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?
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?
But it is still consequential. It is still bad, and it is still wrong.
“Internal domination is the only way to resist external domination.” Both should be abolished. I realize that one may be a necessary evil in order to resist the other, but the goal should be for that necessary evil to be as temporary as possible, and it should be abolished as soon as you can safely do so.
It’s kind of what I mean.
You don’t need national identity. You don’t need national cultural history. You can have individual identity and individual cultural history. These can be defined by yourself and the others you relate to. There’s no need for them to be defined by a ‘nation’. In this respect, ‘nations’ are merely a way of categorizing and organizing individuals’ identity and culture … and in so doing, it often imposes sharp boundaries and distinctions where there are really just blurred lines and spectrums. You don’t need to divide people into nations in order to have identity and culture.
Is it, though?
Every state is its own little empire, enforcing its will against the individuals within it just as more powerful states try to impose their will on other states (and their own people). They demand tribute, extract resources, and enact their will through force just like any empire. Doing it on a smaller scale makes them a less urgent problem, but they’re still a problem.
I’m going to disagree with you stating that the Alliance Sahel States banding together in the beginnings of a Pan-African coalition is imperialism, pretty firmly. This is, frankly, an absurd position that demonizes what is uncontestably an anti-imperialist coalition for seemingly no other reason than to satisfy a vague moral code you have. In practical terms, there is no way to resist neocolonialism without collective sovereignty. This is not done at the expense of others.
As for sovereignty being a “necessary evil,” I don’t agree, nor do I define it as “internal domination.” States should be temporary, but only in the context of internationalism, ie as a joining of national states in one big international union until state lines are abolished and classes disappear, making states themselves redundant. I’m not going to finger wag Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, etc. for creating a powerful regional resistance coalition against France and the US.
The next comment is just an odd tangent describing why you don’t think culture is important or relevant. I’m not sure how to respond other than to tell you to speak with indigenous resistance groups, assuming you live in a settler-colony like many of us unfortuantrly do.
As for calling states “little empires,” this is again myopic. States are the means by which one class monopolizes its power. The national revolution creates a weak national bourgeoisie that can generally only be overtaken by the peasantry and urban proletariat. The anatomy of the national revolution is documented extremely well by Frantz Fanon in the work I mentioned earlier. Nkrumah deals with the Neocolonial phase, where external powers continue colonialism via financial means and balkanization.
States can be governed by the proletariat, in which case the majority is organized and are working together for the betterment of the whole. This is how socialism works. By defining a state as a “little empire,” you are making a subjectivist argument, not a materialist one. Same as calling the Alliance of Sahel States “imperialist” for kicking out France and the US. You use buzz words and emotionally charged diction in place of an actual argument, hoping it carries the conversation. This doesn’t hold up to scrutiny though.
You’re deliberately misunderstanding me here, and I have very little patience for bad faith arguments.
They’re not imperialist for kicking out France and the US. They’re imperialist because of the control they exert over their own citizens.
And what is an empire, but the monopolization of power?
You have to actually justify the things you say. Anarchism is truly even worse than communisation theory.
Read Hegel’s Philosophy of Right or any Winfield and you’ll immediately realize how philosophically incoherent your position is.
Others you relate to! I wonder if this somehow inevitably transforms into national identity!
A state cannot possibly exist except when enforced through violence. That’s why it’s still bad, that’s why it’s still wrong. The existence of any state, any government, any hierarchy is inherently an act of violence … almost always against people who did not consent to it and are unable to escape it.
Now who’s not justifying the things they say? If their arguments are too complicated to present in a Lemmy post, they’re too complicated to be bothered with. “Read theory” is a thought-terminating cliche.
Presumably, if you’re recommending them, you understand them well. So feel free to present the relevant part of their ideas right here, in your own words.
This ‘inevitably’ of yours is doing a lot of heavy lifting. And hasn’t been at all justified.
‘Others you relate to’ are not a nation. You’ll very rarely find two people who relate to the exact same set of other people. Every individual has their own unique connections, their own unique set of ‘people you relate to’, who they can choose to share an identity with. Even for two people who have the same connections and relations, each of them may choose differently when it comes to choosing which ones they identify with the most.
Trying to force people into a national identity, though, ignores that. It pretends that you only relate to people of your own ‘nation’, and that nobody in your nation relates to anybody outside of it. It’s drawing hard lines on a spectrum and trying to define portions of that spectrum as homogeneous groups, entirely distinct and different from others just on the other side of that line. It’s artificial classification and division, trying to create cultural borders right along with the nation’s geographical borders. It’s nonsense, and – at best – a waste of everybody’s time. (At worst, of course, it divides people into ‘us’ and ‘them’, fueling tribalism and conflict.)
Also, and this is a bit outside the point, but I very much don’t like the idea of a ‘national identity’ being forced on me. If you couldn’t tell already, I’m from the US – a nation with a, shall we say, very tarnished national identity. I was born into it. No choice in the matter. And despite doing what I can to fight against it, despite most of those acts being done by people I have absolutely no relation to, I’m supposed to accept it as my identity? I don’t want to be part of this nation – I don’t want to be part of any nation. I’m a human. I live on earth. My identity is my own. If anything, I identify more as a furry than as an American. I’m responsible for my own mistakes and my own shortcomings, not the mistakes and shortcomings of my ‘nation’. I celebrate my own strengths and my own accomplishments, not the strengths and accomplishments of others who happen to share the same nation. I may have much more in common with some people of other nations than I do with some of the people in my own nation.
This ‘national identity’ was put upon me without anyone asking whether I wanted it, just because of where I happened to be born. It makes no more sense than astrology, really – by the accident of when I was born, that makes me an “Aries”. Should I share an ‘astrological identity’ with all other Aries and consider us all the same? Should I consider everyone with different astrological signs to be foreigners I don’t identify with? It’s utter nonsense. It’s a convention that’s only kept in place because the tribalism and division it produces benefits the ruling class.
Edit: I understand, though, why you might resist the idea of giving up national identity. A world without national identity is a messier, more complicated world. You can’t neatly and easily categorize people anymore. You can’t say people of one nation are good and people of another nation are evil. You can’t say that people of one nation are oppressors and people of another nation are oppressed. You can no longer assume whether someone is with you or against you just because of where they’re from. Without these artificial distinctions, you have to address the whole spectrum of human experience, you have to asses each person’s identity based on their own individual connections … and that’s just impossible to do, certainly in any succinct way. It’s giving up a (seemingly) useful tool for understanding the world. But the tool was never useful, not really. The understanding it offered was flawed. Because it wasn’t based in reality, and only ever mattered as much as the people subject to it believed that it mattered.