The relationship of many American leftists to patriotism reminds me a lot of those guys who grow up in oppressively evangelical communities and decide to express their disillusionment with it by becoming black metal satanists - a oppositional mirror of Christianity - instead of becoming atheists.
Like the correct response to the realization that nationalism is a false consciousness used to suppress class conflict is to focus on raising class consciousness not to root against the nation everyone around you is rooting for.
Flag burning anti-patriotism is stupid in the exact same way that jingoistic chauvinism is stupid but it's also stupid in an additional self-defeating way because it sets your goals up in opposition to a bunch of symbols and institutions that normies have been trained their whole life to believe in.
Nations are lines someone drew on maps and flags are pieces of cloth. Made up! Don't get mad at something that's made up especially if it's also alienating people that you need to reach for no good reason!
Ya I feel sometimes like this stuff is the foreign policy equivalent of those straight edge punks who'd tattoo X's on their hands or whatever bsky.app/profile/thre...
"have you ever considered how many people in the united states see the united states flag as an irredeemable symbol of profound evil" like, yes, and the number is "extremely few" which is why setting yourself up against it is insane bsky.app/profile/nacl...
in both directions: in 1854 it was totally reasonable to see the United States flag as symbolizing protection of slavery, in 1864 the same flag was flying over Union Armies as they rampaged through the south burning down plantations. I think that's neat and a good idea! bsky.app/profile/wron...
It's weird that very few people, especially liberals, have figured out that Obama was & remains a wildly popular figure in large part because he's openly pretty patriotic.
Its also why Rs "he hates America" smears never landed outside FOX
I was curious to see if there would be any sustained attempts to retake the canadian flag from the antivaxxers here. But maybe we need a civil war to change that narrative.
interesting to look at all the civil rights marchers who carried or even literally wrapped themselves in the flag in the 60s. were they rah rah jingo nationalists? or was there something more strategic happening?
They, the RW, do not get to claim the flag for them. It is not to be symbol for oppression and racism. We claim the American Flag for us,…actual freedom.
'Not alienating a majority of regular people' is both a requirement for winning power and something a lot of leftists simply can't bring themselves to do
Many people don't understand that it's all well and good to envision a fairer, better world, but the only way you're going to get there is to get most people to go along with it, which means you have to pick your battles.
Unless your goal is to just feel morally superior.
And the beauty of America is that because America has a history of genuinely good creedal values to focus on, you have just as much right to use the flag as a symbol for those as those who would have it represent American's profound failings. There's no reason to let the your enemies have the flag.
You like radical egalitarianism? Great. You can make a connection to America as an idea with that. Others have done so long before anyone alive drew their first breath. Let the flag become your symbol and appeal to people's inherent patriotic feelings.
This is all valid if one assumes the hypothetical leftist cares about reaching people as opposed to simply holding individual likes and dislikes regardless of who may disagree. I may love my world cup and olympics but at the same time I'm just a guy with beliefs. Outreach ain't my job.
There was a kerfuffle a few years ago in which MeUndies made underpants with an American flag pattern, people got mad, and I think MeUndies wound up donating the profits or something.
It seems to me that there are probably fairly few people, especially in the US, who use the language of Christianity like that and oppose nationalism
The Church... is also a source of abuse
I suspect the appeal in part is that it's easy and clear to be oppositional. Power building is complicated, sometimes involves compromises, sometimes fails abjectly, and always involves a shit-ton of work.
This is why I content myself with hating Phish instead of starting a better band.
It feels notable that, for all the other goofy shit they do, even young anarchists mostly don't get up to this these days ime because they (sort of) understand a thing a lot of (alleged) Marxists have forgotten: the US *in particular* isn't the enemy, the class & imperial interests it serves are
Interestingly, this lines up a lot with my trajectory into Discordianism while deconverting from Christianity. Instead of the oppositional-defiant stances of atheism and Satanism, Discordianism gave me the framing of "People make things up and then take them way too seriously."
exact same way? is this the right way to say that they are both cringe? one leads to just cringe and the other leads to mass death and racist wars. it seems pretty important that one is materially anithetical to human dignity and life and the other just makes the normals feel weird and uncomfortable
also, that making normals feel weird and uncomfortable has always been a crucial first step to changing anything. Also, that immigrants forced to move here and global survivors of US violence also matter and are people who influence politics whether or not they can vote.
Sounds like we need to find popular symbols that aren't also deeply associated with oppression, bigotry and feudalism... Like some sort of combo Beyonce/Taylor Swift flag!
I see your point, but I am not sure that flag burning in the late 60's was stupid and self defeating. I think they got good framework for first amendment rights out of a court so.eqhat receptive and moved the overton window.
I've strongly remembered your point from ~4 years ago, that the far right starting using the thin blue line flag instead of the stars and stripes was sorta the beginning of the end of its wider appeal
You're missing the point that selecting for radical membership is beneficial to radical organizations. Establishing a radical frame can also make other groups at the edge of the Overton Window look more mainstream.
It's especially self-sabotaging when the country is a democracy and you get some choice as to how it's run. It's no wonder voting for a better government seems asinine if you believe the country itself is fundamentally evil.
But that process would be worth setting up against in protest, if you believed it was an immoral thing to setup such a psychic monument in the first place. No point saying the nation has dire qualities and offering it tacit permission to make new ones, if the idea of nation is the root of its flaws.
