Patriotism Is Getting a Big, Beautiful Rebrand from the American Left
Scene from a ‘No Kings Day’ protest in Tulsa, OK | Photo by C. Andrew Nichols
For most of the 21st century, U.S. patriotism came wrapped in a predictable aesthetic: truck-stop caps, country ballads, bleachers full of red-white-and-blue foam fingers. To dissent from that imagery was, in shorthand, to dissent from America itself.
But this summer’s Flag Day told a different story. While President Trump staged a tank-lined birthday parade down Pennsylvania Avenue, more than 5 million “No Kings Day” demonstrators unfurled American flags in protest plazas from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. The message on their banners was blunt: the flag is ours, too.
The events bookended a broader sea-change. Progressive candidates now stump in front of bunting; queer activists march beneath Old Glory beside rainbow stripes; left-leaning veterans’ groups flood social feeds with “red, white & reclaim” hashtags. In short, the U.S. left is hard at work giving patriotism a makeover—less Toby Keith, more Tracy Chapman; less “love it or leave it,” more “love it, so fix it.”
A Symbol Abandoned
The modern right’s cultural capture of the flag was not inevitable. From abolitionists waving “Union forever” banners to civil-rights marchers draped in stars and stripes, dissenters have long wielded the flag as critique. But in the post-9/11 sprint toward Homeland kitsch, mainstream progressives largely ceded the symbol—leaving it to “Support Our Troops” magnets, bumper-sticker real estate and eventually MAGA rallies.
That surrender created a narrative vacuum, one exploited throughout President Trump’s first and second terms. If a person’s politics were anti-Trump, the story went, the anthem wasn’t theirs. The second Trump administration weaponized that divide: flag-blazed military parades, ICE raids under banners of “law and order” and a stream of attacks on “unpatriotic” critics. Yet those theatrics also crystalized an opportunity. As Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) argued while handing out pocket flags two days before the parade, “Patriotism does not belong to one party.”
2025: The Flag Returns to the Left
So far this summer, the banner has re-entered progressive iconography in four distinct arenas:
Veteran Surrogates: Ryan and fellow veteran-turned-lawmaker Chris Deluzio launched a Democratic Veterans Caucus whose first act was distributing U.S. flags bearing a note: “The values it stands for belong to every American.”
Street politics. “No Kings Day” organizers insisted on a sea of flags precisely because Trump’s parade sought to brand the emblem as his alone. In West Palm Beach they chanted the Pledge while police blocked a bridge to Mar-a-Lago; in Salt Lake City they marched behind a patchwork flag stitched from donated denim. The sheer visual suggested a jailbreak: rescue the icon before it hardens into a partisan logo.
Queer-inclusive patriotism. Pride Month celebrations—from Citi Field’s Pride Night to small-town drag brunches—paired Old Glory with rainbow flags, spurring right-wing outrage and the viral false claim that the Mets replaced the nation’s banner with a Pride flag (they didn’t). The fact-check became its own lesson in selective outrage.
Art world interventions. Collectives like For Freedoms and museum exhibits from Faith Ringgold to Vito Acconci re-imagined the flag as a canvas for grief, dissent and inclusion.
Pop Culture Reclaims the Stars & Stripes
If the left is retaking the flag, pop culture is leading the charge with performance, pageantry and platformed protest.
At Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour, the pop icon emerged draped in a custom American flag cape—rhinestone stars, faded denim stripes and all. Her wardrobe choice echoed the tour’s deeper thesis: America is not just red states and rodeos. It’s also Black cowboys, genre-blending musicians and Southern heritage reimagined by the daughters of sharecroppers.
Just months earlier, Kendrick Lamar closed out the Super Bowl LVIX halftime show with a new verse performed in front of a glitching projection of the American flag. Behind him: a gospel choir in deconstructed star-spangled robes, their harmony cracking into spoken word. The performance ended not with fireworks but with a looping refrain: “Tell me what liberty means when my block can’t breathe.” In one 12-minute set, he turned a patriotic spectacle into a meditation on state violence and civic betrayal.
And the symbolism didn’t stop with stadiums. TikTok, too, has become a site of symbolic remixing. The #ReclaimTheFlag trend, launched by Indigenous creators in early May, challenges users to tell the story of their families under the American flag—juxtaposing pledges of allegiance with footage of forced assimilation, ICE raids and community survival.
Alongside it are the thousands of “But in a liberal way” videos that have taken off on TikTok. More tongue-in-cheek than the #ReclaimTheFlag trend, the videos feature creators engaging in “conservative” activities such as wearing flag apparel, homesteading, hunting and even attending Sunday services. The videos are often followed by captions like “I’m a Christian and I believe in drag rights,” or “I hunt every Saturday and believe in gun reform.”
It’s satire, surely, but it’s also sincere. For many Gen Z and millennial creators, it’s a way to signal that national pride and progressive values don’t cancel each other out.
From Icon to Action
What does left-leaning patriotism actually look like beyond the optics? Picture it unfolding in real time: a pop concert that pauses for on-site voter registration; drag performers reading the First Amendment aloud at counter-protests; frontline workers hanging flags upside-down to signal distress while they strike for living wages. In each scene the banner is both a prop and a provocation that forces onlookers to ask the most fundamental question: to whom does the republic serve?
Still, reclamation doesn’t always look like spectacle. Sometimes, it’s quieter than that.
At my house, we decorated for the Fourth of July this year—for the first time. Just a few flags, and a sign featuring our state hero Woody Guthrie, nothing too elaborate. But it felt like something, like we are participating in a version of the country we still believe can exist. One where care and critique can live side by side. One where we can raise a flag and still question what it means.
