From what I can tell the people who are actually obsessed with our flag here are a minority, then there’s the football hooligans and the racists (some overlap). Pretty much everyone else doesn’t really use flags.
When was the last time you saw a French flag on a mug or a pair of shorts? Or a Dutch flag, or even a Spanish flag?
The flag in Britain gets pushed into a lot of areas to were the flags of other European countries don’t get pushed to.
My own impression (having lived for over a decade in Britain) is that the flag in Britain gets shown a lot more outside formal occasions than the national flags in other European countries. This also dovetails with the nationalistic push in the discourse of mainstream politicians and even how British news vs International news are reported in Britain (trying to make it sound like in international events everybody is paying attention and following what British politicians say or reporting on some meaningless blunder in some small provincial place elsewhere in Europe in a “look at those silly foreigners, this would never happen here” tone that implies “we’re much better than that”).
And don’t get me started on how, almost a century later, at least every 5 years there’s yet another film about WWII coming out from Britain.
The push for Nationalism and for the belief in National Greatness is much higher and widespread in Britain that anywhere else in Europe I lived in (which, by the way, includes Germany), something which is partly behind Brexit and the shit show it became because British Politicians went to negotiate the Exit Treaty with a “they’ll give us everything we want because we’re so important”.
The whole thing in Britain with the Empire and WWII reminds me how during the time of the Fascist dictator Salazar in my native Portugal there was an almost constant remembering and celebrating the past glories of the country (even though the Age Of Maritime Discoveries was 5 centuries past) which is not at all the case nowadays under Democracy.
As for the far-right and football hooligans in Britain, they’re so extreme in their flag shagging that the ones in England will not only do it with the British flag, they’ll even do it with the St. George’s.
From what I can tell the people who are actually obsessed with our flag here are a minority, then there’s the football hooligans and the racists (some overlap). Pretty much everyone else doesn’t really use flags.
When was the last time you saw a French flag on a mug or a pair of shorts? Or a Dutch flag, or even a Spanish flag?
The flag in Britain gets pushed into a lot of areas to were the flags of other European countries don’t get pushed to.
My own impression (having lived for over a decade in Britain) is that the flag in Britain gets shown a lot more outside formal occasions than the national flags in other European countries. This also dovetails with the nationalistic push in the discourse of mainstream politicians and even how British news vs International news are reported in Britain (trying to make it sound like in international events everybody is paying attention and following what British politicians say or reporting on some meaningless blunder in some small provincial place elsewhere in Europe in a “look at those silly foreigners, this would never happen here” tone that implies “we’re much better than that”).
And don’t get me started on how, almost a century later, at least every 5 years there’s yet another film about WWII coming out from Britain.
The push for Nationalism and for the belief in National Greatness is much higher and widespread in Britain that anywhere else in Europe I lived in (which, by the way, includes Germany), something which is partly behind Brexit and the shit show it became because British Politicians went to negotiate the Exit Treaty with a “they’ll give us everything we want because we’re so important”.
The whole thing in Britain with the Empire and WWII reminds me how during the time of the Fascist dictator Salazar in my native Portugal there was an almost constant remembering and celebrating the past glories of the country (even though the Age Of Maritime Discoveries was 5 centuries past) which is not at all the case nowadays under Democracy.
As for the far-right and football hooligans in Britain, they’re so extreme in their flag shagging that the ones in England will not only do it with the British flag, they’ll even do it with the St. George’s.