Controversy over the flag escalated when Governor Nikki Haley ordered the state and US flags at the Statehouse lowered to half-staff for nine days to honour the dead. The Confederate flag didn't move due to a 2000 compromise that saw the flag shifted from the Statehouse dome to a monument directly in front. The flag can only be lowered with approval of the full Legislature. South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate flag from its Capitol dome.
Republican South Carolina state Senator Doug Brannon said he would introduce a bill to remove the flag entirely. "When my friend was assassinated for being nothing more than a black man, I decided it was time for that thing to be off the Statehouse grounds," Brannon said, referring to Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a state senator. "It's not just a symbol of hate, it's actually a symbol of pride in one's hatred."
Former presidential contender Mitt Romney tweeted that many see the Confederate flag as "a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honour #Charleston victims".
Describing himself as the "Last Rhodesian", 21-year-old Dylann Roof wrote in a manifesto: "I have no choice. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me."He claimed the "event that truly awakened me" was the row over the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen shot dead by George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012. He wrote it was "obvious" Zimmerman was right to kill the 17-year-old and the case led him into the dark world of white supremacy. "I have never been the same since that day."
Roof, who faces a potential death sentence if convicted, said he learned his racism largely online. "I hate the American flag," wrote Roof. "Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud [of] while white people are being murdered daily in the streets."
Stewart despairs over killings
Jon Stewart, the host of the
Daily Show
, delivered a scathing assessment of American society following the Charleston killings.
An unusually stony-faced Stewart said: "I honestly have nothing other than sadness that once again we have to peer into the abyss of the depraved violence that we do to each other, and the nexus of a just gaping racial wound that will not heal, yet we pretend doesn't exist. I'm confident though that by acknowledging it - by staring into that - and seeing it for what it is, we still won't do jack s***.
"That's us. And that's the part that blows my mind ... the disparity of response. When we think people that are foreign are going to kill us, and us killing ourselves ... We invade two countries and spent trillions of dollars and lost thousands of American lives and now fly unmanned death machines over like five or six different countries, all to keep Americans safe.
"But nine people shot in a church - 'Hey, what are you going to do? Crazy is as crazy is, right?' That's the part that I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around.
They are already using the nuanced language of lack of effort. This is a terrorist attack. This is a violent attack on a church, that is a symbol for that community ... I cannot believe how hard people are working to discount it."
- Telegraph Group Ltd, AP
