Many flags around the world are iconic, think the ones of France, Canada, South Africa, the Nordics, etc.
However, there are some that aren’t as good, like the Australian and New Zealand flags, both of which still retain the union jack with little Indigenous symbolism. Speaking as an Australian myself, our flag isn’t all that great! The Southern Cross is cool, but there is no hint of green/gold, and the union jack just looks tacked on. There are also many flags that look good, but the symbolism represents ideas that you’re against. Think Iran’s flag that draws heavily from their sect of Islam and the theocracy, or the PRC’s flag having the smaller stars representing the people surrounding the larger star representing the one party state. There’s also some that are okay, but a bit boring and hard of distinguish from the rest, and an additional element would make it stand out more.
And purple should be on more flags! Republican Spain during the 1930s had some purple, but they lost the civil war and the flag was replaced.
If you could change the national flags of the world, what would be your flag proposals?
Shall we do away with name too? All identity?
I’d be ok with just getting rid of nationalism… Nothing wrong with identity, but nationalism fosters an us vs them mentality that fucks over people in most of the world.
I don’t think that’s going away whether or not you foster it. Tribalism seems to be baked into our DNA. You can get rid of nationalism nominally, but it’ll pop up with sports teams or brand loyalty or racism or whatever. But Us vs. Them is too deeply ingrained to fix by abolishing one basis vector on l upon which it expresses itself.
True, but those other forms aren’t tied to wars and economic disparity in the same way, so kicking nationalism to the kerb would still be a win.
Individual identity is good. National identity is bad.
What is a nation, but for a flag, a name, and some imaginary lines in the dirt to fight wars over?
This is a bad take. Extreme individualism is not a good thing.
Having individual identity in of itself is not an inherently bad thing, but neither is collective identity. People are all unique, and so it makes sense that each person will have an individualistic identity that’s true to them. However, we are also social creatures and we need others to survive. Being parts of groups is how we evolved to become the species that we are today. People need to have both collective and individual identities to thrive.
National identity is just another form of collective identity. You identify with your family, with your coworkers, your friends, the residents of your community, and so on. National identity is you identifying with the people of your society. There’s nothing wrong with that.
No, not quite. National identity takes a spectrum of collective identity and then divides it into borders, creating distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. But, ultimately, we are all one people.
National identity tries to ignore the blurred lines between different collective identities. It tries to impose a sharp boundary between one identity and another, where no such boundary truly exists – because people are always intermixing (when they’re not prevented from doing so by force) and even interbreeding.
Take the example of a child born to two parents from different national identities – which national identity does the child inherit? With the sharp distinctions drawn by ‘nations’, the child can’t truly be part of both – they have to be raised in and become a part of one or the other, with one taking precedence over the other. With actual collective identities, though, the child could easily be part of both collective identities, because neither one seeks to exclude the other. (For every distinction drawn about what a national identity is, you also make a distinction about what it is not, shutting off possibilities of mixing and mingling.)
But even without considering intermarriage and heritage, cultures always mix to some degree wherever they meet. People on one side adopt some of the practices, culture, and identity from people on the other side. Every meeting of two collective identities always results in a blurred line sooner or later. But nationalism is a dogmatic oversimplification that insists upon discrete ‘nations’ that don’t intermingle and intermix at the edges. And it mostly only functions as a tool to facilitate tribalism.
I disagree with this analysis because I frankly don’t think it’s even accurate.
I think we need to start by acknowledging a simple reality, which is that all identities exist to include and exclude. That’s what an identity is, it’s a set of identifiers that makes something distinct to the things its compared to. So all identities can be twisted and framed as “us vs them”, but I think that’s a mischaracterization of the concept.
We also need to acknowledge that we are inherently tribalistic beings by our very nature. We are social creatures that have evolved to survive in small groups. The well being of our groups were essential to our survival, and therefore we have developed a strong sense of belonging to the groups we had ties with and we were wary of groups that weren’t because they could be hostile and could threaten the well being of the group we were in. We would like to think that we have evolved, but we really haven’t. We still have the same brains as back then and they still have the instincts. This is why tribalism is such a prominent part of our society today even if it seems counterproductive.
With that being said, you are correct that nationalism is form of tribalism, but I don’t think that’s an inherently bad thing. Ultimately different groups of people are in fact different from each other. Different geographies, cultures, histories, languages, and customs do lead to very different societies. It makes sense that people identify with the society that they’re from. Nations are ultimately just our modern civilization’s version of the small tribal groups that our prehistoric ancestors had, and because of that, nations are here to stay because they appeal to nature. It’s not something that we can get rid of.
We have to make the distinction between nations and states because I don’t think you know the difference between them. A nation, by definition, is just a community of people who share a collective identity. It’s a social concept that exclusively refers to people and exists in the minds of people. A state, by definition, is the political sovereign entity that was created to rule. These are not interchangeable. There are nations that don’t have states like Kurdistan or the Uyghurs, and there are states that don’t have a single national identity like Bosnia or the UK. The point is that you’re confusing nations with states and countries, but these are not the same thing. Nations do NOT have physical or political characteristics like sovereignty or territory.
A nation is a fluid concept that doesn’t have defined edges, its what people say it is, and it exists as long as there are people who identify with it. For example, in the case of nation states, there are different kinds. For example, Armenia is nation based on ethnic nationalism where the nation is defined by the Armenian ethnicity. If you’re ethnically Armenian then you’re a part of the Armenian nation regardless of who you are and what you believe. Likewise you got the US, which is a nation that’s based civic nationalism where the nation is defined by political citizenship and shared values. As long as you hold those values and have American citizenship then you’re an American.
The point is that your claim of nationalism being dogmatic is wrong. A nation doesn’t have rigid edges nor does it segregate nor does it isolate. A nation, at its core, is just a set of identifiers that a group of people share. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. It something that has its place in our world. Like with anything else, nationalism taken to the extreme is a bad thing, but when it’s not, its simply a way for people with commonalities to associate with each other. Even if you snap your fingers and everybody forgot what nationalism is, a new but very similar concept will emerge to take its place because people will always want to be a part of a greater good.
Well, I do concede that I’m very much fighting a losing battle against human nature. Humans are hard-wired for tribalism, and national identity is an easy way to take advantage of that. (One of many.)
But I do want to call attention to an internal tension within your argument:
versus
If it doesn’t have rigid edges, if it doesn’t segregate, if it doesn’t isolate … then how does it include and exclude? How does it accomplish what you say all identities exist to do?
Generally a collective of people acting as a community. Of course it is all the worst things too, but it doesn’t have to be. I think a big problem is that the borders meet each other due to how many humans are on a planet this size. But imagine an infinite landscape where nations are far apart. When you arrive at one, you may find a group of people that like to collectively offer a set of protections and provisions. They also might have a set or treaties with nearby nations so each can benefit from each other’s resources.
Idealism, I know, but I’m just expressing that nations as a concept doesn’t necessitate the bad parts.
Not just idealism, pure fantasy:
That does not describe the real world in any way. Not even an ‘ideal’ world. It’s not even physically possible. (And people accuse us anarchists of living in idealist fantasy land!)
In the real world, land is not infinite. Anytime one group (whether you call it a nation or a community or whatever) tries to lay claim to a portion of the land to the exclusion of all others, that’s an act of violence – because it’s ultimately only enforceable through violence. Our finite earth belongs to us all. They did not create it, and they have no right (except ‘might makes right’ violence) to take portions of it away from you.
I explicitly pointed out that it was idealism. You’re barking at the moon. It’s like getting mad at a physics instructor for saying “imagine a frictionless surface and purely elastic collisions”. The point is to extract those things that can distract from a rigorous concept.
I’m not implying in anyway that this is the real world. Rather that the negative things associated with nationalism are not inextricably linked to the concept of national identity. If you don’t see it that way, fine. But this act like you think I meant this was a possible representation of the world we live in is just silly.
National liberation and sovereignty in colonized and neocolonized countries is a key first step in internationalism.
It’s a trap, a pitfall on the way to actual freedom. Who gave them the idea that they need nations and flags in the first place, if not the colonizers?
And many of the nations ‘liberated’ by previously colonized people just end up being a tool of their oppressors through neocolonization. Their national government – and even their national identity – are useful tools to be corrupted and controlled by colonizers.
No, this is myopic. Figures like Frantz Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah have correctly analyzed the necessity of establishing statehood and creating pan-African coalitions to resist the overwhelming might of western finance capital and neocolonialism. Nationalist compradors for neoimperialism are a consequence of deliberate balkanization and fragmentation by neocolonial powers. Same with Palestinian, Latin American, and Asian resistance to colonialism and neocolonialism.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, and Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah are extremely useful and describe exactly the extent to which nationalism is useful in the anti-colonial context, and the extent to which it falters and holds the people back, devolving into tribalism. We can see the correctness of their views today with the progressive nationalist movements in resisting neocolonialism from Burkina Faso and the Alliance of Sahel States, where statelets are unifying into a front to support each other and resist foreign domination from France and the US.
A necessity? Perhaps. But a necessary evil, then.
National identity is still a bad thing. It should not be celebrated, and it should be abolished as soon as feasible.
National sovereignty, celebration of indigenous cultures and maintaining the rights of self-determination for all peoples, is the first step towards genuine internationalism. Genuine sovereignty cannot be imposed from without, but comes from within. Tribalism and the progressive elements of nationalism are separate things. The basis of genuine internationalism is nations on equal footing and sovereignty.
Nationalism in imperialist countries is exclusively negative. This is what is in service of perpetuating imperialism, and justifying racial supremacy. This is unambiguously an enemy to be crushed. Nationalism is not progressive in general, but in a particular context exclusively, such as Palestinian nationalism against genocide.
You can have celebration if indigenous cultures and maintain the rights of self-determination without national sovereignty.
And, in fact, nationalism very often interferes with the rights of self-determination, because the nation often imposes laws that interfere with it.
I don’t want “internationalism” – I want post-nationalism. No nations at all, anywhere.
Fuck nations. People should be on equal footing and sovereignty.
All “countries” are imperialist. As soon as you lay claim to territory and exclude others from it, you’re setting up your own little empire. So all nationalism is exclusively negative.
Sovereignty is only secured by the creation of an organized body, a monopoly on force, that can resist external domination. Statelets cannot do this, nor can disorganized regions. This is why finance capital breaks up and balkanizes countries it wishes to dominate, either politically via the creation of new statelets, or through economic balkanization of existing States.
Secondly, the national question. A nation and a state are two different things. A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture. This is how I am using the term, and what I mean by gaining national autonomy. Internationalism, then, is the unity of many different national groups.
Saying “fuck nations” in this context seems to be saying you wish to erase all identity and all cultural history, creating a sort of blob of humanity, but this isn’t what I believe you mean, hence why I am taking the time to explain exactly what I mean.
As for how you are classifying imperialism, this is frankly a bit absurd. Surely you can understand that the Alliance of Sahel States, in resisting French neocolonialism, is playing a progressive role. However you choose to interpret the Sahel States securing their sovereignty as “imperialism,” surely you can see that this is far less consequential than the economic domination levied against west Africa by France and the US, no? By your estimation Palestinians are imperializing Israel by trying to secure their own statehood, and I know that’s not what you actually believe, right?