The swastika also has a fascinating religious history, and has deep meaning to people throughout Asia. You'd have a hard time explaining that as a reason to fly a Nazi flag in the US, and few people would be interested in a complaint about people being close-minded about what the swastika represents. You could display a Buddhist swastika, but you'd have to be very careful of how you presented it and the context in which it was presented.
It's hard to have too much sympathy for people who casually evoke "Kek" and then are shocked to learn people believe them to be white supremacists.
I find the act of displaying a flag publicly to be passive aggressive in itself. I grew up in America where the flag was used as a way to force people to unify (remember post 9/11?) and then I moved to Germany where the only time I’ve seen flags displayed publicly are for sports teams, either local or national, and only for the length of the competition.
Having been away from the blatant flag waving for so long, it really jumps out at me now when I visit America occasionally. It’s not just that flags are a pride thing, it’s that they’re trying to draw attention to the pride a person has. But why should I care about their pride? Why force me to notice it?
The flag in USA appears to be used for 'brainwashing' (compliance training). "I swear allegiance to the flag" and all that, then they use the flag as the backdrop when politicians talk to you, and use it as a symbol wherever compliance without opposition is required?!
Union Flag flyers in the UK seem to be royalist or fascists; or possibly just sportsmen.
Here in the UK there was a period when the Union Jack was hijacked by the far right (notably the British National Party and the National Front). They made prominent use of the flag in everything they did, so people avoided displaying it in other contexts because doing so would be seen as a coded statement of support for the far right.
I just got back from my first real trip to the UK, and while I was there (in the Cotswolds and south) I saw a handful of the red-cross-on-white English flags at various places. It wasn't clear, and I'd be curious to know, if that meant "Fuck the union, we will rise up!" or simply "You are currently in England."
In rural England the English flag has almost no political connotations on the part of people that fly it. It basically means the second one. For example almost every village church will fly it. They have probably been doing so in some cases for 500 years and don't give the political implications any thought.
It is slightly evocative of a kind of gentle conservatism which has mild undercurrents of racism/xenophobia for some people because rural England is overwhelmingly white and slightly old fashioned. (People call this "Jam and Jerusalem")
Basically it reminds people of the village council from Hot Fuzz.
(Source: grew up in Dorset)
Completely separately to this is has a recent history (80s) where it can be seen almost like a Confederate Flag in some contexts. It was aggressively adopted by fascists and also the subject of a tabloid conspiracy where they suggested immigrants hated it so people started flying it as an anti immigrant "this is our land" type thing.
This isn't the context you saw it in, but it's impossible to completely disentangle this new meaning, everyone is aware of it.
> mild undercurrents of racism/xenophobia for some people because rural England is overwhelmingly white and slightly old fashioned
The people of an area are mostly white and that makes them racist? Do you think black people in mostly-black areas are racist too or is it only racist to be white?
Is this your first day in human society? A user asked for an explanation of a highly nuanced aspect of rural English culture and I gave an answer based on my actual life lived in that culture.
There is no way to get from my comment to your comment without bringing a mountain of your own pet grievances and preconceptions to the table.
OK, so it's more that you've observed this mostly white area to be mildly racist (which seems reasonable), rather than saying that this area is mostly white and therefore mildly racist (which is how I read your post above.)
You're probably overanalysing. Sure, flags of the different parts of the UK are popular with separatists (though English nationalists, unlike Scottish or Welsh ones, tend not to be particularly opposed to the Union) but they're also the "you're currently in England/Scotland/Wales", and the "you can watch the football/rugby in this pub" flags. Probably there were a few county flags or local coats of arms on tourist sites and public buildings too.
As proper flag-based protests in the UK go, it'd be difficult to beat the bizarre sight of Cornish fishing boats and villages being covered with Canadian maple leaves back in the mid 90s when Cornish fishermen backed the Canadian side of a fishing dispute...
It used to mean (80s/90s) that you are on the right of politics and not keen on immigration.
However, because the UK does not have one Soccer team (England/Wales/Scotland/N.Ireland) If there is a major soccer tournament on the red cross is used to represent England team and support for that team - from a wider diverse proportion of the population.
It fluctuates between the two meanings, as things like Brexit ("We will rise up!" and Sport tournaments ("You are currently in England") happen.
It's relatively common for people during important world sporting events to fly the English flag, so it might be for the Women's World Cup which England are tipped to do well in. Of course, outside of important world sporting events the flag is generally seen flown by English nationalists and white supremisists, at least that's what I've generally seen.
I think Germany itself is a perfect answer to your question. One thing you start to see over and over in politics is Newton's Third - for every action there's an equal but opposite reaction. Germany took an an overwhelmingly sharp anti-nationalist turn, and what happened? Now we see things like the AfD (far right/nationalist party for those unaware) going from a niche little party that couldn't even qualify for the electoral threshold to the second most popular party in the nation, the #1 in east Germany. And similar things have been happening throughout Europe.
People being unified within a nation is a very good thing. And being unified does not mean believing the same thing. There have always been extremely divisive politics in the US. You only need look at our money - the man on the $10 bill was killed by the vice president of the man on the nickel in a duel. But when people start to become mutually exclusive, or when a nation itself goes too far in one direction, or the other, it results in a sharp counter movement in the opposite direction. It's important that people ultimately view themselves as part of a whole, even if they might strongly disagree with one another. A flag is the most fundamental representation of that whole. The alternative tends to trend towards widescale conflict which rarely has a happy ending for anybody.
I also don't get the logic how strongly condemning the Holocaust is supposedly a reason for their success. How is your neighbours not loving the flag any justification for hating foreigners, women, and the free press?
Anyway, there are many other countries without Germany's specific history, a long tradition of jingoistic patriotism, and still they have far stronger far-right parties today, i. e. France, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, the UK, Finland, Greece etc. etc.
I feel like you're being downvoted for the first sentence, so let me try to elaborate on your point. That's the entire deal of fascists: take something that has no negative connotation and give it one. It's how they make their way to the public space.
It started with swastikas, but there are other, way more recent examples: Pepe started as a meme, "kek" started as a meme. They didn't stop there, of course, they have a bunch of failed examples: they've tried to own rainbow flags ("each race in its own space"), OK emoji ("it's okay to be white"), the term antifa (appropriated to some imaginary paramilitary group instead of an actual definition of anti-fascists), and even the fucking # (this one is especially dumb).
So, when you look at the example of someone using these signs, you need to search through their history to see the context. They know their views are unacceptable by the general public, their entire deal is to be on the brick of plausible deniability and then laugh at people who call them out. That's why "everyone's a nazi" is a meme. They want the term "nazi" gone. It's not difficult to see why, since "nazi" was always an insult to fascists. Their attempt at appropriation of the term "antifa" is them trying to do the same for the complete opposite. It's also why they tend to have more profiles: one pretty obviously fascist, and multiple profiles in which they pretend that they're someone else (women, people of color, LGBT+ etc.) while spewing fascist talking points and retaining plausible deniability.
Outright banning just the symbols goes in their favor. In their recent crackdown, YouTube decided to remove almost every video showing swastikas. Of course, you'll rarely see a fascist openly using swastikas. It's those debunking them, laughing at them, and looking at their history that had their videos removed, while they go on and on with "YouTube is leftist and no leftist content ever gets removed".
> That's the entire deal of fascists: take something that has no negative connotation and give it one. It's how they make their way to the public space.
> ... even the fucking # (this one is especially dumb).
No, the "fashtag" is a great example. The trolls are trying to exploit paranoia about dogwhistles. Their goal is not to make fascists use the hashtag, but to laugh at (hypothetical) people who avoid hashtags because of internet hearsay that it might be a secret nazi symbol.
It takes two to tango - this particular kind of trolling doesn't work (and didn't work in the case of the fashtag) when we relax a little about dogwhistles. I won't let them take away my feelsbadman.jpg.
> this particular kind of trolling doesn't work (and didn't work in the case of the fashtag) if we all relax a little about dogwhistles.
No, that's exactly when it works. They aren't doing it to laugh at reactions as an end goal, the mockery exists entirely to delegitimize attention paid to racist/fascist dogwhistles, whose whole purpose is to get paid attention to by the target audience but ignored by the wider audience, which doesn't work when the wider audience is sensitized to and vigilant against them.
To stick with the pepe example: It only works as a dogwhistle now because everyone but Frog Twitter has stopped using it. If the rest of the world had shrugged and kept using it, then it wouldn't be a political symbol now.
I think this is the same mechanism as in the euphemism treadmill[1], where it's not clear if it's better to avoid a word or to double down on it (but in a proud/positive way). There doesn't seem to be a consensus about how to deal with the euphemism treadmill either.
You're absolutely right. I've seen memes about the "fashtag", including the ones that do their best to attach it some meaning, but that meaning was so stupid that I didn't even bother remembering it. It's a dogwhistle for the sake of dogwhistles.
It's hard to have too much sympathy for people who casually evoke "Kek" and then are shocked to learn people believe them to be white supremacists.