El Tricolor is the new Stars and Bars.
D o you want to make your national flag a symbol of lawlessness and defiance of federal authority?
Well, then, here’s a one-step plan: Prominently wave it at violent anti-ICE protests.
The foremost image of the L.A. riots so far is a masked motorcyclist holding a Mexican flag as he does donuts around a burning car with smoke billowing in the air and police cars in the background — Mad Max for haters of ICE.
We’re told that the Mexican flag “gives people a sense of pride,” and, sure, most people are proud of their country of origin and will display the flag of their homeland at their homes, during important national festivals, or at ethnic parades.
No one can object to seeing Mexican flags on Cinco de Mayo or Irish flags on St. Patrick’s Day.
That’s not the context here, though. This isn’t flying the Greek flag on Greek Day. It’s waving Bandera de México as a sign of opposition to U.S. laws being enforced by officials of the United States government.
Functionally, El Tricolor has taken on a measure of symbolism closer to that of the Confederate flag during secession than, say, the French flag on Bastille Day.
It is being waved not just during peaceful protests, but during shameful attacks on law-enforcement officers and public property.
The response of sensible Mexican Americans should be, “How dare you abuse the flag of our homeland for such a low and dastardly purpose.”
This is especially so when the people who are being arrested by ICE are nationals of another country. Waving a foreign flag in their behalf only emphasizes that they are foreigners who shouldn’t be living and working here in the first place.
The better play for protesters would be to brandish exclusively American flags to make their attachment to this country unmistakable and make the further point that, from their perspective, the targets of ICE raids represent fundamental American values such as devotion to family and hard work.
Instead, the foreign flags are, in effect, “otherizing” the illegal immigrants that the demonstrators seek to support.
The Mexican flags aren’t helping, but the best advice the protesters could get would be, more fundamentally, not to obstruct federal law enforcement in the first place or engage in mass lawlessness.
Since they aren’t inclined to take that advice and they consider legitimate acts of the United States government — in keeping with long-standing, duly enacted laws of our national government — to be out of bounds, maybe it really is best that they are waving something other than Old Glory.