A TORY MSP has been labelled "pathetic" after suggesting the Greens were to adopt the Confederate flag - a symbol of white supremacy – as the party's new logo.
The Scottish Conservatives said the tweet by Murdo Fraser was clearly "made in jest" in response to comments made by Greens MSP Ross Greer on the pensions row engulfing the Yes movement.
Mr Fraser posted a picture of the controversial flag, with it captioned “Scottish Greens unveil their new logo”.
Scottish Greens unveil their new logo pic.twitter.com/KFgldBh43R
— Murdo Fraser (@murdo_fraser) February 18, 2022
Mr Greer highlighted the US Civil War, when the flag was used by the Confederate south, as an example of "how pensions can do strange things".
Speaking on the Untribal podcast, Mr Greer insisted that "in no other sense, I should stress, am I comparing our independence debate with the American Civil War".
He added that “the Confederacy lost and were destroyed in 1865" but "the last widower’s pension for a Confederate service personnel was paid out in 2012".
He said: “So the union government, the United States government who won the US Civil War, paid the pensions of Confederate soldiers who'd been on the losing side of the war, whose states had been destroyed.
“The winning side continued to pay those pensions, and because it was the pensions that were then passed on to those people’s successors, it was paid long after the lifetimes of anyone who'd been around during the US Civil War.”
A Greens spokesperson labelled Mr Fraser's tweet "distasteful and pathetic".
He added: "The Confederate flag represents appalling racism and suffering. It has no place in our politics and nor do these kinds of tweets."
"All MSPs have a responsibility to ensure positive, civil and constructive debate, and should never sink to this level or normalise the use of such an abhorrent flag."
Mr Fraser said that the Scottish Greens were "remarkably sensitive to having their daftness called out".
A Scottish Conservative spokesman said: “This was clearly a tweet made in jest in response to the ludicrous claims made by Ross Greer on pensions and his bizarre analogy with the American Civil War.”
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