{"id":323,"date":"2014-11-08T23:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-08T23:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=323"},"modified":"2014-11-08T12:52:38","modified_gmt":"2014-11-08T12:52:38","slug":"remembrance-day-are-poppies-offensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/11\/remembrance-day-are-poppies-offensive.html","title":{"rendered":"Remembrance Day: are poppies offensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nous sommes donc en guerre les uns contre les autres<\/em><\/p>\n

We’re all at war with one another<\/p>\n

Michel Foucault<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"poppy<\/p>\n

The poppy: a symbol of patriotism, exclusion, bygone\u00a0values, xenophobia, bigotry, volksgemeinschaft (“national community”), war, monarchy, etc. Now more than ever, the youth\u00a0should promote a global social narrative that recognizes humanity’s common heritage<\/a>, and abandon the offensively nationalistic customs and celebrations adored\u00a0by past generations.<\/p>\n

Wearing a poppy is far from\u00a0a celebration of tolerance or civil rights won by\u00a0Britain and other countries observing Remembrance Day. It does not commemorate the defeat of Nazism, but was created by the British monarchy\u00a0after World War I<\/a> to commemorate the pointless waste of lives defending the\u00a0one man’s personal esteem: the King.<\/p>\n

Contrary to its glamorization and acceptance in the British mainstream media, wearing a poppy is more likely to offend many people rather than assure them. Poppies are offensive in modern\u00a0Britain, because they glorify pointless bloodshed, xenophobia, and the absurdity of “patriotism”. As people become more educated, poppies\u00a0should be treated as a symbol of stupidity, created by a monarchy that held its soldiers’ lives to be worth about as much as the bits of card used to make these very badges of continued ignorance and cruelty.<\/p>\n

Wearing a poppy in public, a person is likely to be seen as a supporter of illegal wars of aggression that the British government engaged in, such as the Iraq War and the recently lost War in Afghanistan. It also shows contempt for the majority of victims of these wars, who were not British soldiers but civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of these true victims\u00a0even have family and religious compatriots in our tolerant\u00a0society, who have suffered and continue to suffer as a result of our country’s war crimes abroad. Are we to consider these members of our society not fully “British”, for sympathizing with the victims instead of\u00a0invaders and occupiers by not wearing the poppy? If so, the poppy is contrary to social cohesion and cannot coexist with late modernity.<\/p>\n

Any member of society who wears a poppy is ignorant or cruel, for failing to acknowledge that occupiers do not deserve compensation\u00a0but rather the innocent victims of violence are the ones who deserve compensation. Indeed, our country’s arms are open to these victims. Why offend the refugees from\u00a0our misguided wars even as we pay reparations to them, with the\u00a0outrageous celebration of our country’s war criminals as “heroes”?<\/p>\n

@GeorgeMonbiot<\/a> @PoppyLegion<\/a> the poppy should be cast down as a symbol of shame, stupidity and bigotry<\/p>\n

\u2014 Harry J. Bentham (@hjbentham) November 7, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Remembrance Day and other events revolving around national pride and the armed forces in particular are sponsored by arms contractors<\/a>, who revel in the blood and gore that they have created. For them, as for\u00a0the useless Queen, the wreaths of red stand for the blood and guts of the millions of enlisted men and women they misled into an early and entirely unnecessary\u00a0grave in the First World War.<\/p>\n

Some will counter my\u00a0claims with the\u00a0old, ill-conceived, argument that wearing the poppy and observing a minute of silence remembers the soldiers\u00a0who died for my rights to say the things I say<\/em>.\u00a0Such an argument is faulty.<\/p>\n

First, I didn’t ask anyone\u00a0to die for me, and if anyone thinks the soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan died for me, they\u00a0are insane. Even the terrorists who attacked British victims\u00a0in the famous July 7 attack were themselves born and bred\u00a0British citizens<\/em>, so wearing a poppy does little to confront them, as\u00a0they are part of the very same national community the poppy attempts confusedly\u00a0to\u00a0stand for. The reason we are led to this absurdity is that the “nation” lacks cohesion and uniformity – it is at war with itself, and the poppy only confounds this antagonism.<\/p>\n

Second, the\u00a0cruel practice\u00a0of isolating and excluding\u00a0non-patriotic elements of society looks more like Nazism to me than anything else I can find in the\u00a0country. Wearing a poppy certainly does not support human rights and liberal values derived from the defeat of Nazism. Rather, it supports a key tenet of Nazism: the national community, which must\u00a0exorcise\u00a0non-patriotic elements from its midst and profess loyalty to banners and slogans that otherwise lack\u00a0relevance and meaning. Many people in British society do not identify with the United Kingdom, its institutions and its armed forces. The Muslim community largely does not identify with the UK, and the Scottish independence movement’s famed 45% of the people do not. Republicans in Northern Ireland identify even less with the UK.<\/p>\n

The poppy, like the flag,\u00a0is consistent with\u00a0the Nazi ideal of\u00a0volksgemeinschaft, “national community” – an integral part of Nazi ideology that led to Nazism’s worst crimes. Using symbolism to mark\u00a0out enemies of the “nation” and ostracize\u00a0them, as the poppy seeks to do by polarizing the society between the supporters of the troops and opponents of the troops, is a manifestation of Nazism. At the core, it is\u00a0proscriptive\u00a0power\u00a0like this that allowed the Nazis to argue their\u00a0ideas about national supremacy that caused the Second World War and justify their mass murders\u00a0of minorities and “undesirables”. The same hatred is seen today, being cultivated against Muslim minorities by hate groups and hawkish establishment figures in Britain. Even a reaction of intolerance and hate towards\u00a0a post like mine would be a Nazi-like manifestation, as the Nazis cracked down harshly and intolerantly on anyone who didn’t promote the myths of the nation.<\/p>\n

A self-respecting human being\u00a0should have\u00a0no part\u00a0in sanctifying\u00a0stupidity, observing an offensive custom, or remembering lives sacrificed for\u00a0lies of a regime and\u00a0its sense of prestige. Illegitimate wars led by regimes of exclusion and hate\u00a0should\u00a0be exposed\u00a0as obscene, so modern and awakened people can\u00a0pour their contempt on them, and\u00a0symbols approving or legitimizing them\u00a0should\u00a0be removed from public view.<\/p>\n

\n

By Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n

lordre.net<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nous sommes donc en guerre les uns contre les autres We’re all at war with one another Michel Foucault The poppy: a symbol of patriotism, exclusion, bygone\u00a0values, xenophobia, bigotry, volksgemeinschaft (“national community”), war, monarchy, etc. Now more than ever, the youth\u00a0should promote a global social narrative that recognizes humanity’s common heritage, and abandon the offensively…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,68,71,37,72,66,55,56,69],"tags":[192,198,196,197,199,194,193,195,186,187,191,188],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antistatism","category-conflict-2","category-conflict-resolution","category-history","category-international-relations","category-politics-2","category-scotland","category-uk","category-violence","tag-are-poppies-offensive","tag-britain","tag-help-for-heroes","tag-islamophobia","tag-northern-ireland","tag-offensive","tag-poppies","tag-poppy-appeal","tag-poppy-day","tag-remembrance-day","tag-remembrance-sunday","tag-royal-british-legion"],"yoast_head":"\nRemembrance Day: are poppies offensive? - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/11\/remembrance-day-are-poppies-offensive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remembrance Day: are poppies offensive? - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nous sommes donc en guerre les uns contre les autres We’re all at war with one another Michel Foucault The poppy: a symbol of patriotism, exclusion, bygone\u00a0values, xenophobia, bigotry, volksgemeinschaft (“national community”), war, monarchy, etc. Now more than ever, the youth\u00a0should promote a global social narrative that recognizes humanity’s common heritage, and abandon the offensively…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/11\/remembrance-day-are-poppies-offensive.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-11-08T23:00:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-11-08T12:52:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/files\/2014\/11\/poppy-offensive-3-300x200.gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Harry J. 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