A news website is suggesting Chris Pratt is a white nationalist for wearing a shirt with an old-style American flag.
A report by Yahoo Movies UK makes the weak connection between Pratt’s shirt and comments left by people on social media who see it as a symbol of racism.
The shirt Pratt is seen wearing in pictures circulating across social media is from as far back as the period of the American Revolution, according to usflag.org. It’s called the Gadsden Flag and usually contains a rattlesnake picture over a yellow background, along with the words “Don’t Tread on Me.” Pratt’s shirt uses the standard American flag as the background.
The flag was used by the early U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Despite that, Yahoo reported about online commenters dismissing Pratt as a racist.
Love the shirt.
Glad that there are a still a few decent human beings in Hollywood like Chris Pratt.
Otherwise I guess it’d just be an endless sea of sexual abusers, rapists and pedophiles. https://t.co/iMkFRJlyW8
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) July 17, 2019
A TMZ article on Pratt’s shirt does not come to such a conclusion. The flag is historical and doesn’t have any racist connotations, according to TMZ. The Gadsen flag signified a message from the early American colonists—a warning to Great Britain not to mess with America. The TMZ article said that Pratt is simply a conservative, as he has always been.
Yahoo makes a false equivalency between being pro-gun, Christian, and being a racist. Yahoo implies that political views held by many Americans mean they are white supremacists.
Commenters on the Yahoo article think it reflects shoddy standards of journalism.
Shame on @Yahoo for this trash. A handful of dumb twitter comments isn’t a news story you click-baiting parasites. There nothing white supremacist about that T-shirt.
It’s like everyone wants to be stupid and make everything worse. https://t.co/TVNeLUGUAc— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) July 17, 2019
“Welcome to ‘journalism’ in 2019: concoct some woke narrative and trawl around on Twitter until you find a few randos posting comments about how problematic they find it to pretend it’s the majority opinion,” commented Mr. Flibble.
“I didn’t realize news outlets like Yahoo used contributors who don’t know the history of an issue they’re writing on,” commented Andrew.
“I hope he continues to wear it and ignores all this b.s. It’s a symbol of independence, not a statement of support for the alt-right (which, although I lean liberal, has a right to adopt whatever symbols they want). My god we are getting sensitive,” commented Carl.
Famous Conservatives had harsh words for the writers.
This is next level stupid: People calling Chris Pratt a white supremacist for wearing a shirt with the Gadsden flag on it.@YahooNews should be ashamed for even running this. pic.twitter.com/rq8Rt1xPuq
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) July 17, 2019
“This is next level stupid: People calling Chris Pratt a white supremacist for wearing a shirt with the Gadsden flag on it.@YahooNews should be ashamed for even running this,” tweeted Steven Crowder.
“This is pure idiocy. Not every symbol of the early republic is a white supremacist symbol unless you are a moron,” tweeted Ben Shapiro.
Erick Erickson wrote a piece for The Resurgent about what an attack on such an American symbol means.
“I’m noticing more and more that progressives are claiming anything Neo-Nazis have tried to co-opt is somehow immediately bad. The Betsy Ross flag, the Gadsden flag, the American flag itself, etc. are all immediately deemed bad,” Erickson wrote.
“What I find so interesting is that they make no effort to defend the historic symbols or repurpose them or take them for their own. They just want to discard them all. It seems vastly more about a convenient way to cast aside American symbols than actually about bad people trying to steal the symbols of liberty for themselves,” Erickson continued.
Erickson said that leftists are attacking Pratt because of his frank talk about God and his love of America.
Pratt is next set to appear in Disney Pixar animated film “Onward,” in 2020, according to IMDB. After that, he will return for sequels to his franchise films. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Jurassic World 3” are both set for 2021. Pratt last appeared in “Avengers: Endgame.”
