Thread by @AnarchistFed

#FlagShaggers is trending, some asked how we feel.

The Red and Black isn't a "flag" in the same way as a national flag, it's symbolism and treatment are different.

No one cares if you burn a RnB. It's just some cloth.
No one takes an oath to it and it inspires no loyality.

1/

The Union Jack was brought into play to unite the patriotically inclined at a time when the British were deeply divided. It was a consolidation and centralisation of identity, chiefly for the purposes of war and economy. As was the English flag, Scottish flag, etc
2/

These flags are weapons of mass belief, used by those who wish to control you through the use of identity. Nationalism, even when it's utilised to rally against a greater oppressor, is never the soil of genuine liberation.

State socialists lean heavy into these manipulations.
3/

They are thrust onto people and they are continually told that this national identity is you now, anyone insulting it, questioning it (or it's leaders) is attacking you.

It's weaponised compartalisation of the working class.

It's the same shit with "left / Right" wing.
4/

Now sure you see people treat anarchist flags in the same way, with the same fervor, but it's almost always out of a socialised need and generally as peoples anarchist consciousness increases, it wanes.

I think One Minute Silence expressed it best... 5/

"I pledge allegiance to no flag, a blood rag, on every body bag
I'm not wearing a price tag, a toe tag, for anybody's rag
I bow down to no man, no bigger plan, no predetermined programme
Mine is my own load, my own road, my way is what I am"

6/

Borders and flags spew myth and hatred, they are tools used against us. Tools can have positives use ofc

They can provide also sense of belonging, of friendly rivalry or of telegraphic information about yourself etc

Like most things in this world it's complex and if you 7/

find yourself halving pride in a arbitrary symbol chosen by some committee to until X population, then you atleast owe it to yourself to accept the positive and negatives of this shared identity.

The current beef with the Union Jack is that it was the symbol of a vast empire,
8/

This empire sowed unimaginable pain and suffering around the world. It lay the path for countless ongoing issues within our society. It profitted from slavery, it commited genocides, it's might was used against the working class around the world and indeed at home. 9/

This is the reality.

You don't get to pretend otherwise simply because you've bought into the jingo or your life is so empty that you feel the belonging you crave by worshipping queenie.

The same goes for the Soviet flag
10/

You see exactly the same zealotry and willful ignorance in the name of some mythology which for arbitary reasons you've decided can do no ill.

If you fly a flag, you should take responsibility for the history you are advertising.

Dearest Anarchists...
11/

Our flag is not special.
It's a device used to telegraph a political notion which we think the working class would do well to adopt.

The absence of authority and the community working together*

* Yes, I know. This is what it means in a "shit this post is long, reduction"
12/

While it's fantastic to see them waved at demos, especially on mass, we should never by into the notion that they are anything more than a vague symbol.

They have no power.
They are not special.

It's some colour on a cloth.
13/

#FlagShaggers, whether you are conscious of the manipulations you are using or ignorant, you can take your tired regurgitated jingo and fuck off. Your borders and the suffering they have brought are the enemy of all.

#destroyallnationstates
#destroyallbloodrags
14/

This opposition to nationalism is often forgotted by Anarchists who keenly jump to support some exotic movement, usually fetishising it with the very same bullshit that they attack in the right wing nationalists.

15/

We owe it to ourselves to avoid these reductions, to stand with comrades aroudn the world and at home who are fighting great evils without capitulating to the idea that if only my master was X identity like me, I'd be freer.

You wouldn't.

16/

The working class has no nation, no border, no ethnic divide. The bastards who drew the lines on the map and told us we were English, French, Scottish, Columbian, etc had nothing in common with us.

Fuck their Jingo.
It doesn't become any more "real" with vintage.
17/

The future will see these concepts shatter and fall apart, we're building a new world, and in that world there are no borders, the blood rags are museum pieces, the very concept consigned to a backwords history, the remnants of which treated as Hadrian's Wall is now.

-R

18/18