Flags have taken centre stage in news coverage on both sides of the Atlantic this week. In the United Kingdom, there has been a major surge in the display – and even painting of – the St George’s flag across cities and towns, with streets, lampposts, and even roundabouts in England and Wales being adorned. Supporters claim the flags are a show of national pride, though critics argue the display is linked to heightened immigration tensions and far-right activism. Meanwhile, in the United States, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order proclaiming that anyone found guilty of burning the American flag would face a mandatory one-year jail sentence. The move openly defies longstanding Supreme Court precedent protecting flag burning as free speech, sparking significant debate about constitutional rights and the scope of presidential power.
Thanks to the rise of modern nationalism, flags have become powerful symbols — so powerful that many people are literally prepared to sacrifice their lives in their defence. As Tim Marshall discusses in his book Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of Flags, flags serve to condense collective identity, evoke deep emotional responses, and often act as rallying points in moments of national tension or division, with individuals seeing them as embodiments of their nation and its values. Marshall explains that flags’ provocative power is such that, even in a globalised world that aspires to unity, flags still channel “our traditional tribal tendencies and notions of identity – the idea of ‘us versus them’,” making them more than just pieces of fabric but potent embodiments of belonging and, potentially, conflict.
This everyday potency of flags ties directly to what sociologist Michael Billig calls “banal nationalism”: the subtle, often unnoticed ways that national identity is reinforced in daily life. Banal nationalism is reflected in the routine presence of flags in public spaces, national colours on sports jerseys, common references in news and advertising, and countless other ordinary practices that keep national identity constantly in the public consciousness. Unlike the spectacular displays of nationalism in parades or protests, banal nationalism works quietly, ensuring that the nation is always present in people’s minds – normalising allegiance and making the symbols feel so “natural” that defending them, sometimes fiercely, seems an unquestionable part of everyday life.
It is inevitable that modern societies require strong symbols to promote cohesion, and flags fulfil this need exceptionally well, acting as accessible representations of shared history and collective values. However, there is a clear distinction between healthy civic pride and the kind of irrational zeal that can arise when emotional attachment to the flag overrides the ability for critical thinking. When reactions to flag desecration become extreme or disproportionate, it often stems from a failure to apply skepticism and reason – turning a useful symbol of unity into an object of near-sacred indignation. In this context, promoting flag display is very different from reacting with outrage or punitive fervour when a flag is desecrated; the former encourages community, while the latter can signal an uncritical, even dangerous, escalation of symbolic nationalism.
In essence, flags in modern societies function strikingly similar to totems in traditional ones. Early anthropologists such as Émile Durkheim and James Frazer were fascinated by totemism – a system found in many tribal societies where groups identified symbolically with animals, plants, or objects regarded as sacred ancestors or emblems. Totems, they observed, served as visible symbols of group unity and identity, reinforcing social bonds and embodying the “spirit” of the community. Yet these scholars were often perplexed, and sometimes even bemused, by the intense reverence and the sometimes seemingly irrational taboos accompanying totems – how violating or disrespecting the totem was thought to bring about dire consequences or provoke communal outrage.
Today, these early anthropologists are rightly criticised for paternalistic and ethnocentric attitudes towards what they deemed “primitive” societies. However, there remains enduring insight in their recognition that totems evoked deep, sometimes irrational, emotions within the group. It is important to note that the fetishistic attachment they observed is not confined to the societies they studied; it is vividly alive in our modern attachment to national flags. Whereas the tribal totem might have been a carved animal or sacred plant, the flag has become the “modern totem” – a mundane object imbued with potent meaning, around which communities rally with both pride and, at times, a curiously irrational defensiveness when it is threatened or disrespected.
The cognitive fault in fetishising totems and flags often stems from a form of animism, where people unconsciously attribute agency or spirit to inanimate objects – treating a piece of cloth, for example, as if it were an actual agent deserving of protection and care. This animistic thinking parallels the magical beliefs seen in practices like causing harm to a poppet or doll to harm the person it represents – both rest on the assumption that harm done to a symbol somehow affects the thing symbolised.
Our modern Western world has taken a positive turn thanks to the gradual process of secularisation that gained momentum after the Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Spinoza, and Diderot championed reason and individual liberty, emphasising that genuine progress required tolerance and freedom of speech – even when it entailed protecting views, expressions, or acts that a majority might find offensive. This liberal spirit has underpinned reforms that decriminalised many acts previously punished for offending social or religious sensibilities, such as homosexuality, on the understanding that being repulsed by an act is not the same as being harmed by it. In this context, freedom of speech includes protecting acts like flag desecration that might shock or offend but do not constitute real harm against others.
Today, there is concern in Europe and North America that some migrants from Muslim-majority countries seek to enact blasphemy laws that criminalise insults to religious symbols – a move widely resisted by those who value secular principles. Yet, it is a sad irony that many who rightly oppose blasphemy laws are often the first to demand harsh penalties for flag desecration. In essence, laws punishing flag desecration are functionally a form of blasphemy law: they criminalise symbolic offense rather than real injury, and treat a secular “sacred object” much as societies once guarded religious icons. This contradiction calls for a more consistent application of Enlightenment values, recognising that the true test of freedom is the protection of expression – however unsettling – so long as it causes no substantive harm.
There can be a reasonable argument for outlawing flag burning, not due to the symbolic act itself, but because it has the potential to incite riots or imminent violence. This pragmatic approach is explicitly echoed in President Trump’s recent executive order, where he justified strict penalties by stating: “When you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy”. The analogy underpinning this argument is famously drawn from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who asserted that freedom of speech does not protect falsely shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre – a metaphor pointing to the boundaries of free expression when it poses a clear and present danger to public safety.
However, the “fire in a theatre” analogy has often been criticised and misused as a pretext for unnecessary censorship, obscuring the line between genuine incitement and the mere stirring of offense or discomfort. Even if restrictions on flag desecration are justified on the grounds of preventing violence, it is crucial that such laws be applied strictly and transparently, motivated solely by the imperative to avoid real-world harm. They must never serve as vehicles for the irrational, fetishistic attachment to a piece of cloth – an impulse that, historically, has far too often been the true driver behind punitive laws targeting desecration of symbolic objects.
