On the ground at Flagstock, the rager for the UNC frat bros who defended the American flag from protesters

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

What kind of party can you throw with more than $500,000? For months, the organizers of Flagstock 2024 plotted an answer to that question. Last night, at a field outside an American Legion hall in North Carolina, some of country’s biggest stars took to the stage as busloads of college students arrived at a location that organizers had gone to great lengths to keep secret.

“In country music, we say if we’re gonna make it happen, we show up in your home town and we make it happen,” singer John Rich told the crowd from the stage. And make it happen they did.

Organizers had such a massive budget because Americans donated sums large and small to a GoFundMe, titled simply: “UNC Frat Bros Defended their Flag. Throw ’em a Rager.” While $500,000 can seem like a lot of money for a rager, the event eventually transformed into more of a music festival, along with the stratospheric costs that come with that. The stage alone cost around $100,000, and everything from private security to insurance to a glistening row of porta-potties to UNC ice sculptures added up quickly.

“We’d better hope there are no fires anywhere in this area, because it looks like all of the fire engines are here,” one attendee quipped. John Ondrasik, whose stage name is Five for Fighting, kicked off the concert with a rendition of his platinum song “100 Years” as jets flew above stage. He told The Spectator that, while he’s performed at many patriotic concerts before, the circumstances that led up to Flagstock struck him as “unique.” 

The events that led up to the “rager” are familiar to most by now. During an on-campus uproar at the University of North Carolina in which students and off-campus agitators raised a Palestinian flag on campus, a group of “triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde,” in the words of the viral GoFundMe. 

One contingent of the UNC chads even addressed this year’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, but this event was organized in a strenuously apolitical manner. 

“Patriotism is not partisan,” one of the organizers of the rager told an assembled crew of journalists during a media walkthrough. That message was echoed by Ondrasik, who has released songs in recent years in support of Ukraine, in opposition to the Taliban and in support of hostages held by Hamas, forcefully pushed back that the message of Flagstock is political. 

“All these songs, about Afghanistan, Ukraine and Israel are in my mind moral messages, not political ones,” Ondrasik said, nothing that “in this tribal age, everything will be interpreted through the lens of politics, but criticizing the abandonment of our citizens and allies in Afghanistan, supporting Ukraine over Putin, and standing with Israel and the hostage families after the greatest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust should not be hard to do for anyone who values freedom and human rights.”

But on colleges in 2024, even something as simple as a free party honoring America’s flag can’t escape politics. In the run-up to the event, its organizers sought to avoid anything that could even be perceived as political. Nonetheless, there were some scattered MAGA hats and “let’s go Brandon” chants, with the most expressly political statement coming from Lewis, the former lead singer of Staind, who injected several iterations of “fuck Joe Biden” during one of his songs. Upon hearing those words, a New York Times reporter in attendance looked aghast, according to another journalist in the media pagoda.

Beyond the singers themselves, almost all of whom appeared free of charge, the event also had a series of sponsors, including Hooters, whose servers were some of the most popular attendees, on and off the stage. “All I need is a pitcher of beer,” a man told the Hooters waitresses as he piled chicken wings onto his plate, “and I could die a happy man.” Fortunately for him, there was plenty of beer, but no hard liquor present after one of the national presidents of a fraternity told organizers they should only serve alcohol with bubbles to ensure maximum safety. 

Throughout the evening, performers included Ondrasik, as well as headliners like Big & Rich, Aaron Lewis, and less well-known acts, like Angie Aparo, who John Rich said is “such a powerful vocalist and artist that I put him in my will. I said, ‘If I die before he does, I want him singing at my funeral.’” 

After the concert component concluded with a live rendition of “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, dj TWINSICK took the stage alongside scantily-clad women, and a Transformers-looking man roamed around the crowd until the party ended around midnight, with students bused back to campus. 

While thousands of tickets were doled out in advance to the fraternities who helped secure the American flag on campus, students faced overt and covert intimidation, including by some of the very fraternities the event was meant to honor. Multiple fraternities and sororities told members they couldn’t come, organizers told The Spectator. One student attendee said this is because Greek life on campus has been “overrun with DEI,” and that sororities in particular didn’t want to alienate any pro-Palestinian groups on campus.

Days before the event, the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine issued a statement supporting “armed rebellion” in both “Palestine” and “here in the imperial core,” which Flagstock organizers took to heart, shelling out tens of thousands of dollars on private security that could have otherwise gone to further festival festivities. 

Ondrasik noted that it is a “sad statement of the times that the concert was at an undisclosed location for the safety of those kids and all involved. For many in the culture today, standing up for the flag is more controversial than burning it. The positive side was that we were able to spend time with the kids and their families, hug, take pictures and sing along, particularly with the Jewish kids who have been under siege on our campuses.”

While fewer than the 3,000 ticketed attendees showed up, the event certainly riled up those who did attend. Chants of “U-S-A” echoed throughout the night, which inspired Ondrasik to say on stage that, while he hasn’t attempted to use a beer bong in around four decades, he was willing to give it a try — and he wants to bring acts like last night’s to schools around the country.

“I look forward to playing more concerts on the most toxic and antisemitic campuses, including my alma mater of UCLA — which, when a judge ordered them to allow Jewish students to freely move across campus, initially appealed the ruling,” he said. “It is time to stand up to the bullies and radicals, save our kids who are being indoctrinated,and stand shoulder to shoulder with Jewish students and those under siege.”