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...
ever consider how many people look at that flag and see mammon, a beast that hates them, a monster that has killed and harmed their families? those are the people our struggle is for. blessed are the meek, jackass
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...
Gallup polls "are you proud to be an American" regularly and in 2023 it fell to a record low... of 89% (saying "extremely" "very" or "moderately" proud. Only 4% said "not at all")
news.gallup.com/poll/507980/...
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.
Garrison believed entering politics would dilute second wave abolitionism’s commitment to both ending slavery and achieving citizenship for African Americans. Douglass concluded that politics were the only way to achieve any of those things.
Others have addressed the question, I’m just here to plug David Blight’s book
The Garrisonians gave Douglass his platform to become a famous public intellectual, and his break w Garrison on the redeemability of the republic & 1789 constitution got very heated
www.goodreads.com/book/show/38...
This.
On the merits, it's easy to disagree with Douglass's characterization of the US Constitution (long before the Reconstruction amendments) as a glorious liberty document.
But from a political standpoint, Douglass was clearly right to claim this.
The short documentary I just watched on the Niagara Movement on PBS kinda implied that he was a really difficult person to try to come to a consensus with, unless the views you held were exactly aligned with his own.
Somewhat inflexible in thought would be a generous way of describing him.
He began or always saw the world as either with or against me. I always wonder if he had oppositional disorder or PTSD.
There is no way folks got away from this work with mental health intact.
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."
ever consider how many people look at that flag and see mammon, a beast that hates them, a monster that has killed and harmed their families? those are the people our struggle is for. blessed are the meek, jackass
