>I was at the Chicago Blues Festival this weekend--everyone should
>try to make it at least once, we have a great jazz festival too. The
>evening at the main stage opened the Star Spangled Banner (and I
>insisted my kids stand for it; I took off my hat; I explained to
>them that whatever you feel, you respect others' customs). Some
>biker types whooped it up during the line, "our flag was still
>here." One of them had a swastika tattoo. The people next to me were
>snarling about him, "Why hasn't someone killed him yet?" But the
>evening closed with Shanika Coleman (Johnny Coleman's daughter, and
>she is fucking awesome) singing about being a ghetto child in this
>so called land of freedom. The crowd loved that too. So it's
>complicated, not nearly as totalitarian as you suggest.
Yes, complicated, but I don't stand up for the Star-Spangled Banner, just as I don't stand up for Hinomaru & Kimigayo. In Japan, unlike in the States, no leftist berates other leftists for paying no obeisance to official symbols of nationalism. The Japanese Left, instead, honor people who refuse to stand for them. Hinomaru & Kimigayo have got to go -- that's settled among leftists. They are irredeemably symbols of the Japanese Empire that raped, pillaged, plundered, & generally exploited the peoples of Asia. I don't know why American leftists don't feel the same way about the Star-Spangled Banner and other official national symbols, after the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Vietnam, Contras, and countless other imperial atrocities.
Now, it's understandable, for instance, if French leftists have a soft spot for La Marseillaise, for they have the record of Partisan resistance at home against fascist occupiers and collaborators, and the song can signify that; more importantly, La Marseillaise evokes revolutionary insurrections of workers (during the French Revolution [especially 1792-94], the Paris Commune, etc.), so much so that the singing of La Marseillaise was banned many times: "La Marseillaise was banned by Napoleon during the Empire, and by Louis XVIII on the Second Restoration (1815), because of its revolutionary associations. Authorized after the July Revolution of 1830, it was again banned by Napoleon III and not reinstated until 1879" (@ <http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/marseill.html>). Americans have no comparable revolutionary experience associated with the Star-Spangled Banner enshrined in popular memories, however. (Very few Americans can even explain what the War of 1812 was about and what it meant to ordinary Americans.) -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>