Interesting to take a look at this and it's a somewhat controversial topic.
I think there are a few big flag wars that flared up around the time of your data spikes so maybe the key here is to try and frame a data query around identifying and counting those flag wars. I'd expect these to be flags in both directions so there may be a clue in the data there.
I think the flagging with regards to 'wars' has only started in earnest the last week or two - flags have been falling for the past month or so, and so I don't think this has made much impact, so far!