this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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I get the feeling I'm in the minority here, but let me try to express a nuanced opinion on the Internet:
I don't think it's a good idea to fly the Mexican flag at these protests.
To be clear:
But it's unwise and counterproductive because:
The alternative, using the American flag, in context obviously shows this is about us taking America back from the racists, that they are not free to define America.
If the goal is to show multiculturalism, the American flag is also better. America is built on immigrants. It is the proverbial "melting pot." As the saying go, our flag is red with the blood of immigrants who fought for the country, not just in wars but to be accepted and treated as equals. They have earned the right for it to represent them.
Avoiding it because it's associated with the right is short-sighted and tragic. Right wing nut jobs should not be allowed to continue to appropriate the American flag, to make it toxic. Because they are traitors who are trying to destroy constitutional rule of law, i.e. America, while we are trying to protect it.
It used to be that nonviolent protest was intended to provoke a violent suppressive reaction from the state. It might be uncomfortable to some but I think the white moderate that MLK agitated against are the same people concern trolling over the optics of various forms of nonviolent protest now.
Agitation is the point. Provoking violence from the state is the point.
Yea, but provoking violence to what end?
People aren't doing it just to get beat up. It's about making a fascist regime look as bad as they are. Which looks worse? A country blatantly attacking its own citizens flying its own flag? Or a country attacking illegal immigrants flying a flag of a foreign country we've kinda' had a war with in the past?
One of these has much more powerful imagery, especially for the dumdums who do not understand cultural pride in other cultures, like most Americans.
This is exactly it. There is a literal fight that the protests represent, that some commenters here (no offense intended, we're all on the same side) can't see past; and there is a symbolic fight.
The symbolic fight defines how we think of ourselves - which I do think is important, that we are the true voice of the American project - but also how the rest of the country views Trump's illegal use of military troops. The Mexican flag does not help either symbolic goal. It's counterproductive.
Those people are legal nonresidents you dipshit. They are protesting against the deportation of legally present foreign nationals. That's the entire fucking point of the protest. What you're calling 'bad-optics' is just flat out racist jingoism. There's nothing wrong or illegal about flying another country's flag, except through the racist logic of mass deportation. There isn't anything wrong with protesting as a legal non-resident against your own targeted deportation.
Libs are afraid of Trump taking power under the delusion of some foreign invasion, and their genius strategy to stop him is to hide away anyone who gives latin-american vibes? Put away all the cultural and national symbolism so that we can say 'look, there's no invasion, there aren't any latin-american immigrants here'? This is like people advocating for trans rights by arguing that it's extremely rare to be trans. Ok, yea maybe that's true, but it's not a problem to be trans anyway, why does it matter at all if there are a lot of them or not? And if someone was running around scaremongering about marxists transing the youth, wouldn't it then suddenly be a problem for libs if trans people were loudly and proudly displaying their identities?
Jesus christ, we are so fucking cooked. If this many liberals are totally bought in to this 'bad protest optics' shit, they will 100% be collaborating with the fascists.
Counter-agrument:
middle-of-the-road approach only helps the opressing party, not the opressed
If we want to improve things, we should decisively explain that migrants are not the problem, never were, most hate towards them is unfounded and misplaced.
Then we might start looking at the core problem, not dancing around Jeb who watches latina porn but cocks his shotgun when he sees skin darker than porcelain around his house or in his TV.
Migrants do more for the country than most 'patriots', and deserve to be proud of their heritage.
Fascists will keep lying about everything regardless of reality, never care about what bad faith actors may say.
I appreciate the counter-argument, it's not wrong in a pluralistic, we-can-both-hold-equally-valid-but-incommensurable-values sense. But I think insisting on that flag is picking a harder battle for no reason.
I think the problem with the optics - and of course, by this I mean, the problem with fascist-accelerating interpretations and not swing voters or Jeb's feelings - is that the Mexican flag became a proxy for the movement flag. If it was a variety of flags + the American flag, that would convey a message that couldn't be misused. But when Fox News can plaster a bunch of Mexican flag images on their immigrant-protest-panic news stories, it gives Trump cover to send in the federal military here, which - once established as precedent, as Stephen Miller knows - will now become the accepted norm for future protests, and then for future opposition purges, and then for a future normalized authoritarian state.
And while I get the "don't cater to racists" principle, we need to think about strategic consequences - if we give the fascists ammunition, they will not hesitate to use it to kill us. In this way the protestors are not seriously thinking about this as the war that it is, as much as their passions and hearts are in the right place - they are doing things that feel good but may harm their cause. It's, again, counter-productive.
My advocacy (didn't intend for it to be, but it has turned out that way) to flying the American flag is that it doesn't give the fascists ammunition that will be used against us. That should not only be a valid concern, but an overriding one to win the war.
This is exactly what I was arguing against:
they will shoot you no matter what with
Remind yourself of every baseless lie the fascists have spread lately.
Why do you think that the Mexican flag is what is tipping anything over right now?
Remember immigrant caravans? With pictures blasted all over the Fox news?
There was a photo yesterday on Lemmy of a fallen over trash can with 50 photographers taking picture.
Reality doesn't stop fascists, and those very minor details aren't what's making us lose the battle.
It's not standing up for our principles.
Freedom, equity, tolerance, and punching fascists right into their face.
You stop doing any of that, and you will lose. No matter how 'good' your 'optics' are.
The American flag has always been a toxic symbol of imperialist, capitalist oppression. The right wing didn't make it toxic, this country's history did that itself.
Don't buy into the bullshit propaganda and whitewashing of this nation's sordid, bloody history.
The only thing the American flag is good for is burning.
In other contexts I would burn a flag, sure. The flag is emblematic of the struggle that is our country, and the struggle can mean different things, positive and negative, in context.
At the end of the day, we all live in America. We have an idea of America as a multi-cultural, immigrant nation. That is the correct idea. We have a right to define what the flag means.
Otherwise we've already conceded the patriotic high ground. It's like giving the enemy control of the (metaphoric) capitol of the nation just so we can be the insurgency. You feel better but it's tactically irrational. Why is it not better to start out with moral ownership of the nation's core symbol?
For me personally, I fundamentally disagree with the concepts of nationalism and patriotism. Tying our pride to an imaginary concept of a "nation" just further serves to divide people into arbitrary groups. When a nation is criticized for the actions of the whole, such as when people from other nations say (rightfully) that "Americans are racist, uneducated bigots", people of that nation tend to take it as personal attacks against them, clouding judgement and diverting discourse away from the actual problem into a defensive justification on how your criticism isn't a personal attack.
So let them take "patriotic high ground". It is not something I respect. My goal isn't to fix "America". America, the state apparatus that comprises the "nation", is the enemy, it is the entire problem, and I wish to see it go the way of the dodo. I don't care if I live in America. I didn't ask to be born here under this regime. The idea that it is a "multicultural, immigrant nation" is a whitewashing of how this country was founded in genocide and slavery. It is only "multicultural" because of colonial exploitation of minorities and natives. It doesn't do so by choice and never had without a whole lot of kicking and screaming.
That's a reasonable premise, I get it. Borders are just imaginary lines, I agree in theory. But in practice, patriotism (as opposed to nationalism, and I do think we should differentiate) is a positive concept insofar as it overlaps with us - we who are alive now - making good choices about the direction of our arbitrarily-defined geographic region and being proud of the ones we could accomplish.
I think your issue with how the country was founded gives too much power to those who you don't agree with and who shouldn't have power over you. Whether the nation was founded on exploitation, we are not them - you refuse to be constrained by arbitrary geographic boundaries, for the contradictory reason that you feel constrained by arbitrary temporal boundaries, linking yourself and your dislike of American symbolism with what people hundreds of years ago did, with no relation to you except general genetic lineage.
That isn't to say we deny that it happened, don't teach it, learn from it - obviously systemic racism is an ongoing effect that is both traceable and related statistically to that founding. We aren't living in those times, but those times echo in our time. We aren't culpable, but we are responsible, only because nobody is left to deal with it.
But by refusing to take ownership of America, you are also ceding it. You may feel good about not being associated with the messy parts, but I would argue many who do this do it because they don't want to take on the burden, not because they are taking the claimed moral high ground.
Upside down flag is a good compromise