall” and will be available to the general public after 30 days.
To get full access to all content behind the paywall, sign up here:
20 comments
The star spangled banner is a question.
To which these BLM demons are changing the answer.
Good article.
Things that were once signs of civic nationalism are gradually transitioning to symbols that will almost only be relatable to patriotic Whites. Embrace it.
As a non-American I always thought your best tune was the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and glossing over its content I can’t find any glaring issues.
You’re right; it is a powerful and rousing song. But it was written (by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe) to be an antislavery song used to justify the Union invasion of the South. A little much for me.
This is true, I found it originated as a little ditty to honor the mad fundamentalist terrorist John Brown. Its current lyrics seem to have no (direct) trace of this though. Also, our friends on the left tell me that we have a thing called “cultural appropriation” now, which basically means we can just steal whatever aspects of culture we want, rewrite it and make it our own – so I say let’s do that.
On a side note, let’s reintroduce the Bellamy salute while we’re at it.
re: side note — It would certainly give Mrs. Howe’s gospel hymn a new touch.
It wouldn’t matter if everyone agreed to change it to the Hymn, they’d claim victory but in a year or so they’d find a reason to want to replace it with the jogger anthem.
A perfect song for us is Pine Knot Riots “We’ll Have Our Home Again”, it is very inspiring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctpfRxvC0JQ
This is another good one: “Keep Your Rifle by Your Side”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y-68Xd9oTc&ab_channel=InsensitiveWAVE
“By God We’ll Have Our Home Again” (here with lyrics and a video referencing the post-American USA) is powerful and quite moving, with a nice Celtic ring.
We might consider it as our own Internationale, and, indeed, here is a video, with commentary from Way of the World, putting it in the broader context of our family suffering across the globe.
The song connects viscerally and underscores, with appropriate urgency, that we need our own homeland free of degeneracy and hatred of our people as the enforced norm.
You make a good case, Mr. Hampton. I’ve been torn about this myself, apropos of your “since the Cold War…” point above. But I think that presently you are right, it could be used to great effect, rather than creating something ex nihilo and hoping it catches on.
My neighbor flies the American flag upside down. I suppose that’s a meme equivalent to the clown emoji representing clown world, and could certainly open up conversations, as one would certainly be asked about it.
When the first doughboys arrived in Britain in 1917, an English military band greeted them by playing Dixie. Dunno how that went down with the Yankee contingent.
The band could have played God Save the Queen, as it shares its tune with America (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee), but that would have been cheeky.
Maybe we also could reclaim the 48 star flag, which was last official during much better times.
Right, or the Betsy Ross flag. The current 50-star flag, while reviled by much of the Left (and the flag we all grew up with), has been coopted by the bureaucratic machinery of globohomo, an occupying force.
While I believe the American flag itself it quite a bad and cluttered design visually speaking, and getting to design a new one is always a good time, I wouldn’t be so ready to cede your symbols to your enemies.
Perhaps there can be an extra flag alongside the national one, a sort of Race Flag maybe.
“The Super Bowl was America, and you’d better love it or leave.” Reminds me of Gore Vidal’s satirical novel Duluth: “Duluth: you may love it or leave it, but you never lose it nor loath it.”
The Battle Hymn of the Republic has often been mentioned as a good substitute for the national anthem. It was also sung by union troops as: ‘Oh, we’re gwine to hang Jeff Davis from a sour apple tree.’
Someone once suggested that God Bless America be the new anthem, but it’s kind of smarmy, although full of WWII pep. Also, America the Beautiful has been mentioned, since it’s kind of all inclusive and harmless…can woke people hate “amber waves of grain?” Probably so, since we took the land from the wonderful Indians who used it wisely, and them poor innercent buffalo.
But back to the Battle Hymn. In Patriotic Gore, Edmund Wilson noted the song’s history, probably coming from a song of the battle of Naseby in the English civil war, a strong, rousing puritan piece.He also noted the Calvinist nature of the lyrics, where Christ is merely peripheral. He was ‘born across the sea,’ and what is needed now is a militant God to ‘crush the serpent (Confederates) with his heel.’ Jesus, Wilson notes, is trampling no grapes of wrath. As he writes, “And now come on, New England boys, get in step with the marching God! If you succeed in crushing the serpent, God will reward you with “grace.””
Wilson ties the song in with the mystical, semi-religious appeal Lincoln took on as a Biblical prophet, as in the song “We Are Coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.”
So I think I’d rather not the Battle Hymn of the Republic take over as national anthem.
One reason the national anthem is disliked is that it is hard to sing. It is eighteenth century style, semi-operatic, taken from a Anacreonic ode, a drinking song. However, the events celebrated were an actual battle, the attack on Baltimore, and if we didn’t beat the British, we didn’t lose Baltimore. God knows, we’d be more than happy to now.
For years, Jews have periodically campaigned for “God Bless America” to replace the original Anthem – because Irving Berlin wrote it.
Having America’s national anthem replaced by one written by a Jew would be a major coup, rivaled only by their getting a poem written by a Marxist Jewess installed on the Statue of Liberty.
Everything else in the West is being re-written to the Jewish tune, so likely Mr. Key’s Anthem will be cancelled next. Kill the best of the goyim…
Just for the curious, here are the lyrics to the original song To Anacreon in Heaven, the tune used for the star spangled banner:
“To Anacreon in heaven, where he sat in full glee
A few sons of harmony sent a petition;
That he their inspiration and patron would be
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
“Voice, fiddle and flute
No longer be mute
I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot;
And besides I’ll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s vine.”
I agree the Toby Keith song is lousy. Lee Greenwood’s Proud to be an American is not much better, being somewhat bland and cornily sentimental.
The national anthem has a good tune. It comes from the drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven,” which comes from an aristocratic men’s club in 18th century England dedicated to the Greek poet Anacreon. No doubt a feminist would say it was hatched in an environment of male privilege.
I’ve always thought ‘Lift Very Heart and Sing’ to be a ridiculous choice for a [email protected] anthem.
May I suggest either ‘Car Wash’ 1976 by Rose Royce or the theme to ‘Shaft’ 1971 by Isaac Hayes. The words can be changed but why bother? It’s only the funkiness that matters.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access