THE COLUMN: And See Who Salutes

When this madness all began -- we can pretty confidently date it to the time of the presidential candidacies of Eugene McCarthy in 1968 (aborted) and of George McGovern in 1972 (failed) -- one of the popular Leftist slogans of the day was that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." That this manifest, Frankfurtian untruth was received unskeptically by the nascent running-dog media of the day is not in retrospect surprising, since "getting clean for Gene" and "bringing America home" from Vietnam were youthful Boomer/eternal graduate student watchwords as they began their prolonged undermining of American institutions. Weaponized protests, and with them deadly riots, became the order of the day.

Today that shibboleth has morphed into something far more sinister: overt treason is now the highest form of patriotism. It's a logical extension of Critical Theory, taken to the ultimate Leftist end point of self-negation -- which is why in my book The Devil's Pleasure Palace, I noted:

Here lies the threat: Wave after wave of what I dub “satanic” leftism—in the sense that Satan cannot create, but only destroy—has gradually eroded and undermined our own belief in ourselves. This book, then, is explicitly and implicitly an argument against globalism, one-worldism, cultural relativism, and fatuous moral equivalence—not just made by me, but by Roman emperors, medieval philosophers, cavaliers of the Enlightenment, nineteenth-century revolutionaries, and twentieth-century daemons. It is not for the squeamish, the dense, the dull, the ignorant, or the easily offended.

To that, this addendum: expressions of overt patriotism -- and what is more patriotic than the display of a nation's flag? -- are now considered by tyrannical governments across Europe as badges of "far-right" jingoism and "hate." In their attempt to neuter opposition to their plans for unlimited "immigration" (read: occupation) of cultural aliens from endemically violent and backward parts of the world, officials in the U.K., the Republic of Ireland, and across the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have successfully managed to criminalize "hate."

God for Harry, England, and St. George.

But what is wrong with hate? It's a perfectly useful emotion, especially in times of war. Hatred of an existential enemy is not irrational but instinctive and self-protective; after all, they hate you and don't pretend otherwise. Only governments bent on facilitating national suicide -- which, let's face it, is the very raison d'etre  of the EUSSR -- would put its citizens in jail for trying to defend themselves, their families, and their culture from hostile aliens. But such has been the triumph of the Frankfurt School during the past 60 years or so, and its message is: lie down and die before we kill you.

So the flag revolutions now going on in the British Isles operate on two levels: 1) they are an expression of nationalist patriotism, 2) they send a clear message to illegals to get the hell out before they are thrown out. To pretend otherwise is nonsense.

Up to this point, the language on this issue has been entirely controlled by the international Left: actual invaders are euphemistically called "migrants," as if they were seasonal workers just passing through, like Mexican farm laborers in California in the 1950s. Even more ennoblingly, they are sometimes dignified with the term "immigrants/emigrants," like the Swedes and other Scandinavians who came to the United States in the mid-19th century.

Those Swedes gambled everything to find a new (if not better) life in the wilds of Minnesota where, among others, they were caught up in the great Sioux Uprising in the 1860s, with great bloodshed on both sides. They asked for nothing but freedom (of religion, of association, of economic opportunity) and along with the Germans, basically created the image of Minnesota Nice. Today they have been replaced by "refugees" from Somalia where, according to Grok: "Crime is widespread, including killings, sexual violence, abductions, banditry, theft, robbery, piracy, and human trafficking."

In other words, not all "migration" is the same. Indeed, Julius Caesar made his bones way back in 58 B.C. when he stopped cold an attempted transit by the Helvetians and other tribes from what is now Switzerland through those parts of Gaul which were Roman provinces and thus entitled to legionary protection. At the Battle of Bibracte he forced the Helvetians back to their mountains, thus putting an end to their dream of becoming doctors and lawyers and owning beachfront property in Aquitaine.

Meanwhile, "Palestinian" colors fly proudly alongside Ukrainian flags and rainbow pennants in many cities, towns, and villages across the U.S.; in those places, the exhibition of an American flag is seen as a provocation, an incitement to violence, and just plain hateful.

Not the "Palestinian" flag.

Yet the tide is turning. The gloom on the Left these days is the realization that what they thought was a 50-50 "deeply divided" country was in fact more like 60-40 or, in the important things, 80-20. What they're only now just grasping is that they were looking at a Potemkin Village of Frankfurtism flying the hammer and sickle, fronted by the Boomer media, the Boomer universities, and the Boomer Democrats. But the country wasn't behind it. All these things are vanishing now, along with the Boomers; the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition is disappearing before our eyes. Like the end of The Wizard of Oz or Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window, it might have all been just a dream -- or rather a nightmare, born of a criminal organization masquerading as a political party.

In any case, the years of the Left letting their freak flags fly are drawing to a close, a luxury no sane society can afford at a time when the avowed enemies of Western civilization are on the mooch and on the march. If the governments don't like it, don't change the nation, change the government that despises it.