Every year as we approach Australia Day we have the same black and white schism between two competing views of the day.

1. Australia Day is a wonderful day for one to celebrate the love of their country. Anyone who doesnt feel like celebrating Australia day because of whatever reason is a treasonous traitor who hates their country.

OR

2. Australia Day is a racist holiday only celebrated by either uneducated bogans who dont know better or by organised racists who use the day to intimidate non anglo-saxon protestants.

without any sensible middle ground in between.

The source of lots of contention this year is about those miniature Australian flags people put on their cars around this time of year. Some study by UWA researchers found that people who put the flags on their cars had a higher change of supporting racist attitudes. TBH it hardly surprises me, it’s common for racists to use nationalism as a more acceptable way to push their views, but people are not surprisingly using this story to generalise that anyone with flags on their cars or displaying any other clichéd patriotic symbols must be a racist. I’m sorry but this is fucking moronic, seriously.

Yes, there are some people who use the flag as a symbol of exclusion, but that doesnt mean we should judge everyone who likes to display the flag as a racist prick based on no other information. To me the flags on car things is just an extension of the outward commercialism of patriotism that just increases each and every year. More and more Australia day is about selling lamb, vegemite, holdens or whatever company somehow gets the marketing whizzkids to dumb down “patriotism” to “buy this product”. It’s a tad tacky, a bit tribal, but by itself its hardly anything to get angry about.

So no, I wont be judging people as racist based purely on whatever stupid novelty item they put on their car.