Washington Commanders Quietly Selling BANNED Redskins Gear — You Won’t Believe Why

Liberty Check

• Washington Commanders now selling throwback Redskins merchandise despite claiming the name was offensive
• Team caved to woke pressure in 2020, but quietly profits from ‘abandoned’ brand to maintain trademark control
• Many Native American leaders actually supported the Redskins name and logo with pride

The Washington Redskins name and iconic logo that the NFL team abandoned in 2020 under liberal pressure is back — sort of. It’s now on full display and for sale in the team’s current merchandise shop.

Although the gear bearing the Redskins name is limited to a Mitchell & Ness throwback line of T-shirts and jerseys featuring former players, it is indeed available for purchase. Anyone can walk into the brick-and-mortar store at Northwest Stadium or buy online.

For example, fans can purchase an Art Monk T-shirt featuring the Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver’s likeness in his old uniform and Redskins helmet. The back of the shirt is emblazoned with “Washington Redskins” along with Monk’s career statistics and records.

The shirt costs $49.99.

For the same price, fans can buy a Sean Taylor T-shirt showing the former safety in his Redskins uniform before he was tragically killed in 2007. Taylor played for the Redskins, not the Washington Commanders.

Taylor’s retired No. 21 jersey, complete with the Redskins name on the front and a 75th anniversary Washington Redskins patch, is available for $114.99. The franchise is marketing this gear — emblazoned with Washington Redskins script and logos — as Commanders merchandise.

The jersey is described as a Sean Taylor Black Washington Commanders Retired Player Name & Number Mesh Top, even though the Commanders nickname does not appear anywhere on the jersey.

This is what happens when an NFL franchise builds a long and storied history as the Washington Redskins from 1937 to 2019, then decides the nickname is racist under pressure from liberal fans, some Native American groups, and corporate sponsors. The Washington Commanders, as they’re known now, have vowed never to return to the Redskins nickname.

Current owner Josh Harris said in September 2023 that he understands the nostalgia for the former name but that “there was a portion of our fan base that felt disrespected by the former name.”

So why, if the Redskins name is supposedly so offensive, are the Commanders now selling Redskins merchandise?

And why are they wearing an alternate helmet later this season with a spear piercing the W insignia, much like the old feathered arrow helmet the Redskins wore in the 1960s? The spear that is part of the so-called “Raise Hail” alternate uniform is an obvious reach at Redskins nostalgia.

According to reports, the gear in the team gift shop is being made available to keep the old trademark in commercial use.

“We are required to maintain the marks in commercial usage so that marks remain under franchise control,” a club spokesman told a Washington television station.

Under trademark law, a mark may be deemed abandoned if its use is discontinued with intent not to resume use. The Lanham Act says that three consecutive years of nonuse is prima facie evidence of abandonment.

The statutory standard also requires “bona fide use … in the ordinary course of trade,” rather than merely token sales made solely to reserve rights. That might be a problem for the Commanders because their contention is that these Redskins items are sold on a limited availability basis.

It should be noted that there are Native American groups who believe the Redskins nickname to be racist. But other native individuals, including a Navajo Code Talkers Association leader and a former Blackfeet tribal chairman, have publicly supported retaining the old nickname and the Native-profile logo.

Walter “Blackie” Wetzel, a former chairman of the Blackfeet Tribe and former president of the National Congress of American Indians, helped persuade the club in 1972 to replace its “R” helmet logo with the Native chief helmet portrait most associated with the team.

In a 2002 interview, Wetzel said:

“It made us all so proud to have an Indian on a big-time team. It’s only a small group of radicals who oppose those names. Indians are proud of Indians.”

Americans deserve better than corporate virtue signaling that caves to woke pressure, only to quietly profit from the very traditions they claimed to reject.