Morrissey really seriously ill?

like, i didn't know that the confederate flag was considered racist when i was a kid watching dukes of hazzard but...

not analogous

unless the Union Jack has explicitly been the symbol of a government that fought a war over the right to maintain a racial group as slaves. the Confederate Flag literally has no other meaning. It is the symbol of that gov't.

http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article1132959.ece/alternates/s615/Great%20Britain%27s%20Jessica%20Ennis%20holding%20the%20Union%20Jack%20Flag%20after%20the%20heptathlon%20800%20metres%20during%20Day%20Four%20of%20the%20IAAF%20World%20Athletics%20Championships

feel free to enlighten me on the history of the Union Jack tho

lots of flag posts itt

i did not know it was a symbol etc etc when i was watching a car draped in it on dukes of hazzard, you had no idea union jack had been appropriated by racist skinheads in 70s and 80s uk, potato potahto lets call the whole thing off

first hit when googling racist appropriation of union jack AND national front appropriation of union jack: http://www.morrissey-solo.com/threads/28727-Morrissey-s-use-of-the-Union-Jack-WAS-insensitive-and-racist

the statement "the Union Jack is considered a racist symbol" is somewhat reductive but it has a long history of prominent display by British far right groups, as per the photos above. my (limited and poss incorrect) impression of American white supremacist or w/e groups is that they don't use the American flag in quite the same way

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/the-tragic-decline-of-the-union-jack/261071/

(several xposts)

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hK6lUbtUxmAC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=national+front+appropriation+of+union+jack&source=bl&ots=KBsk2ppS0q&sig=SntetASVcpkf5hqthwyiUD-ViAg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZPSqU4H8LKew7Aa9-oHIDQ&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=national%20front%20appropriation%20of%20union%20jack&f=false
^^^ don't know if this link works but it links to a book that points out that the same afternoon morrissey was waving union jack at madstock in finsbury park, the national front had organised a 'british troops out of ireland' march in nearby islington

also that he was literally waving a flag about whilst opening for a band that famously had a notable far-right/skinhead following, at a time when he was fetishising skinhead aesthetics in his songs/record sleeves etc, I don't think it's really the same as the Noel G or Geri Halliwell examples xp

you had no idea union jack had been appropriated by racist skinheads in 70s and 80s uk

this all seems to go back to the idea posited upthread somewhere that all nationalism is at heart racist, which I can't really argue with. Some expressions of nationalism are more racist than others, I suppose.

xp

American white supremacist or w/e groups is that they don't use the American flag in quite the same way

this impression is incorrect

http://www.rulen.com/kkk/kkkflag3.jpg

not nationalism, the NATIONAL FRONT, which is an explicitly racist group

thread delivers

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qfdHUpexL.jpg

http://www.amazon.co.uk/There-Aint-Black-Union-Jack/dp/0415289815

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41qfdHUpexL.jpg

the paul gilroy book might be worth reading, here

what this thread has taught me is that we need a poll to determine which flag is the most racist

lots of flag posts itt

― Knob Dicks (wins), Wednesday, June 25, 2014 12:09 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

Very good

Actually thats not the book I meant - just a sec

I was talking to a queer friend about some of this stuff once. He pointed out that, in his view, songs like "Sweet and Tender Hooligan" and "National Front Disco" are basically really about rough trade, which I'd probably been naive to really miss. I'd been inclined towards a more charitable interpretation of "NF Disco" but this actually makes it seem more loathsome.

the footage of Finsbury Park was a surprise when i finally saw it. type in the phrase "morrissey draped in union jack finsbury park" into Google and see how many people have parroted that down the years. he doesn't appear to be draped in it at all from the look of the footage. he didn't wave it about during National Front Disco either which often gets said, he picks it up off the floor once during the show, twirls it around in the same manner one might do with a feather boa or whatever then chucks it away again.
(4.50 onwards on here for the full 'horror')

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-0EQsbhTb0

i wonder how many people have ever actually seen this. it never came out commercially so i'm assuming.. not many.

GIS for "racist flag" is fairly conclusive

not nationalism, the NATIONAL FRONT, which is an explicitly racist group

yeah I get that, I know what the National Front is. But on a more general level nationalism - by itself, this idea that there is a PURE conception of the nation that deserves to be prized above others - is essentially racist, it always requires some idea of ethnic homogeneity, it's pride based on demonization of an externalized "other".

xp

clearly I need to read up on NF policy on the Irish occupation! interesting.

contextually, racism/nationalism and the national front were not misty-eyed 70s/80s nostalgia in 1992 - a year later, the BNP won a council seat in the isle of dogs. i was studying in mile end at the time and the sense of tension there was palpable. that moz would coyly play with this stuff seemed unforgivable to me at the time.

ward - i'm not saying a desire to preserve or be a booster of stuff is bad, i just think he tends to see the decline of it as part of a "declining England" narrative or loss of Englishness that's has been a theme of his and i think at times has caused him to be racist (like "life is hard enough when you belong here" or "we are the last truly english people you will ever know" etc)

― sinister porpoise (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 25, 2014 1:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol ums, i think i was just being defensive because i like a lot of the same old musty shit as morrissey - and of course a lot of this stuff (like british sitcoms from the 1970s) is really horribly racist, tho' i don't think that's the sole reason that morrissey digs 'em.

the last time i saw morrissey live - one of his Meltdown performances on the South Bank - I was struck by the surprisingly heavy audience presence in the bar beforehand of serious rocker and skinhead types wearing oh-so-cryptic 'european tour' 1938-45 t-shirts etc. maybe having the Cockney Rejects on the same bill contributed to that, but it was far from being a regulation indie crowd.

and of course a lot of this stuff (like british sitcoms from the 1970s) is really horribly racist,

yeah I assumed bringing up Nico was deliberate in this regard

didn't know the Union Jack was considered a racist symbol for example

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, June 25, 2014 3:50 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Depends on the context in which its used.

If someone throws the Union Jack on stage and you pick it up?

http://static-1.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/18911-1-1339907682.jpg

Every racist has good luck.

Wait, UN Goodwill Ambassador Geri Halliwell is a racist!? What is the UK equivalent of a crying eagle gif?

this all seems to go back to the idea posited upthread somewhere that all nationalism is at heart racist, which I can't really argue with. Some expressions of nationalism are more racist than others, I suppose.

I struggle with this mostly wrt classical music: after the explosion of modernism in CM following from Prelude a l'Apres-Midi/Satie/Elektra and above all le Sacre du Printemps, there was this amazing, dizzyingly fruitful long wave of works informed by nationalism in a more or less positive non-racist way coming out of every territory with a western orchestra at hand-- all the Baltics, every future eastern bloc country especially Poland/Hungary/future Czech Republic, South America, Spain, every scandinavian country, Greece, Turkey, weird regions of France... this shit was so great but it was for sure nationalist and obv part of a thread that would curdle horribly as the century went on.

I mean I guess the early German nationalist artists were pretty non-pathological too (OG romantic poets & writers, Beethoven, Schumann, Schubert) but once they started getting an actual nation things got vile pretty quick. Maybe nationalisms always have this kind of arc of being a positive thing in their infancy and then becoming poisonous...

The Olympics is a celebration of nationalism, yet surprisingly not racist.

Hmmm I see a connection there.

plenty of racist shit has happened at the Olympics

they used to throw gypsies down the luge

for luck

obviously the Olympics organization itself is an internationalist, not a nationalist, organization, so yeah they haven't done anything egregious that I know of. but participating nations have used the nationalist nature of their participation in racist ways

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0801.html

"I present to you this olive branch as a symbol of love and peace," he said. "We hope that the nations will ever meet solely in such peaceful competition."

Hitler, receiving it with obvious emotion, thanked him heartily and shook hands with him. The "Hallelujah Chorus" in a final great burst of melody and the recession of nations from the stadium brought this notable opening to a close.

In British terms, the Olympics are mostly inclusive these days. It doesn't really matter where you, or your parents, were born - if you are competing for GB you are considered British by all but the most cantankerous, exclusionary racists. Morrissey's commentary on contemporary Britain in much closer to the cantankerous, exclusionary racist vision than the Olympic one.

The reason black athletes wrapped in the union flag is a big deal is because of the way it was so closely associated with the far right for so many years. The Spice Girls were probably, in some way, trying to reclaim and detoxify it. Morrissey not so much.

lol yeah nothin racist about the Spice Girls nope

The dresses understandably made a lot of people uncomfortable at the time, as did Annie Lennox's union flag suit a few years before. There was definitely a strain of British triumphalism to the whole era but, at the same time, a kind of inept but well-meaning attempt to take the symbolism of British nationalism away from the far right and towards a more inclusive place. Not necessarily successfully.

you can be included, but we get to call you scary

*bookmarks thread in "cultural studies" folder*

you can be included but we get to call you posh

you can be included but we get to call you ginger

you can be included but we get to call you baby