Flag Waving [The Devil's Encyclopedia]

Flag Waving

Flag waving, or alternatively flag-waving, is the act of attempting to appeal to in-group/out-group biases to disguise an illogical attitude or path of action. The term is so named because it most frequently uses the appeals from dividing by nations or other geographies such as cities, and symbols (most prominently the flag) provide very effective propaganda for the technique. The use of geography is the most popular because it allows other prejudices to be hidden under a banner that is more acceptable both publicly and for internal rationalization. Since geographies have strong demographic correlations due to biased immigration policies, demographic groups that move to avoid others, and tensions between different groups living together. Thus, a flag waver will be able to hide motives with a statement such as, "I love America! I love the troops! Are you with us or against us?" This flag waving technique proves much more effective than the less PR-friendly statement, "I hate brown people! I hate people who don't worship vague outlines of bearded faces found in jars of Prego! I love spending money I don't have to pay troops to gun them down with semi-automatics! Are you going to pay for it or aren't you?"

The overwhelming majority of the term's usage is by the American left-wing, along with members of other nations criticizing the American right-wing. The term does not have one source, as with the widespread propagandic use of the flag as imagery following terrorist attacks on September 11, C.E. 2001, the term was able to arise organically from many sources. As in the earlier example statement, the call to the group mentality is often paired with aggression towards members of the in-group as a high-pressure bandwagon technique. Thus, a standard flag waver will first make the statement of the style, "Doing this thing I want is patriotic" or with patriotic substituted for in-groups other than nations.but then follow it up with a "town hall" type of bandwagon trick. The flag waver first looks for those reluctant or openly opposed to the policy being masked with the flag waving, and confronts them with statements of the style, "You haven't started doing this thing I want yet. You must not be patriotic." The objective of the flag waver is not to convert the person being confronted to the flag waving side, but instead to intimidate the easier targets that will witness the scene, with hopes of coercing them out of the fear that by not joining the flag waving side, they will be the next one singled out for confrontation. Flag wavers will rarely, if ever, attempt to explain why what they do it patriotic (or otherwise loyal to the in-group), or why the patriotism (or similar quality) would be a positive trait, as doing so would be a more difficult justification than the justification of the policy they want to hide in the first place.

Flags are by no means the only symbols, nor is any visible symbol necessary for the flag waving trick. Flag waving can be accomplished effectively simply by repeated declarations by the flag waver that he or she represents the in-group, without any justification. The flag waver trick allows the lack of justification for the patriotism or similar in-group loyalty easily, by responding to criticism by acting standoffish and running in circles. For example, suppose that one is attempting to flag wave and encounters a critic who states, "Your policy is not patriotic. This graph shows the ten most important measurable qualities according to national surveys, and that implementing the policy has each at least 10% worse than before." One would then respond to the statement by asserting, "This person does not have the patriotic approach, because he or she has a different approach than I do, and I'm the patriotic one." If the critic attempts to question any piece, then one simply needs to rephrase the same circle slightly, and continue for any number of attacks. In this example, suppose one's critic says, "Why are you the patriotic one? We need evidence." Then one would reply, "This person can't possibly be right, because he or she is criticizing me, and I'm the one who's on our country's side." The circular approach has mixed results, however, so one may be advised to stick to the more effective flag waving defense of concentrating on speaking louder than the opposition and using conflict as a pretense to leave early, so one can repeat the same assertion several times and then cut the conversation short before many people realize that no support for the assertion was ever planned. If attempting to do extended amounts of flag waving, one would be advised to augment the surface aggression of the technique with the purchase of a long, penis shaped car and a few flight jackets.