McTag wrote:SierraSong wrote:Dadpad - Students in Sweden aren't allowed to display the Swedish flag. A student who recently arrived at school with a tiny Swedish flag pinned to a backpack was reprimanded and told it was forbidden because it might be seen as offensive to the immigrant population.
That seems odd at first (and is no doubt unthinkable in America etc) but something similar had happened here before. Some schools and some public institutions have decided to ban the overt use of our national flag because of its misuses and its association with right-wing groups and their sentiments.
Same in Holland. Skinheads and gabbas had started to wear a small Dutch flag sewed into their jacket or bag, especially in the big cities. For some it was an actual political expression of "resistance" against their multicultural environs (and schoolmates), for others (many of the gabbas) just a way to be tough or cool or to, you know, basically flick their middle finger. To say, "dont even think about f*cking with us". Lots of clashing at high schools going on between sets of teen machismos, the young white males staking out its claim of terrain this way. Sure their counterparts would provocatively sew in the Moroccan star, or perhaps some Islamic green, I dunno.
More to do with teen boys ganging up (in the fifties in Amsterdam, it was "Dijkers" versus "Pleiners", different neighbourhoods) than with a collective sense of nation, though definitely seared through with ethnic resentments, Dutch vs Moroccans vs Surinamese. Volatile stuff to have to keep in check as a high school board, so there was serious concern about how to deal with it - dont remember whether there were any actual bans (Naj, you know?). (Dutch arent too big on dress codes).
Lonsdale, thats the other big thing - clothing of the brand Lonsdale, massively used by skins and gabba-types to identify themselves with their clan. Has acquired a definite extreme-right connotation (to true believers, the "nsda" in Lonsdale is short for NSDAP, the abbreviation of Hitler's Nazi party), though many Lonsdale wearers are not political at all.
Lonsdale clothing
is being banned now in places, I think, in Germany and/or Holland, despite the brand itself desperately trying to rebrand itself away from the connotation, producing clothing with the brand name in many colours, sponsoring anti-racist events etc. But what can they do? Just remember how far-right skinheads in the past embraced the whole ska scene, never mind that many of the musicians are black.
The confusions of identity...
