I’m Worried About the Gadsden Flag Kid

Graphic by Alex Microbe, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Last week, a 12-year-old’s life changed forever — and not for the better.

The student (I’m not going to use his name) was kicked out of his Colorado Springs middle school for wearing a Gadsden flag — of “Don’t Tread On Me” fame — patch on his backpack. The flag, according to the school, violated district policy “due to its origins with slavery and the slave trade.”

Our intrepid, Tuttle Twins-reading hero, as well as his mother, didn’t take too kindly to being reprimanded for proudly displaying a symbol of American rebellion and resistance. The Gadsden flag may have been appropriated by some unsavory alt-right groups, but the school’s assertion that it originates from the slave trade is patently false. Mother and son stood their ground, and the story was brought to the masses by Connor Boyack, the president of the Libertas Institute, and the author of the aforementioned Tuttle Twins series.

The story, understandably, immediately took off. Numerous journalists, conservative activists, the Libertarian Party, legal institutes, progressive congressmen, and Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, came to the family’s (and the Gadsden flag’s) defense. The school, realizing that they had massively overstepped, allowed the kid — and the flag patch — back into the classroom.

Victory was achieved, and this is where everything should have ended. However, the situation has started to get out of control. The Babylon Bee wrote a piece satirizing the school’s response. Conservative media provocateurs like Eric Bolling, Charlie Kirk, and Benny Johnson have invited the kid on their programs for interviews. In a conversation with the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, the student said he was now “Mr. Popular” at school, and that he hoped to one day run for governor of Colorado. He’s given some of these interviews wearing a tricorne hat.

If, in a few years, the kid decides that politics isn’t for him, and that he wants to go work for a bank, would that even be a possibility? He could go to college and get a finance degree, sure, but would a bank that isn’t “based” or “red-pilled” be willing to hire him? I’m not so certain. The internet lives forever, after all.

I remember being 12. Like the youngster in question, I was very politically aware for my age. I knew that if I had the ability to vote, I would have voted for Mitt Romney, and I could explain why (my reasons weren’t very good, but for a 12-year-old, they were legit reasons). I knew that I one day wanted to be president of the United States, but I would have settled for governor of Texas. I was also a bit of a rebel, and had the stars aligned a certain way, I could have very well encountered the same challenges as our protagonist. Perhaps even over the same symbol.

But I had also only read Diary of the Wimpy Kid for the first time two years prior. I was only one year removed from my first social media account (Facebook, to chat with friends and family). In other words, had I become an online celebrity in a matter of hours, it would have drastically altered my development, and not for the better.

There’s already evidence to indicate that the student’s “Mr. Popular” designation may be hiding something more disconcerting. Teachers, rightly or wrongly, are not happy with the student. A national news story makes teaching more difficult on any day, but a politically charged news story makes things even worse. Moreover, in a short video posted to Twitter, the kid makes reference to his new friends putting Gadsden flags on their lockers — “well, at least, my new-made friends, ’cause I’m big on Twitter and now they like me all of a sudden.”

That statement alone should raise red flags for anyone who is genuinely interested in the student’s welfare — especially in light of a tweet that claimed he played chess by himself at lunch. His entire life, at least in the near future, is going to revolve around his online popularity. Being 12, he is likely going to want to maintain that popularity, since that makes him “cool,” so he is going to lean into what made him famous even more. That is a recipe for turning him into the next Turning Point superstar.

I’m petrified that this is inevitable for the poor kid. Post after post permanently affixes his name and likeness online, and the more interviews he gives, the less likely it is that he can live a normal life after this. I don’t think he’s past the point of no return yet, but I do think he is at the stage where he and, more importantly, his family, have to consider the consequences of what is quickly becoming a kerfuffle. Young superstars often don’t turn into very good people. Others who remain true to themselves may nevertheless fall to Turning Point temptations — drugs, alcohol, sex, and virulent racism among them.

Consider what has happened to older Zoomers in similar circumstances. Daniel Schmidt, a University of Chicago student who gained fame for exposing a “The Problem With Whiteness” course at the university, now grifts for Kanye West and rambles about “white genocide” on X. Nate Hochman went from being a rising star on the right to someone fumbling to defend themselves from neo-Nazi accusations. Many more have no life or personality outside of their edgy, online personas. One wrong word could effectively end their lives and careers — and none of this even gets into what child actors go through.

It’d be one thing if this choice was purely on the family. Choosing fame would be, I think, the wrong decision, but at least it would purely be their choice. The problem, however, is that all the adult right-wing influencers are nudging this poor kid towards a life no 12-year-old is ready for. They’re parading him around the internet like an idol, and giving him every incentive in the world to soak it in. Benny Johnson made the student a Gadsden flag cake (and had him pose with it for Twitter, of course). Connor Boyak has been tweeting non-stop about him for days, encouraging him to monetize his fame.

This type of instantaneous glory isn’t healthy for a 12-year-old — heck, it isn’t healthy for adults either. I know some of the people who have been pushing the story, and while I don’t think any of them are intentionally trying to break this child, who can really say in this culture war click-driven Year of Our Lord 2023?

I would love to be proven wrong, but I don’t think this story will have a happy ending. Conservative media world forgetting that this whole thing happened would be the best possible outcome, but I doubt that’s going to be the case. I keep seeing tweets, posts, and articles about this poor kid, with no end in sight. As things stand, he’s a hero. If the school comes down on him, he’ll become a martyr. This is grooming of a different sort.

Shouldn’t all the parents in the conservative movement know better? Where are this kid’s parents in all of this hubbub? Whatever those answers are, we should collectively stop feeding the monster that’s about to break its chains. A child’s future is at stake.