To ask if you agree with ‘the flag flyers’

[Gobbledygook123]

Plus if you’re also educated and at least middle income?

The only people I know personally that agree with Farage et al are from working class backgrounds and/or are generally not educated higher than GCSE level.

Granted this is quite a small snapshot but this includes friends of friends, acquaintances etc so wondering if my perception of the ‘typical Farage voter’ is correct or skewed.

You stole them? Did you give them back?

It's not stealing to tidy up some fly-tipped junk left in the street.

If someone has paid for them, then it's stealing.

Where did this sneering come from in our culture?! It’s so toxic! ‘ what class are you, how educated are you’ ??? How is this different from measuring the size of peoples skulls to determine if they are acceptable!
Absolutely repulsive levels of assumed superiority over others.

If I hang a load of tat I bought off Amazon on a lamppost outside your house, it's not stealing if you take it down and get rid of it.

The flags are clearly a racist dogwhistle, BUT I think there are certainly people who don't realise that and think that they are merely celebrating their country and trying to take back the England flag from the skinhead BNP types who have co-opted the flag, or flags are being hung by those who are trying to say that the level of illegal migration is too much, but who do not hate people of colour. And you can't tell who's doing it for those reasons from those who do have darker reasons for it.

I can certainly see how immigrants of all stripes would see the flags as a threat. And when I say all stripes, I mean legal, illegal, and people who are born and raised British but who have Black or Asian heritage due to older family members or ancestors immigrating.

I do agree that it's a pity the flag has long since been tainted by the far right, and I can see how people might want to take back the flag from those people, but I don't think this is the way to do it. The country needs to start using the England flag as a mainstream badge, including on things like foods and goods being made in England having the England flag, and maybe VisitEngland running a campaign using the flag. For example, Duchy products don't have an England flag on them. It could be used as a mark of quality. The thing is, it was never used, which was why the far right could take it over, as they have done over the past twenty years or so.

The flag campaign by the public is rabble-rousing and could easily lead to verbal and physical abuse of anyone who is a person of colour, and that is not OK.

I think probably there are many different people flying flags at the moment, with different approaches to the movement.

Being proud of Britain feels crucial in the face of a tranche of the populace that has a neurotic tendency to over focus on criticisms of Britain for things long past.

inevitably for every swing of the pendulum in one direction, there will be it’s opposite, so of course any feeling of being undermined results in a compensation.

This

Oops

You’ve obviously never visited the part of your nation called Northern Ireland then?

Great thread. Such rigorous research standards. 👍🏼

Have you factored in that the bleeding heart liberals may have degrees, but they also are most likely to live in areas least affected by high influxes of low-skilled immigrants and they’re less likely to be affected by poor access to services and antisocial/criminal behaviour?

Do we really want to import large numbers of young males from cultures which are anti democratic and misogynistic?

If you don’t like Farage because the mere whiff of the riff raff doesn’t do it for you, why aren’t the ‘respectable’ parties listening to the disaffected poor?

Yes I have post-degree qualifications and no, I don’t fly flags, but I have eyes and can see exactly why disempowered people are choosing this form of direct action. Why can’t you?

Nope I don't agree.

Absolutely have enjoyed seeing all the Saltires flying high when out and about in recent days. Working class. Degree educated. Used to work in a middle class occupation.

Was questioning who would be flying a Boyne standard though in a village near me recently 🤔

Agree with this. Yes I think there's manipulation and cynicism involved in this whole push, of course, but the problem is also real.

Middle class educated liberal people are more likely not to be affected by issues of stretched resources and alienation from their own communities, or even aware of the extent of the problem.

I wasn't myself until I moved to a different area and DCs went to a different school. A friend's DD is not invited to any birthday parties in her class, no one will come to hers, she can't have any friends to play. It is a massive problem.

Do I have a problem with the flags in general? No. It's fine to be patriotic.

Do I have a problem with the flags when they're used to intimidate people who aren't white and straight? Yes. "Protect our women!" They shout, until something happens to a woman in their life and they couldn't give two fucking shits about it.

I'm white, but not straight, and every time I pass one of those flags, I am genuinely worried about my safety. I can't imagine what it's like for people who aren't white, or aren't British-born, or for those who have come to live in the UK (whether legally or not). Hell, even for those who ARE British-born but are still of a different race or background.

Maybe I'm generalising. But they generalise everyone else, and it's much more harmful to generalise minorities than it is to generalise straight white people.

I have a shocker for you, I am an architect, my husband is a surgeon, I am a partner in our practice, I am mixed race and I agree with the flags and Farage. I'm sure this will blow some minds but it isn't just white people who disagree with the current situation.

We need a change, I believe we need to force Governments to be more transparent about immigration and specifically asylum processes and if flags do it I'm on board.

My friend was showing me videos of a counter protest she went to near a hotel. The atmosphere was almost festival like. People were singing, playing drums and were happy. She then showed me the video if the actual protest on the other side of the road. I couldn’t believe the difference. The pent up
agression and potential for violence was written on every single face. They were just there to pick a fight no matter who they were. My friend said she so t ho to anymore counter protests as she felt so unsafe afterwards. Which is sad.

Yes I agree with flags. Degree educated but as a mature student which means I didn’t go the middle class straight to uni route as I was working class and it just wasn’t the norm for us at the time.

The reaction to flags is based in pure snobbery and classism. Personally I think they’re a pretty benign response by the working classes to having been utterly suffocated and prevented from discussing mass migration and its impact primarily on THEM over the last decade. Political & middle classes made it impossible for them to discuss what was happening to them, their lives, their schools, their areas, their ability to be housed etc, by constantly sneering gammon/racist/bigot any time they tried to express the issues.

Seeing the flags gladden by heart, and how people respond to them helps to pick the wheat from the chaff as to who is or isn’t an unpleasant snob living in a little bubble.

That is her intention.

Well yes and the responses of this and the multiple other Flag threads show us how many agree with her. The trouble is most people don’t really how offensive their sneering at the working class is, they don’t even realise they’re doing it as it’s so acceptable. The classism & snobbery on MN has always been off the charts though, even more so that I encounter in RL.

The poorly educated are easy to manipulate that's why Donald Trump freely admitted smart people don't vote for him. I listened to Tim Hartford take apart Nigel Farage's lies about unemployment figures on More or Less earlier. The information is all out there but if you don't have the education or an enquiring mind you don't even look for it.
That said I do think you have to be fucking thick to believe Farage after he so provably lied about Brexit.
And this is the problem: we shouldn't have to "call politicians out on their lies". They should tell the truth, and face sanctions when they don't, like the rest of us do if we lie to the authorities about our taxes, or who was driving a speeding car. Boris Johnson is one of many who has set the bar for political behaviour so incredibly low, that we don't bat an eyelid about politicians telling lies. We say "oh, it's what they do". We should be angry about this, but instead, people seem to worship blatant liars like Farage and Johnson like deities, because they like the sound of the miracles they swear they are going to work.

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