There has been some mention of Gordon Brown trying to “steal mayday” [Gordon Brown Set to Steal Mayday:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/331657.html], but there was only a passing mention to what should be a more major concern.

Why do we even need to be patriotic? Brown says he wants us to be more like the Americans, but there flag burning is not just a crime but earns you immediate pariah status, even amongst ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’. Not to mention the incident where an entire town in Texas turned out to crush Dixie Chicks’ CDs after they spoke out against Bush. The pictures looked frighteningly like the Nazi book-burnings, and it seems as though the only American columnist to pick up on the fact was Paul Krugman, an economist.

But back to why we need patriotism, or rather why we don’t. Einstein once said “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!” and this is precisely why I object to the scheme. Patriotism is, at the bottom of the matter, a means of keeping us obedient, a parasitic belief in the superiority of an arbitrarily defined grouping. My mind is flung to Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid (which I finished only a few months ago), more precisely the chapters dealing with the Medieval Cities. He makes regular mention of the rise of Kings and despotic rulers, and a brief mentioning of how this achieved – by propagandising the people with patriotism, whilst destroying the “institutions of mutual aid”.

Brown also says we must “embrace the Union flag" and reclaim it from the far right. I say let the right have the flag, that way we can tell immediately who and where they are – they will be the ones paying obeisance to a piece of cloth. The rhetoric used in these matters is always one of respecting the flag and the state. By all means, carry a flag, but use it as a symbol of your unity, not something to represent a top-down system – it may sound trite and as though I’m just finding things to moan about, but the Union Jack represents our Imperialist ambitions and deserves no respect whatsoever.

I don’t think we need to be more patriotic, I believe we can live without patriotism, and that the “respect” agenda can be better served by education, and by looking to the people’s needs, not the demands of companies or states.

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4611682.stm