Deconstructing Americanism: The Futility of Patrioptics

If Germans had reclaimed the swastika, they would’ve totally got that Hitler guy out of the picture.

As someone commented on the Instagram post promoting one of my latest pieces with The Barbed Wire, the 50501 Movement’s No Kings Day protests have been called one of the biggest national protests in history. McDonalds fast food restaurants have also served billions of people, if you didn’t know that either.

I’m not surprised that the protest with no demands, cute tees, and hot dogs with all the fixins saw a lot of people. Mass market appeal, merchandise, it was big field day vibes with heavy theatrics with no real change. But more frustratingly, a movement struggled to be born within the 50501 crowd. 

Points of time when protesters would start chants drawing from a place of righteous fury and resolute loyalty to working class and decolonial aims (“Fuck ICE,” “From the river to the sea,” etc.), older demonstrators with goofy anti-Trump signs began chants calling for greater voter turnout and peaceful resistance. I envisioned Kendall Jenner with her Pepsi can and a young Assata Shakur struggling to snatch it to lob at a cop’s head.

“We don’t need the police escort. We don’t need police to tell us what a protest is,” one of the lead organizers said during the march in Downtown Dallas, seemingly unaware that 50501 fully cooperated with law enforcement and secured permits. “But the police did tell you what a protest is, big dawg,” I thought.

50501 Movement’s promotional materials prior to the event encouraged demonstrators to leave non-American flags at home, a suggestion sufficiently but not glaringly ignored. Some were inverted, most not. The American flag policy is in line with suggestions of strategy for the sake of optics echoed by many online commentators responding to the Los Angeles Immigration Protests. Older demonstrators at the protest in Dallas – most of which identified as Democrats – spoke to a need to reclaim patriotism from the far-right. But when confronted with the perspectives of those feeling a great general ick over waving the flag of an objectively villainous nation, none had a direct response beyond “That’s valid.”

I am aware that a narrative presenting the situation in the United States as one of an intruder in our collective home – locking the doors and starting fires – acting as a common enemy for us all to unite against is palatable. It is also inaccurate considering that many of us were being held hostage long before this incident and that the so-called “intruder” was cordially invited before leisurely strolling through the front door.

It is through this that the idea of Americanism comes into re-examination.

Americanism or American Patriotism is a set of nationalist values variably identified as multiculturalism, monoculturalism, democracy, capitalism, assimilation, Christianity, and/or religious freedom. And while politicians across the U.S. political spectrum have claimed patriotism in their respective social messaging, those of a conservative background are technically more objectively valid in their interpretation of Americanism. Especially considering that this country is cited as one of the biggest influences of the Nazis.

Liberal pundits speak to the negative implications of both the flag and the actions of the U.S. as ‘part of its history,’ stating in more socially acceptable terms that ethnic extermination and slavery served as crucial character development for the country. Americanism necessarily depends upon the erasure of culture and identity in favor of a contiguous network of watered down representations of demographics. These other groups effectively serve as deuteragonists to the white hero, eager to nourish him with both the blood of their suffering and the milk of their compassion. This concession, famously and enthusiastically embraced by organizations like LULAC, results in culture death and a consistent backslide of civil rights.

“It comes as a great shock around the age of 5, 6, or 7 to discover that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.” – James Baldwin

However, waving the flag of any colony at a protest is kind of like keeping a green flag up at a buffet restaurant and being confused that servers continue to bring you food.

Comparison of the 50501 demonstrations with news coming out of LA provides one with a bearing on the spectrum of large-scale political protest in this country. 

At 50501’s protests, demonstrations are largely peaceful if also mismanaged. Some volunteers fit the emotional profile of workers at the State Fair. A large emphasis stays on Anti-Trumpism while lauding the glorious American system. Meanwhile, Mexican flags are waved prominently in LA amidst tear gas and rubber bullets, with online critics warning that the anti-American messaging might turn off the public, despite rejection of U.S. policies being the point. The message of these images, which is discovered and not created, is that older nations than the U.S. and even Mexico itself exist. And while I understand that the point is to shift the country’s narrative, I just don’t think Mein Kampf could’ve ever had a redemption arc. 

Criticism of normal, everyday people under siege in LA and their messaging in the face of repression presupposes that an uprising is a decision and not part of a natural human reaction to systems that destroy them. And there’s a reason why HIV disguises itself as human proteins and not the inverse. “Patrioptics,” likewise, are a sucrose that shifts the rhetoric of an associated movement toward neoliberalism and away from liberation. And accordingly, it ensures that gay/trans/non-white folks in this country remain in a toxic relationship with a government that has made no bones about its hatred for them. An identity crisis exists between generations, one part calls for vindication and reform with the other intent on dismantling old systems.

I wonder, in a hundred years, if there will be a 50501 Tel Aviv branch in the potential Greater Israel. I shudder at the thought of online comments praising a demonstration against anti-Arab policies in the state, descending in a sea of blue and white flags. “I really appreciated the touch of inverting the flags,” one Gen-Xi TikToker might say.