A Country Afraid To Be Patriotic
It’s not bad to know the nation’s history, anthem and flag, nor to be proud of it.
On the 21st of July, my wonderful home country of Belgium (autonymously België or Belgique) celebrates its National Day (or literally “the national holiday” as we call it). As with other nations, this is hypothetically a day to show off everyone’s patriotism. A day to show gratitude for living in one of the most peaceful, fair and prosperous places that the world has known throughout its history. A day to show our unity as a people and to stress why it makes sense for our country to exist as a sovereign country. Well, not here.
In other European countries, such a day finds the streets filled with celebrations, with citizens proudly singing the anthem while waving the one flag under which they all unite. Belgium is not like this. Flying the nation’s flag is met with scrutiny (“Why do you feel the need to fly the flag? What are you trying to say?”), and in fact, there is so little enthusiasm surrounding the National Day that the citizenry has outright forgotten why we celebrate it on the date we do. Exactly one year ago, on our National Day, my brother and I drove into the city centre of the academic capital of Belgium to ask passersby exactly that question.
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- Quick history
- Empirical study in the streets of Leuven
- Europe’s phobia of nationalism
- Oh, je sais pas.
- Which pride will it be?
- Bigger picture
Quick history
Belgium has existed for nigh-on 200 years. In 1830, following in the footsteps of our American brothers and sisters, we seceded from the then-United Kingdom of the Netherlands to liberate ourselves from oppressive measures such as taxation without fair representation. On October 4th, shortly after the start of the Revolution, our temporary government declared independence, and the new king was subsequently crowned the following summer, on July 21st, 1831. In the meantime, the temporary government had ratified our constitution on February 7th, also drawing heavily on the God-given rights outlined in 1776.
Our flag is a somewhat oddly-proportioned black-yellow-red tricolour 🇧🇪.1 It is sometimes confused with Germany’s flag 🇩🇪, but I recommend against doing so in front of any European, lest you be looked at askance; making such a rookie mistake is arguably even more embarrassing than confusing the flags of France 🇫🇷 and the Netherlands 🇳🇱, which at least have the same order of colours.
Our anthem, the Brabançonne, exists in all three of the national languages (Dutch, French and German). The infamous punchline is “for king, for liberty, for law” whilst the national motto is “unity makes strength”.
Empirical study in the streets of Leuven
Exactly one year ago, on our National Day, my brother and I drove into the city centre of the academic capital of Belgium to ask passersby exactly that question.
Two years ago, my brother and I also went into the city centre on the National Day. This time, we did it only for statistical purposes, not to film or entertain, which actually took more confidence than putting it all on camera – because in this century, it is more comfortable to be approached by a guy with a microphone and a guy with a camera than to just be approached by two guys. Of the 10 men and 16 women we surveyed, 4 men knew the anthem and only 1 woman did, and exactly 1 man out of the 26 people surveyed total knew why we celebrate our National Day.
Europe’s phobia of nationalism
Growing up in Belgium, you are quickly conditioned by peers and by media that it is stupid at best, and evil at worst, to have even the slightest pride in one’s country. The underlying reason is somewhat of a mix between trauma from the wars in the 20th century, and the failing multiculturalist – which is an oxymoron – ideas of today. (There is also a marginal fraction of people who will point to our nation’s very short-lived venture into slavery abroad as the reason they cannot be patriots, but growing up, I never heard this even once, so this is a very recent phenomenon limited to obsessive left-wingers cosplaying as American activists who themselves are already cosplaying as abolitionists.)
Being proud of our national identity is tip-toed around either because “there’s nothing to be proud of because we aren’t special and have no culture” (which can only be proposed by someone who is fully ignorant of the rest of the world) or because “Nazis were also proud of their nation” (which demonstrates the one logical fallacy ideologues love to exploit to win the minds of average people, namely that ”\(P\) implies \(Q\), so \(Q\) must imply \(P\)”, a.k.a. dogs have four legs, so having four legs makes you a dog or in this case “Hitler had a dog, so having a dog basically makes you Hitler”).
It’s not happening, and it’s good that it is.
My rhetorical opponents will now raise one of three objections. The first is that “This is all in your head. Nobody is stopping you from showing your patriotism.” Fortunately, this very real sentiment I was raised with has been described in forum posts, articles and even entire books, making such gaslighting ineffective.
The second is that “There is a difference between patriotism and nationalism: one is about feeling proud, the other is about feeling superior.” Not only is this a red herring – because this article is about showing national pride in the form of flying the nation’s emblem, and having basic civics knowledge like the nation’s origins and anthem – but it is also a distinction without a difference. You aren’t proud of something just because it is associated with you, unless you have the unaware narcissicism of a small child. You are proud of something because it is comparatively better to other things in the same category. You are proud of your work not when it is shoddy, but when it is better than your competition or better than your past work. You are proud of your children not when they make mistakes, but when they visibly improve on their past actions or when they exhibit traits that are absent in their peers. Being patriotic (proud of your nation) and nationalistic (thinking your nation is comparatively better to others) are the same thing.
Lastly, I will be told that “If you feel judged for the views you express, they’re probably bad anyway.” I don’t think you want to go down the “you probably deserved it anyway” line of reasoning.
Oh, je sais pas.
Half a decade ago, Belgium’s national football team (colloquially known as the Red Devils) moved in and out of being the world’s most highly ranked. As celebrities that are internationally highlighted as representing the nation of Belgium specifically, one would think that the players would be more patriotic than the ordinary citizen, who works under some faceless company rather than his country’s tricolour. Nope! Unlike the enthusiastic anthem singing that may be expected of other European teams, it is commonly observed that our very own players don’t know the words to our anthem.
How about our political class, whose sole occupation is with the country itself? Believe it or not, we have even worse examples of patriotic ignorance there. In an infamous interview preceding the 2007 National Day ceremony, our then-soon-to-be prime minister, at the time a senator, not only answered incorrectly the question of why we celebrate this day (no, not the ratification of the constitution), and not only did he do it twice (after the reporter hints that it has to do with our first king, our prime minister guesses that we celebrate his resignation), but when prompted for the lyrics to the national anthem, he starts singing the first verse of the anthem of the republic of France. You would have thought it was satire if you didn’t know it wasn’t. As a representative of the people, he did indeed drive my point home: nobody cares to know our nation’s history.
Which pride will it be?
Humans are an inherently tribal and worshipping species. The astute observer might recognise that many of the secular social movements of this age are highly dogmatic religions, much more so than your average (or even 75th-percentile) Christian. Ironically, it has been radical left-wing ideology which, as much as it pretends to reject the notions of nationalism and colonialism, has been swift in their creation of a flag to signify their tribe and even more swift to replace any other flag displays by their own.
It is impossible to evade belief. The question is hence which belief one adheres to. Throughout our shooting of the video above, my brother and I encountered a mere two Belgian flags displayed across the entire city: one was on its permanent mount on the side of the town hall, the other within 100 meters waving atop the university hall (seen at 8:45 in the video).
In contrast, we found the same amount of Ukrainian flags displayed on private balconies, and even more strikingly, this was outdone by the amount of rainbow flags we spotted, with the local museum (seen at 12:01 in the video) even going as far as to have a permanently mounted pride-progress flag. Since regular rainbow flags (without the extra insignia) are obviously way easier to find and purchase, this must have been a deliberate choice on their behalf, espousing the ideological claims that differentiate the current flag from a plain rainbow flag. What is striking about this, especially on a supposed day of patriotism, is the intentional addition of the brown triangle, which stands for the claim that Western countries are explicitly structured – in their laws and in the minds of the people – with the goal of having the light-skinned oppress the dark-skinned. In reality, it is precisely the West where people of all skin colours are treated as equals under the law and where multiculturalism is a thing at all, which isn’t the case in Africa nor Asia.
Bigger picture
A lack of Belgian flags on the National Day demonstrates that the populus is unaware of – and thus ungrateful for – living in one of the most peaceful, lawful, and prosperous nations in the history of this planet. Just like the lack of basic civics knowledge, this is a symptom of what will eventually be the end of Western Europe if we aren’t careful: we are ashamed of our existence. We became societally convinced at some point in the last 100 years that we have an unpayable debt to the world. We feel guilty but don’t know what for. All we know is that we must be “tolerant” to those who would like to erase our way of living, because it would be better to be erased anyway. Everyone is entitled to our land except us.
Europe – from Greece and Italy to the United Kingdom – gave the world all of the philosophy that led to the advanced societies we have today. And, rather than having pride for it, we want nothing to do with ourselves. I would not be surprised if this self-flagellating cuckedness is also one of the undercurrents for why European women have fewer than two children on average. After all, if there’s nothing of value to Europeans, why make more of them?
In my very biased opinion, there is no three-coloured European flag that is more balanced than ours. Perhaps it is due to the usage of two of the three primary colours, whilst having better contrast than the Romanian flag (which uses all three). ↩︎
