I can understand why people are passionate about belonging to their national community: it structures most of their lives, it's the thing with whose history they identify etc. & I get why more cosmopolitan-leaning people feel uncomfortable about it: states are a locus of war as well as belonging. 7/
Here's what I *don't* get: who are those more cosmopolitan-leaning people - "my" people - so blind to their own side's various flag obsessions? And what do people who mock Starmer for being photographed with the English flag have to offer by way of justification for waving all those other flags? 8/
Long story short, I feel that actually the Liberal left is in a lot more of a muddle about flags than the right is. They (the right) seem to know their minds about flags & what they represent: the nation, the state, & the community that belongs to those two. It's simple & attractive. 9/
But what do "we" believe about which flags are good & which are bad? What is the heuristic that says Ukraine flag good, England flag scary? Or, poppy cringe, watermelon pin virtuous? Only the latter celebrated the death of civilians. What, apart from naked in-group signalling, is our ethic here? /10
I guess what I've done in this thread is clarify my thoughts a bit, in that the reason I'm so ill at ease in this discourse is that at some level I'm aware we, the left-broadly-defined, have feet of clay in this whole business, & are on very shaky ethical ground. /end (probably)
I saw someone on here the other day say "if they can call us communists how come we can't say their flag is drenched in the blood of empire" and I thought that epitomised how badly wrong the online hard left gets the flag stuff.
It’s semiotics. Flags are signifiers. In most situations, the St George’s flag is a signifier of a certain conception of Englishness, which excludes immigrants and non-white people. If someone has a St George’s flag hanging up in their window, I’m going to assume they are racist, not woke, etc.
You wouldn't actually always assume that (e.g. about a teenage girl during the Euros wrapped in an England flag), but why has belonging to the national community become coded (for lefties) as negative & violent, & belonging to supra-national ones or even foreign ones like Ukraine as morally good?
Hence I said in ‘most’ situations. Do you really need me to explain why, with the history of the British empire, some people see it as a thing we shouldn’t always take pride in? But rather look clearly at some of the awful things we’ve done. And then have disagreements with the people who won’t.
I thought the English flags on every balcony in the neighbouring block of (council) flats were charming. But mine is a multicultural part of London. In Kent, those flags say "no entry". They say, we belong here, you with your Union Flag do not.
I assume a bunch of other things about people who display various other flags. My problem with Keir’s flag shagging is not the use of flags as signifiers. It’s what is signified by this particular flag.
Trouble is, the flag of St George has been claimed as the flag of (white) nationalism and the idea that it represents harmless patriotism is a deliberate part of the nationalist strategy.