Americans watching the phenomenon of Los Angeles rioters (AKA “peaceful protesters”) saw many waving Mexican flags while burning cars and blocking traffic on a major highway.  There are now social media influencers arguing that those folks should ditch the Mexican for the American flag.  Why?  Substituting the red, white, and blue for the red, white, and-green would not raise American hackles.  It would not get Americans thinking, “Maybe there’s really something not in America’s interests in mass, illegal immigration.”  It would try to turn impeding federal immigration law enforcement into an “American” thing to do.

We should push back on that advice, because it is lacking one critical element: You should wave Old Glory because you love it.  Because you pledge allegiance to it.  Because it’s your country.

The flag is not a prop, a backdrop to support the cosplay in which you are engaged.  If it is, then you’re missing the critical element just stressed: It’s your flag.  It’s a symbol, not a stage decoration.  People can even give their lives for symbols; they don’t for props.  The guys on Iwo Jima weren’t raising a prop.

We should be critical of the mentality of the “flag of the day,” le drapeau du jour.  I think it’s a modern-day affliction.

As Los Angeles was roiled in unrest, on the other side of the world, Greta Thunberg et al. were sailing for the coast of Gaza, intent on making a statement.  What Israel called the “selfie flotilla” daily posted pictures of Captain Greta and her Argonauts, usually with Thunberg channeling her inner Rose standing in the bow with a Palestinian flag.  (Cue Celine Dion.)

A Palestinian flag.  She’s a Swede.

Why do I make that point?  Because when Israel interdicted the boat, all of a sudden, the crew suddenly ceased being “global citizens” and invoked their nationalities.  All the crew members posted videos appealing to their countries of citizenship to provide them with consular protections in Israel.  Most galling, the dinghy that was constantly flying the Palestinian flag suddenly became a “British” ship, with demands that His Majesty’s Government not just make inquiries, but even come to the aid of an “illegally seized” English boat.

That’s what I mean by drapeau du jour.

Now that Thunberg has been deported, expect attention on Rima Hassan, a leftist (“France Unbowed”) member of the European Parliament (MEP) from France.  (She arrived in France c. 2002.)  All across the Mediterranean, Hassan touted her credentials as a European “official” (who should presumably then have immunity).  How dare the Israeli “occupiers” touch an MEP?

Now that she’s in Israel, she’s suddenly become a “Palestinian” asserting her “right of return.”  In this author’s view, it’s a stunt, Act II of the Flotilla Show.  Faced with accepting deportation from and a ban on return to Israel, she’ll risk jail to deny Israel’s right to bar her from “her” land.

Guess it would be uncouth, maybe even “racist,” “sexist,” or — horrors — “Islamophobic,” to suggest that the MEP should have been in Strasbourg, doing her job, working for the French people who nominally elected her.  Had she been, she’d be free as a bird.

Citizenship and loyalty are not a costume, a particular vesture to be donned according to what is most useful at the moment to the bearer.  Thunberg and her flotilla crew didn’t call for the “Palestinian Autonomy” to sail out to protect the Madleen; they asked for the Royal Navy.  Our hearts may be with Hamas, but we’ll co-opt His Majesty when it suits our purposes.

Thinking about the meaning — even the exclusive, almost monogamous relationship most people have (or at least used to have) with their national flags — is an appropriate reflection this Saturday, June 14, Flag Day.  It’s also a day being prepped for coast-to-coast anti-ICE protests.  Watch what flags appear.

The drapeau du jour is very much the consequence of the globalist ideology, inculcated in many American classrooms, that we are “world citizens.”  The truth is that the concept in many ways undermines the very idea of “citizen.”  It instead puts the focus on the individual and his agenda, for whom a particular citizenship or flag becomes momentarily useful in the pursuit of that agenda.  Need to convince Americans that illegal immigration is OK?  Wrap it up in Old Glory.  Need help when you’re boarded for sailing into restricted waters?  Hope that the Union Jack will help you rule the seas.

Image: Greta Thunberg.  Credit: Lëa-Kim Châteauneuf via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).