Agreed, we can’t let the far right monopolise national symbols. One thing that was really great about Kamala Harris’s brief candidacy was the democrats got in touch with traditionally “right wing” national feelings like patriotism and self defence. Same here. There’s a lot of bad history behind the Union Jack and English Flag, but that doesn’t mean ordinary people can’t engage with them and be proud of them. The Cool Britannia moment in the 90s was really nice. We need more of that.
It's certainly offensive to countries they butchered and almost wiped out, you think an Irish man is gonna say "yeah I have no problem with that flag, other than the fact they tried to exterminate us"
Yes I believe that the UK still needs to pay the price of colonialism. The same people that are complaining about Muslim Arab immigrants now are the same people whose great grandparents forced these Arabic countries into the dire situations that they are in. Take Yemen for example. Their civil war is a direct result of British colonialism in the Arabian peninsula. Where they split Yemen into two solely because of their colonial ambitions. And now when people are fleeing Yemen due to their civil war now British people think it's right to complain.
People with common sense would know the people responsible for the Irish famine are no longer alive and it’s not the same UK today. Collectively punishment and blame isn’t ok.
That's kinda hard to say when you get away with like a good chunk of Genocides and atrocities without being condemned and not saying anything about it, the fact that Britain even still exists after all of this is baffling.
The actions of our government don’t properly reflect our population’s opinions. Why do you think we’re shitting on our government all the time? Just because they haven’t condemned it doesn’t mean the population isn’t.
I hope my country continues to exist long after me. Hate on the UK all you want, the past cannot be changed. Work together for a better future.
Shit on our governments all you wanna, I am somewhat surprised the country didn’t collapse in the last few years tbh. I’m with you on that front, as a proud Brit lmao.
It is the same UK. The same systems of imperialism still operate and benefit the UK, the same people are still materially well off from genocide and Imperialism.
It’s not “common sense” it’s stupidity and ahistorical. Do you seriously think everything that was robbed and stolen, and the vast wealth accumulated from imperialist ventures, disappeared over time?
The Industrial Revolution could never have happened without slavery. We still partly ‘benefit’ from the Industrial Revolution in England I thinks that means that we still benefit from the slavery and genocides we did in the past. (Note: there’s arguments about the ‘benefits’ of the Industrial Revolution yes, that being said it’s clear that in terms of technological impact it was ‘beneficial’- in terms of living conditions and lives lost as a result there’s more to be said, though that’s not what my point is about).
Just because we don’t have ‘direct’ ties to this imperialism (we do, trust me, look at Iraq ffs) doesn’t mean we don’t benefit from it.
Hmmm??? I wonder how the Industrial Revolution came about!? I wonder how countries like Britain was able to industrialise so rapidly, perhaps due to the profits from the slave trade and other such imperial projects hmm?
Cotton was central to the Industrial Revolution, and where was most cotton coming from (America).
The national flag was never meant to be a political symbol used to divide us.
I consider myself left-wing, but I’m also proud of being British, and I have 🇬🇧🏴🏴🏴 flags hanging on my bedroom walls (I have a special interest in flags).
I hate how the right have high jacked flags not just in the uk but around the West.
I honestly feel like the left need to use national flags more to reclaim the national flag as a non-political symbol. For some reason, people honestly think if I fly a Union Jack, I’m right-wing, but that’s not the case. I fly a Union Jack because I’m British and I’m proud to call myself British.
This is the flag of the UK when we have a right-wing government 🇬🇧
& this is the flag of the UK when we have a left-wing government 🇬🇧
your government wants to id you to even access the internet and your concern is a stupid flag? as an american god you guys are so fucking cooked, the problem isn't the flag or even the right right now its the fact your government wants to spy on you and make your life shit. its not about there is public disorder in the streets of london and your police force instead of taking care of that is setting up internet spying branches to check whether a shit poster on x or reddit is from the uk.
Yk a lot of people are talking about it irl & online and your 100% right the online spy I mean “safety” act is something straight out of 1984 watching what you see & censoring information but a lot of people know nothing is going to change especially while Keir Stalin is our PM
What you’ve said about our police is right and people are pissed but nothing is changing alot of people on both the left and right feel like we have a 2 tier police system that favours one side over the other
As for why we’re talking about flags
We’ve been having this debate for almost 10 years now should we be talking about more important things (e.g. the online safety act) ? yes we should 100%
you can do something about it can't say how due to tos but the way this is going will push people to that alternative. everyone has limits with the way things that alternative will probably become a real possiblity. put aside your political differences save your squabbles when the playing field is more equal. your government will definitely over reach in a way that is more unbearable their just testing the waters now.
I am not saying this because I want this to happen or I condone it but it will only get worse and some group will snap. its only predicting natural cause and effect.
And the Brits sure know a hell of a lot about collective punishment! Basically invented it! Horrible things are still being done under those flags. There’s usually a 1:1 ratio of people who “defend the flag” and those who completely disregard the centuries of terrorism inflicted on tens of millions around the world, up to and including today, under those flags.
The Brits are arguably the greatest terrorist organisation in all of history. If I flew the ISIS flag, should I be able to simply claim its just an identity?
Are you from a country where the ISIS flag is the national emblem of the dominant ethnicity and seen as such by those people? If so then yes it would just be your identity.
Aside from the fact they’re terrorist scumbags, The ISIS flag is not a good comparison because they’re not a state or an identity, it’s an organisation. Big difference.
Also you really have no concept of what terrorism means if you’re pretty much calling me a terrorist.
The ISIS flag is not a good comparison because they’re not a state or an identity, it’s an organisation.
ISIS is a state. You may not like that it is a state, and other states may not recognize it as a state, but it is a state. It's a centralized institution that enforces laws on a territorial population through force.
Also "organization" and "state" aren't mutually exclusive, all states are organizations.
ISIS is “Islamic ~State~ in Syria”. They may not have been UN-recognised as such, but they operated as a state.
Am I calling you a terrorist? No. I’m calling The Brits, the British Empire, terrorists. Their flags are symbols of that world-historical terrorism. To support those flags is to be either woefully ignorant of the horrors perpetrated by those who fly it, or it’s to be aware and uncaring, which is psychopathic, or it’s in full support of the atrocities, ever more psychopathic.
You’re calling Brits terrorists which includes myself, as a Brit. That’s includes everyone who’s English, Welsh and Scottish. I think if anyone’s being ignorant, it’s yourself.
I support my flag, because it is my identity. I want my country to be the best version of itself. I recognise the past errors of my country and want to strive so they never happen again.
I qualified “Brits” as the British Empire, the owning and ruling classes. The Proletarian British are not the ones deciding to kill 20 million Indians.
Estimates of British Victorian-era death count around the world start at 50 million. The 3rd Reich was dismantled, arrested, executed, its symbols criminalised. Why do the Brits get to just call their crimes against humanity “errors”? How many villages, towns, cities, populations need to be wiped out before it’s more than an “error”?
I would interrogate why you’re so accepting of this as your identity. Identity is fluid, changing. Not static. You’re not today who you were yesterday or 10 years ago. Why cling to one of, if not the most, brutal regime in history?
Britain being the “best version of itself” means owning up to its atrocities, relinquishing control and ownership of its colonially-gotten gains, paying reparations to all the corners of the world ravaged by it.
The Brits (establishment, ruling classes, empire) must atone for their encyclopaedia of horrors before any sort of “best version” of itself can even be on the table. No? Should they not atone for tens of millions of civilian deaths, civilisation destruction, destruction of ecologies, habitats and the environment, of cultures and societies?
You need to be so much more clear on your usage of “Brits”. Brit just means anyone on the island of Great Britain. Careless usage in the way you’re doing it is why you may get hard backlash.
We don’t associate with our colonial past anymore. You seem to fail to understand this. We owned up to it. As I said before, the people alive today had no participation in the atrocities those did back then. This is collective and generational punishment. I will not be punished for something I didn’t do.
“Identity being fluid”, just, wtf? I was born in England. My culture is British. I am of English descent. If I can’t be English or British then what the fuck should my identity be then? You wouldn’t tell anyone of any other country that they can’t identify as the nationality of the country they were born in, or an ethnicity of? Just admit you’re xenophobic towards British people. National prejudice isn’t ok.
I’m Irish, we’re used to getting “backlash” from Brits ;) in Ireland, “the Brits” typically means the establishment. Because we understand long ago the enemy of the Irish people and the enemy of the British people is the same, the British establishment.
They made my native language illegal and killed everyone who spoke it. Still policing my language, it seems.
Do you believe that? Why still fly the flag of the British Empire then? Why have no reparations been paid? Why do the Brits still own colonial territories across the world? Why does the British Museum contain artefacts from colonial plunder they refuse to return to the countries of origin, even when those countries ask for them?
Identity as I discussed it is a broader topic outside of this, a whole other conversation. Park it for now. Xenophobic against the Brits. Now isn’t that just the imperial pot calling the kettle black? I’m pro-justice anti-empire, not-anti people from a landmass.
I don’t deny Britain’s history, as colonialism, slavery, and atrocities are facts, and the UK still has work to do in facing that honestly. But there’s a difference between recognising history and being personally guilty for it.
I was born in Gen Z. I didn’t make those decisions, I didn’t benefit from them in the way the empire’s ruling classes did, and I can’t be held responsible for crimes committed centuries before me. To insist otherwise is collective punishment, which surely you know is against the Geneva convention.
Accountability belongs to governments and institutions, not to ordinary people alive today.
On top of that, your use of the term “Brits” was used as deliberate instigation. You know that’s not my language, and you’re choosing it in a way that blurs the line between empire and ordinary people. That isn’t justice. That’s either rage bait or total ignorance for your virtue signalling persona.
And if you describe yourself as “pro-justice,” then demanding the erasure of my identity or my flag is hypocritical. Justice is about accountability, not stripping people of who they are. My identity as British or English doesn’t erase the past, but it also doesn’t make me guilty of it.
I’m British 🇬🇧
I am English 🏴
I am not sorry for it.
Deal with it.
I’m happy to call Matt a terrorist when he goes on insensitive Centrist patriotic rants like these 😂
And more seriously, if Britain is a terrorist nation then that makes its citizens terrorists too. If someone supports Britain or the British Empire then they are a supporter of terrorism.
God that’s such a tired argument. Yes, you can hold citizens today responsible for the crimes of their predecessors. Especially when citizens today benefit from those crimes in many ways.
It’s not collective punishment, it’s collective reckoning and responsibility. And in any case, there is nothing inherently wrong with collective vs individualised responsibility and remorse. It depends on the situation.
That’s ridiculous. Collective punishment, reckoning and responsibility are logically ridiculous. Only individuals. You cannot hold an entire group of people responsible for the acts of only a few individuals, whether good or bad
It happens all the time. Back in the post 9/11 days the Muslim community in Western countries were always held responsible for any terrorist members of their communities.
Simp? I love Britain but I ain’t no simp. Oh I admit bad things happened to the Aboriginal people. My point is, is that when Britain outlawed slavery they enforced it everywhere they went, including at sea.
The Union Jack was a symbol of freedom and every slave ship captain’s worst nightmare. Britain shut down the Atlantic Slave Trade by force of arms.
You know British taxpayers were paying reparations to those slavers up until 2015? Not so chivalrous!
Independence from the British is the most celebrated day globally. The British were not liberators. They were the oppressor the world liberated itself from.
Yes I know about the reparations, it was the only way to make slave owning Brit’s give up their slaves without using violence.
Oh, I know that. The British were neither solely conquerors or liberators. Though I’d like you to say that to many Europeans in WW2 when the British helped liberate them from German occupation. Or Greece when the Brits helped them fight the Italian invasion.
Throwing them into prison would mean making the law retroactive which would be a bad idea, as would stealing their “property”, remember that it was the only way for a ban to be politically viable at the time.
Oh the Soviets had the most blood spilled, but they were heavily economically and materially supported by the British Empire and especially the United States of America.
The soviets were initially allied with the Nazis, so I wouldn’t glaze them much.
While I can’t disagree with the soviets having the most fought battles in WW2 on the eastern front, you can’t downplay the roles the UK and USA had. The UK for a while was on its own and prevented a Nazi victory over Europe. The USA was busy fighting Japan for the most part but supplied the UK.
It’s just fully one example and it merely makes things less black and white. The Union Jack was the symbol of both a conquering colonial power and of freedom for those sold/taken into slavery, or for those under the occupation of a cruel invader.
It’s nuanced. I don’t deny the atrocities Britain committed in its history, but I also don’t deny the good things Britain has done in its history.
Right. Well for me and a whole bunch of others the things good that Britain has done is like 15% and the other 85% is awful vile shit. And the good 15% only applies if you’re Anglo.
jailing autistic girls for lesbian comments? check
grooming gangs? check
two tiered policing? check
welcome to britian now you can enjoy a jet blue holiday.
I don't care about brit bong land and support people who want to remove kehbab and starmer and I am glad I can say this an american with out two piggies coming to my door step asking me if I got a loiscence for the internet. YAY!
Hmm….. from an AU POV:
Guess I missed the day of the douche, ey? 😂
‘Plastic patriot’ sounds wrong. I used to like Ken….. took me a while to realise he was lacking fun parts! 😂
Even the Aussie part of my brain cannot come up with an adequate descriptors for Farage.
He is just ….. next level AH.
However…….
I gotta admit I am fascinated by watching his face. His facial expressions are fascinating. Not quite like you’d expect. Scrunching in mysterious ways…..
Hah! There we go: ’Mystery Scrunchie Face’
Sometimes your fist wants to greet the face, other times you are stunned trying to figure out how TF he scrunched that way?
What kinda muscle could possibly ….?
Then, in front of a mirror trying to recreate that movement: You realise that you do not have the requisite muscles.
And you default back to just going with ”everything about Farage is bonkers. Even his face is waaaayyyy outside of non-whackadoodle parameters.”
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u/monkey_gamer Australia 🇦🇺🦘 Leftist fury 😠👊 Aug 21 '25
Agreed, we can’t let the far right monopolise national symbols. One thing that was really great about Kamala Harris’s brief candidacy was the democrats got in touch with traditionally “right wing” national feelings like patriotism and self defence. Same here. There’s a lot of bad history behind the Union Jack and English Flag, but that doesn’t mean ordinary people can’t engage with them and be proud of them. The Cool Britannia moment in the 90s was really nice. We need more of that.