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Watching coverage of the D-Day ceremony and it’s so obvious that all the pageantry, the flyovers, the colors, the flags, the pomp and circumstance, disguise reality. We’re taught to be in awe of them and meanwhile we have a leader actively embracing fascism.
What matters isn’t revelry and pageantry. It’s that we fought fascism, that we prevented a fascist regime from dominating the world. The symbols are interchangeable, they can be used by anybody for anything, including fascism.
We have to question. We have to stop simply accepting these symbols as proof that things are fine, that we’re in the right. It’s given space for this sickness to grow.
What I’m learning, studying history, is that this era of symbolism and rhetoric began with World War I when propaganda was discovered as a potent weapon and symbols as means of manipulation. We have to reject that because literally anyone can use them, for good or bad.
Watching Trump “honor” veterans just highlighted how meaningless and manipulatable the symbols are. He loves dictators, supports active fascism, yet he can stand there and benefit from the symbolism.
That doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate heroes. We have to. We must. But we have to start questioning wholesale symbolism and mindless pageantry. We need to look up to heroes like D-Day veterans, but understand what actually made them heroic.
