The purge of all items that have anything to do with the Confederate flag has made the leap to the digital realm. Ever since the Charleston, South Carolina shooting that took place last week, where a white supremacist killed nine people as they attended Bible study at their church, the Confederate flag has been under fire. First, citizens demanded that it be taken down from the South Carolina Capitol. Brick and mortar retail stores like Walmart, Sears, and Target then announced that they would no longer sell any merchandise that featured the flag of the South. Online retailers quickly followed suit, with Ebay, Amazon, and Etsy all banning the sale of Confederate flag items.

Today, Apple made the decision to remove apps that featured the Confederate flag from its App Store. These games didn’t necessarily glorify the South. The only thing they were guilty of was being historically accurate.

What is the purpose of the great purge? To prevent people from seeing anything offensive? What about Civil War apps that didn’t feature the Confederate flag on the app icon? People would have had to download the game and played the app in order to see the Confederate flag. Most people who download Civil War games would expect to see Confederate flags, so its unlikely they would have been offended. So is it for our own good? Apple won’t let people play games with the Confederate flag, even if they want to, because Apple knows best? What about educational games, or books? How far will this go? Are we attempting to purge the Civil War from history? The Android App Store still has Civil War games that feature the Confederate Flag on the app icon, but how long before they buckle under the pressure of political correctness?

I reached out to GameStop Corporation to ask if they intended to discontinue selling the History Channel branded Civil War games made by Activision Publishing, Inc. They wouldn’t comment. I stopped by a local GameStop store and they had it in stock, so I picked up a copy. I couldn’t help but feel scandalous as I chose to be a Confederate soldier. I fought alongside my brothers from the South, under the Confederate flag, and it was fun. I enjoyed shooting the Northern invaders. And as I played, I learned things about the Civil War. Battle locations, and the outcomes of various skirmishes. It was interesting. So what was the harm? Why is it so important to sanitize the past? Is it the flag itself that we’re not supposed to see? There was a time when video game developers would change the color of in-game blood to green, in order to get a more lenient game rating. What if app developers adopt that tactic? If the colors of the flag are changed, it’s no longer the Confederate flag. Will that satisfy Apple?

What else can we expect from this new movement, where people feel like they should never be offended? GameStop had a Duck Dynasty game for sale. The fundamentalist Christian beliefs held by the Duck Dynasty family is offensive to a good number of people. Will Apple remove Duck Dynasty apps from the app store? Will retailers ban Duck Dynasty merchandise? Why can’t consumers decide what they want to purchase? How can we promote a culture of innovation if we’re determined to ban anything and everything we don’t agree with? What are your thoughts on this new trend?

image courtesy of Darryl Moran on Flickr