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I posted briefly about this when I saw it earlier, but I wanted to provide a little more context now that I’m in front of the PC and able to do a longer-form commentary on it.
Of late, I’ve seen people sharing an observation about the tiny US flag icon on the upper left corner of the us.gov website. It’s this little dude right here:

Embiggen it to full size and you get this:
Nine stars, eleven stripes. OK, great. That is indeed incorrect for the full presentation of the US national colors, which has 13 stripes– one for each of the original 13 colonies, and 50 stars for the 50 current states.
But the meme spreading around is suggesting (a) that this is a doing of the fascist-in-chief since his inauguration, and that (b) it is the First Confederate National flag.

Both these statements are empirically untrue.

The fastest claim to refute is that it’s a Trumpian doing. I didn’t do an intensely deep dive, but the image was in place at least as of Biden’s presidency. Archive.org has this image stowed away from December 2020.

I did a quick pop over to the Obama years, and it wasn’t in place at all then– there was no flag in the top chrome, so it came sometime between Trump and Biden– but Biden kept it, if it was in the former. I would think that it would have been excised under Biden if it were some coded, secret Confederate message… but it wasn’t. Rather, Occam’s Razor would dictate that it is simply that a 57 x 57 pixel image has only so much real estate to show detail– hence the reduction in both stars AND stripes. I don’t see some plan to represent the first Confederate States here– just an imagery shortcut that doesn’t match any historical US flag.

As to it being the First Confederate National?
No. Just no.
The very first version of the First Confederate National — the “Stars and Bars” had THREE stripes and seven stars. It was followed by the same design with 9, 11, and 13 stars as states joined the rebellion.
The Stars and Bars were abandoned by the CSA since on the battlefield and at a distance, it was too similar to the Stars and Stripes and caused confusion and friendly fire.

It was followed by the “Stainless Banner” which was the familiar crossbars in the canton, on a white field. (Note that this DOES differ from the “Confederate Flag that folks are used to seeing, which is really a bastardization of the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederate Naval Jack and was never a national flag for the CSA.)

That flag too was replaced, as it too closely resembled a white flag of surrender (which I will admit feels rather apropos to me, but that’s just me snarking) by the “Blood Stained Banner” which was the Second National, but with a vertical red stripe at the trailing edge of the flag.

And even with all of this– not one of those flags resembles the offending one on the US.gov website. It’s unique, and as I suggested above, is almost certainly an artifact of limited resolution on the small image, not some nefarious message.

I feel like there is a real risk in the propagation of this meme, in that it is almost certainly spurious and false in its assertions, and that– as a friend suggested on my original statement on the matter– such false information creates an illusion of the left being wrong on factual points that are easily researched, and that we are leaning into knee-jerk reactions to absolute nothingburgers rather than spending our energies on the real threats to our nation posed by the reactionary right.

And make no mistake– the threat to democracy is real and present.

So let’s fight the right battles, and not bullshit ones, yeah?

Posted on February 4th, 2025 by Jay Law
Filed under: History, Politics