Haley: Political climate, media hysteria wouldn’t allow Confederate flag to come down in SC today

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said today’s political climate would prevent South Carolina from bringing down the Confederate flag as it did in 2015 when she served as the state’s governor. 

“The reason is not the upsurge in white nationalism,” Haley wrote in an op-ed published Wednesday in The Washington Post. “While that is a very disturbing trend that must be resisted, it has not changed the composition of the South Carolina legislature that needed a two-thirds vote to remove the flag.”

“Rather,” she continued, “the reason is today’s media hysteria that makes it far more difficult to have the kind of thoughtful and prayerful dialogue we had following the Charleston murders.”

Haley’s op-ed comes on the heels of backlash and protests over her recent interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck in which she said that Dylann Roof — the shooter in the Charleston attack that left nine black Americans dead — “hijacked” the meaning of the Confederate flag. 

Haley wrote that she made similar comments in her 2015 speech calling for the flag’s removal, and has done so “countless times since.” 

“But the reaction has been very different,” she wrote. “Today’s outrage culture does not allow any gestures to the other side. It demands that we declare winners and losers.”

Haley adds that the flag has “long been a hot-button issue.” 

“Everyone knows the flag has always been a symbol of slavery, discrimination and hate for many people,” she wrote. “But not everyone sees the flag that way. That’s hard for non-Southerners to understand, but it’s a fact.”

Excluding “a small number of hardened white supremacist racists who proclaim the flag as their symbol,” which she said included the shooter, Haley said there’s another group “that today’s outrage culture wants to either deny exists or to condemn in the harshest terms.”