Well politically speaking that is a weakness in your position, it willingly abandons ground to the right and makes them stronger whether you like national symbols or not. Its not a personal attack, each to their own. But it 100% is an attitude that harms the left from a tactical/pragmatic perspective. It gives the right a weapon, when instead we could compete to instill our own values in our Nations image.
It only cedes ground to nationalists. Nobody else gives a toss. And nationalism is something I can’t even pretend to have a minute care for. Humans are humans. English people are lucky sperm. With our flag flying we caused all the chaos that leads to all this immigration. Keep flags for ritualised combat like football and I am all for them. But it isn’t on the left to reclaim the flag that racists have ruined.
It's not solely the right by any stretch of the imagination. The left (my god how I hate making everything binary, but as you've started with those labels, I'll continue) rejoices in teaching young people to hate our country and specifically our history. That's a HUGE problem.
I feel like you don't see how weak this is? Fair enough if you do not personally care, but you could at least see the value in not saying 'you know I am happy for the racists to represent my country, it isnt really up to us to do anything about it'. Because in effect it allows them to be the image of the UK, I do not want that. We stand for so much more.
That just isn’t true. A rounded education of our country is important - and I have never met a single young person who hates it. You are spouting rightwing talking points now. When did the left ever put a flag on their shoulder and go beat up some minorities?
That is not what I am saying. The flag is generally seen the same way I do. A fine thing but if you are flying it you probably have some issues… Most British people don’t care about it except for sport. The ones that do are generally never voting anyone left of Tory ever.
I'm really not. There's a lack of national cohesion right now. There really is. And part of that is being driven by how we're teaching people that the British Empire is something we should be terribly ashamed of (which firstly is historically questionable, and secondly I wasn't there). The whole idea of reparations etc is frankly absurd. That's not making stuff up, even if you want to disregard any such thing as a "right wing talking point". That doesn't automatically make it wrong. (there's a million different examples of stuff like that too). The second question is just a bit silly.
Ok, show me where this teaching people to hate Britain exists without showing me a rightwinger claiming it fairly baselessly? What nonsense.
You know one of the big reasons the "right" have nefariously co-opted the St George's Cross (rather more than the Union Jack). Precisely because there is no national cohesion. It would be a far, far more beneficial question to ask yourself why that's happened, rather than focussing on the consequences of that and saying "nowt to do with me guv".
I don't think you are to be fair but I would say that practically, that is what it achieves. It would be interesting to poll that, I think the effect of National symbols is far more wide reaching than you are suggesting and appearing to have shame in it can give a lot of ground to the likes of Reform UK when they claim it. I think there are a lot of prospective Labour and Lib Dem voters who do care about that kind of thing and it isnt just limited to sport and the right. Hell 'Cool Britannia' was only 2.5 decades ago.
The discussion is about the flag and the claim the left had ruined it. The right ruined it. The left did **** all but say stop using the flag as an excuse to be racist and homophobic.
Okay, I'll stop talking about the very important fact of a complete lack of national cohesion, and you can crack on with whatever you thought the discussion was. No worries.
Oh sorry, I will change two pages of debate now that you have joined in. Lack of social cohesion has been the plan forever. A socially split society is afraid and votes for the status quo. Murdoch’s entire media empire is based on this. The flag is just an excuse for some people to say they are better at being British than others.
No need. I clearly misunderstood that you were only talking about flags, and no other subsequent discussion was permitted. It's the reason I generally avoid coming on to this thread. I'll bow out.
But the idea is you need to fight to unshitify it, you can't just say 'well thats ****ed isnt it?' and walk away. Otherwise we will just end up wallowing in a Farage shaped pit. I guess what I am saying is, this is a big political tool we are talking about, if you do just walk away from it then it will hurt you regardless of whether you personally feel any affinity for it. *I care a lot about my last two sentences but removed because I dont want to distract from my point*
Ok, how do we reclaim the flag? Because right now every racist decks themselves in it. If you show up to counterprotest in it, you just swell their numbers.
If you have the flag on both the left and right, it nullifies the use of it on the other side and stops it being a symbol of their views alone.
