National flags can be a common sight in advertisements. Most countries have some national holiday, some kind of independence day when patriotism gets monetized and used for profit. This is the day when the state will put up flags everywhere, organize some fireworks, maybe even a military parade. This is also the day when many private companies jump on the patriotic advertising bandwagon. Flags or flag colors and shapes on the product packaging, flags in window displays, flags in shop isles. We all have seen this. But why is this happening? Do shop owners really have such strong patriotic feelings that they must utilize every opportunity to display a flag somewhere, or is this just commercialized patriotism—a hypocritical lip service that happens, because marketing people hope to earn a bit of extra cash this way?
Here’s how my Google front page looked like yesterday. (Note: 18th November is the nationalists’ holiday in Latvia, and what you are looking at is the Latvian flag.) As you can see, I am not using google.lv; this is google.de in German language. I can only assume that the irritating flag was shown to me because of my IP address.
This is a worldwide phenomenon, in every country private companies will advertise their products by pandering to the patriotism. Apparently the idea is that at this special time of the year a customer will enter the store (apparently patriots are supposed to celebrate the national holiday with a shopping spree), notice some cookies packaged in the colors of the national flag, and buy said product, because… um, some reasons. Do consumers seriously buy some product just because its packaging features the national flag?
Seeing such displays evokes in me the opposite of the intended reaction. Instead of wanting to buy some product I start thinking about the things marketers don’t want me to ponder. Why is this even happening? Possible explanations:
(1) Shop owners and employees have such strong patriotic feelings that they absolutely must utilize every opportunity to express their undying love for their country. Since I’m a cynic, I will immediately conclude that this cannot be possible.
(2) Marketing people consider their customers to be gullible fools who will buy any product as long as it is packaged in specific colors. Thus nationalism gets monetized for the sake of earning some extra profit. All the flag-colored decorations are just an example of empty lip service that serves personal interests. The chances are that marketing people don’t particularly care about their country, they are just self-serving liars who will use any tactic that promises to increase sales.
(3) Shop owners are giving in to peer pressure. Every year they look around and notice how all other shops have some flag-colored decorations. Storefronts, shop isles, individual product packaging—wherever they look, there are flags. Thus they start fearing that a failure to join the crowd and put up some decorations might result in negative publicity. What if somebody assumes that no flag-colored decorations mean that they don’t care about their country?
Why do people even need such public displays of patriotism? You care for your country? Great. Congratulations for having a heart so full of love. Now go on with your life, be nice to other people, don’t litter, and pay your taxes. The moment people start brandishing their patriotic feelings like a badge of honor, I get suspicious. I assume that they are probably just showing off for the sake of gaining prestige or social status/approval. I conclude that all those publicly displayed flags are probably just empty lip service.
There’s a reason why I just said “be nice to other people, don’t litter, and pay your taxes.” Those are all practical actions that your country actually benefits from. Putting up flag-colored decorations, on the other hand, benefits nobody. The fact that some person didn’t display a flag doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their country. The fact that somebody did display a flag doesn’t guarantee that they aren’t merely engaging in lip service. At the very least nobody should be criticized for not displaying the national flag.
Overall, I dislike nationalism/patriotism. Firstly, I prefer to treat all people equally regardless of where they happened to be born. I think it would be wrong for me to prioritize the well-being of people who happen to live within some arbitrarily drawn lines on the map at the expense of everybody else. Secondly, nationalism encourages an “us versus them” mentality. When people divide everything into “my people, my country” versus “other people, other countries,” it fosters and facilitates discrimination.
Of course, I understand that some nationalistic ideas are less harmful than others. It’s not like everybody who wears some flag-colored accessory on their clothing secretly is also a racist, a xenophobe, and a Nazi who wants to put other people in gas chambers. Nor do all self-proclaimed patriots support putting refugee children in concentration camps where they are denied access to toothbrushes. But the problem is that nationalistic ideas can facilitate dehumanization of various groups of people who are deemed as “other.”
Caring for your country and the society you live in is great. Working in order to increase the well-being of all the people who live in your country is also great. The problems start when people go further than that and say, “My country first, screw everybody else.” When somebody says, “I love my country,” what do they really mean? A country constitutes of some land and people and animals who live there. Is the person saying that they love the nature, cities, people, and animals who live in some region? If so, great. Or are they just worshiping a piece of fabric like some quasi religious idol? If so, then that’s no longer great at all. Loving something shouldn’t be a matter of bragging and feeling superior to other people as in, “My country is the greatest nation on Earth, everybody else should envy me for living here.”