Britain’s patriotic vibe shift
Flag-raising Brits are demanding liberation from our post-borders elites.
That the middle classes congratulate themselves for displaying the Pride and Palestine flags even as they condemn ruffians who fly the national flag is incredibly revealing. It confirms national pride is the great unutterable emotion under the rule of the technocrats. Pride in the self is cheered – especially if you are in possession of one of the elites’ chosen identities, such as transgenderism, ‘queerness’ or minority status. Pride in one’s own puffed-up sense of virtue is cheered too, as demonstrated by the omnipresence of the Palestine flag on leafy campuses and in leafy suburbs. That flag is less a statement of solidarity with the Palestinian people than a statement of one’s own heightened moral sensitivities in comparison with the lower, less caring sections of society. […]
The ringfencing of the flags of the elites, even as the national flags preferred by working people are roughly dispensed with, speaks to a new species of cultural supremacy. Convinced that their belief system is of a higher moral quality than that of the masses, they shield their icons from blasphemy while themselves blaspheming against the banners preferred by ‘ordinary people’. This is the cruelty of luxury beliefs: they would deny to others the thing they so jealously guard for themselves – a sense of pride and belonging, if only to cosmopolitan networks of elite opinion rather than anything as old-fashioned as a national territory.
