Is a St George cross an underlying sign of passive racism?

[ThatCyanJoker]

Walked past the house of a relatively new friend today and was surprised to see they’ve put up a huge flagpole, complete with St George cross flag flying high. I am generally patriotic , and put out the bunting for notable occasions without a second thought. I would probably be pleased had it been a Union Jack, but the St George has an undertone of racism to me, unless it’s flown for the football World Cup or something.
AIBU to reconsider friendship?

Yes, everybody should have encouraged to put up the cross of St George taking any racist connations out of those putting the flag up for racist reasons.

Maybe I wasn't clear in the flag that they should all have been encouraged to put was the English flag.

But you have mis interpreted what I have posted.

It's literally how they took back the union flag - mass flying.

There are multiple posts on this thread supporting the flying of the flag, acting horrified that anyone would call it a potentially racist act, without acknowledging the associations it has and why some people might feel threatened by it. And no, I really don’t think a lot of people do acknowledge this or actively push back against it.

Cannot quite understand if we’re reading the same thread!

Because you're filling in gaps on behalf of other people. Someone not acknowledging something is not the same as actively denying! I think people are 'horrified' that anyone would automatically call someone racist for flying a flag. Which is horrifying. And wrong. And rude. And obnoxious.

This 'Reform hijacked the flag' doesn't really make sense. It's not as though the flag wasn't really quite regularly flown by racists before last August (and generating the exact same debates: I remember this around the World Cup in the early 2000s!). Reform and Fly the Colours and similar put the flag up because of what it symbolized already: they didn't make it a racist act, they did it because it is one.

apply occam's razor: it is the flag of the country you are in. That is all.

that's not remotely Occam's Razor.

So is racism and the stooges that are perpetuating it across the country at the moment.
it has always been co-opted by the far right, to not acknowledge it is to pretend an innocence it is hard to believe.

Oh it's been an issue for at least 20 years and Reform weren't around then. Interestingly, Reform haven't used a Welsh flag - either of them - on their manifesto for the Senedd elections... it's because they have been repeatedly challenged on the fact that they almost didn't even bother having a 'Welsh' party because they arrogantly thought they would just steamroller in, so it would be a bit rich to abuse the flag for their own purposes. They do have the obligatory daffodils... but no Welsh flags! (I have to read their shit for work unfortunately!) See - you can push back!

But who is not acknowledging it? I have on this thread. Repeatedly. Doesn't mean I think everyone who flies one is a racist.

My dad is going to have a good old chuckle at the weekend when he asks how my week has been and I say: "Spent some time defending the rights of the English to fly their own flag without kowtowing to racist connotations."

the simplest answer is absolutely occam's razor.

The views held by the groups that are erecting these flags are as far from Jesus Christ's teachings as is humanly possible.

The UK is not a theocracy so non-Christians, including Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and atheists have as much right to be here as you do.

There are some toxic mindsets that would like to poison the flag by pretending it’s racist. It isn’t. À flag can’t be racist.

also, nobody can read the minds of those flying à flag, if people make an assumption of racism .. which is quite a leap… that’s a reflection of toxic mindset.

Very goady opener....

Not one reply....

Fuck right off OP

it is the flag of England. That is it.

And if people would insist on that and use it more and more and more then the racists would find something else to represent their shite views and leave the flag alone.

We need to see more of them, not fewer. Much much more.

You are clearly the racist.

We saw fucking loads of them up and down roads from August until it got a bit dark and nippy for the racists to keep putting them up. Do you think that helped?

A swastika isn't antisemitic - it originally meant something like 'well-being'. A swastika is just a swastika. That's it. But if you saw one on a house, would you think 'good on them for reclaiming the swastika?' or, 'we cannot possibly know their reasons for putting a swastika up'?

At the very least, even if you thought maybe they did just think a sign meaning 'well-being' was nice, you'd perhaps reflect that they were being obtuse and insensitive not to realise it would be virtually certain to make certain groups feel out of place and unwelcome.... wouldn't you? At the absolute best, they're ill-informed, insensitive, thick, or uncaring, surely?

In that case I clearly wasn’t referring to you,
and I am not going to start picking out posts and users.

Because no one has denied that the flag has been used and abused by racist pigs on this thread. Not a single person.

No just England but despite what vile horrible people the English seem to be, every fucker and his dog wants to be here dont they!!

Brexit didn't create the boat crossings. We used to be part of the Dublin Agreement where we could return people but you'll find that under that agreement very few were actually returned. Before the boats people came over in the back of lorries until 2 tragedies changed all that. In 2019 39 Vietnamese people died in the back of a lorry in Essex and 58 Chinese people died in the back of a lorry in Dover in 2000. This caused a crackdown on people smuggling via lorries and rightly so, so the traffickers looked for other means.

With regard to unskilled labour we need to look at why our young people aren't doing them. In my town there are numerous car washes all run by immigrants, all cash in hand. Why is that, do you think that is to avoid paying tax. I suspect many of these employees are working for someone else who is exploiting them paying them less than the minimum wage. The British economy definitely won't be benefitting. The same with numerous nail bars.

Obviously Brexit has contributed to our current issues - I didn’t vote for it. There were all sorts of other problems being caused by our membership of the EU but we are where we are.

The off shore processing as a deterrent was a Tory plan that could well have reduced the number of economic migrants claiming to be asylum seekers in reduced the £billions we are currently spending. Thanks to recent BBC investigations, we hear about a serious issue of fraudulent claims lying about domestic violence or sexual orientation to exploit our immigration routes. This needs urgently dealing with.

Our border points are the same as other countries, passport control etc. What’s wrong with those?

It’s not the ‘border points’ that are so much the problem as the rest of the borders where people are just walking in, many of whom have ditched their documentation, off their small boats. That combined with the questionable claims from people that entered on student visas that then decide to claim asylum, and the asylum fraud I mentioned above, all add up to an almost total lack of control of our borders.

It is a basic responsibility for any government. I am just amazed at anyone still claiming that there isn’t a problem.

Quite. So many people seem to be happy to hand wave human trafficking on a grand scale. Then we gave a small but worrying number of criminal fugitives who entered other European countries, committed terrible crimes, then entered our country. Is it fair to say that not all asylum seekers are innocent victims?

From the article below:

Many fugitives have fled here from Germany, where migrant crime gangs established after Angela Merkel opened its borders to about 1.2 million refugees in 2015 and 2016, an investigation by this website has found.
Germany is now seeking so many foreign migrants from the UK that it is responsible for more than a quarter of all extradition requests made to us by EU countries.
Many of the migrant suspects left Germany within days of a serious offence being committed there, before making their way to the French coast and on to the UK,
^^
In one shocking case, wanted Lebanese crime gang member Mohammed Roumieh, who had 15 serious convictions in Germany, was given asylum, a taxpayer-funded home, and placed on benefits here after he gave a false name to immigration officials when he arrived in November 2024.
He was only arrested after his true identity was discovered four months later.
In another case, it took so long to order the extradition of Afghan migrant Abdul Wali Ahmadzai, who was wanted in Germany in connection with a 2017 sex atack on a 14-year-old girl, after he claimed asylum, that he commited a sexual assault in a Swansea park last year.

www.essexnewsandinvestigations.com/single-post/special-investigation-fugitive-migrants-wanted-over-murders-and-rapes-using-channel-crossings-to