Texas Department of Agriculture
Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller
After Six Flags decided to remove the Confederate flag from the theme park’s marquee last Friday and instead replace all of their flags with the American flag, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller criticized the move as being part of a “militant, anarchist movement sweeping our country, destroying and attempting to sanitize our nation’s history.”
The long statement posted on Miller’s Facebook page is hardly surprising coming from the right-wing politician who is known for making outlandish statements: he has said “bad Mexican food” and the idea of the U.S. becoming a “Muslim country” are the things that keep him up at night, and he once referred to Hillary Clinton as a cunt in a Tweet. (A staffer, who was not fired as a result, took the blame for the incident.)
In his Monday statement, Miller said he was “extremely disappointed to hear that Six Flags over Texas in Arlington had succumb to this scourge of race baiting, liberal activism.”
Following the resurgence of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the tragic death of counter-protester Heather Heyer on August 12, numerous Confederate statues have been removed across the country. The University of Texas at Austin removed Confederate statues from campus late Sunday night, following a statement from UT Austin President Gregory Fenves, who said the decision to remove the monuments stemmed from the violence in Charlottesville, and that “confederate monuments have become symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”
“The bringing down of these flags as well as the removal of our historical monuments around the country is just another act of appeasement to the intolerant, liberal, and oftentimes violent left who strive to establish a false narrative where our state’s and nation’s history is one dimensional. It’s not!” Miller wrote in his statement.
Six Flags spokeswoman Sharon Parker explained the decision to change the flag displays in a statement released on Friday. “We always choose to focus on celebrating things that unite us versus those that divide us,” she wrote. “As such, we have changed the flag displays in our parks to feature American flags.”
