Just a Flag?
But Mr Howard said yesterday the flag did not cause violence and accused the Big Day Out organisers of “running their own political agenda”.
…and Guns don’t kill people, I do!
I think that our hats should go off to the Big Day Out organisers for actually addressing the issue and showing some concern that certain members of the public may be ostracised by flag carrying racist thugs. To be fair, racists do hide behind patriotism. Moreover, patriotism isn’t an inherently good thing (that said I think I could reasonably be described as a patriot).
I was in Germany during the world cup and there were German flag everywhere. Many people commented to me that they found this really concerning and that German flags had not been displayed so profusely since the Nazis were in power. I don’t want to degenerate into calling people Nazi’s I’ll leave that up to Andrew Bolt but extreme nationalism has certainly been problematic in the past.
I don’t think the flag should necessarily be banned (which it isn’t incidentally – let’s not get too carried away) but a healthy dose of caution when it comes to nationalism is always a good idea. In this respect, my hat goes off to the BDO organisers for even having the debate.
For more on this see Fluffy, Web Diary, Andrew Bartlett and Jess Ausculture. I’m sure there are plenty of others around as well.
(Update: Just uncovered Clem Bastow’s piece on the Age web site which I think sums up a lot)
