By Mike Carter
The Seattle Times
WENATCHEE, Wash. — A group of wildland firefighters from the Washington National Guard are under investigation for gathering around and displaying the white supremacist Rhodesian flag while battling the Little Giant fire this month.
Washington National Guard spokesperson Joseph Siemandel said the troops involved are under investigation by their chain of command, adding that the incident — seen in a photograph published on Instagram — was a “poor choice” by those involved.
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The photograph shows 11 firefighters, in full gear, standing atop a mound surrounded by smoldering grass and shrubs. Two in the back row are holding up the green-and-white triband flag of Rhodesia, a Black majority, white-ruled country in southern Africa that lasted from 1965 through its collapse in 1979 in the territory that is now Zimbabwe. The faces of the firefighters appear to be digitally blurred.
Simandel said the photograph was taken on either Aug. 13 or 14 at the Little Giant fire, which continues to burn in Chelan County and has consumed more than 150,000 acres, or about 234 square miles. Seattle contains about 84 square miles of land.
Rhodesia was a British colony until its prime minister, Ian Smith, revolted and issued a “unilateral declaration of independence” intended to preserve white rule in the African state, when others were moving toward majority rule. Political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of a few white leaders and businessmen at a time when 90% of the country’s population was Black. Most countries refused to recognize Rhodesia, and the United Nations imposed sanctions, making the country an international pariah.
For more than a decade, the white minority engaged in a brutal “bush war with the Black majority seeking liberation. Among the liberation fighters’ leaders was Robert Mugabe, who eventually became Zimbabwe’s first prime minister.
The country’s flag, like the Confederate Stars and Bars, has been associated with white supremacy ever since. Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine Black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015, featured a Rhodesian flag on his website and a patch on his jacket, according to news reports.
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