News Digest

Quentin Tarantino says Confederate flag is the ‘American swastika’

Quentin Tarantino considers the Confederate flag the “American swastika” – and feels it is “about damn time” people questioned its place in the American South. His latest movie, The Hateful Eight, is set a few years after the American Civil War and puts the spotlight on strained race relations as a black Union soldier (Samuel L Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren) is thrown together with former Confederate soldiers – Walton Goggins as a South Carolinian sheriff and Bruce Dern as a General.

I mean, I’ve always felt the Rebel flag was some American swastika. And, well, now, all of a sudden, people are talking about it, and now they’re banning it, and now it’s not OK to have it on f****** licence plates, and coffee cups, and stuff.

Quentin Tarantino speaking to The Telegraph

The US has seen sustained racial unrest following the shooting of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014. Further incidents have stoked the fire, including the mass shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, carried out by a white supremacist who had previously posed with the Rebel flag of the Confederate states. Tarantino said: “All of a sudden, people started talking about the Confederacy in America in a way they haven’t before.“

People are starting to question about stuff like statues of Bedford Forrest [the Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard] in parks. Well, it’s about damn time, if you ask me.

Quentin Tarantino