Results | International Vexillological Index (preview version 1)

Eckels, Christopher Wood. 2021. “The Antisocial Fabric: German and American Approaches to Flags As Hate Speech in Public Demonstration.” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_16.

Flag use by far-right demonstrators at the 2017 Unite the Right rally is similar to historical flag use in public demonstration by antidemocratic groups seeking to deprive others of equal democratic rights, such as the Nazi Party between 1920 and 1945 and American segregationists during the Civil Rights Movement in the mid-twentieth century. This sort of flag use brings democratic values such as free speech and equal protections into conflict. Since World War II, international democratic norms have shifted to emphasize human dignity and equality, even if it requires limitations on free speech. Germany’s constitutional order is designed to protect democracy from antidemocratic groups in part by criminalizing display of flags representing them. Meanwhile, free speech absolutism in the United States makes it exceedingly difficult to impose legal sanctions for flag use, allowing flags that are in fact hate speech to masquerade as protected political speech.

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Fozdar, Farida. 2021. “Flagging Exclusionary Nationalism.” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_8.

After an outline of the history, design and uses of the Australian flag, this paper considers the media frenzy and public outcry surrounding the publication of research findings identifying a relationship between the flying of Australian flags on cars for Australia Day and racist attitudes. While the findings did not surprise many social scientists, given the semiotics of the flag and its increasing use as a symbol of exclusion, they were apparently highly contentious for portions of the Australian public. This paper describes and analyses the public reaction using three case studies from among the hundreds of examples. An email, a blog discussion, and a newspaper article, are analysed to demonstrate overlapping themes focussed on racism, patriotism, and nationalism. The chapter concludes that the publicity flagging the relationship between flag use and exclusionary nationalism actually may have worked against the goal of producing a considered debate about appropriate forms of nationalism and flag use, delivering the flag into the hands of exclusionary nationalist.

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Könczöl, Miklós, and Gábor Schweitzer. 2021. “Flags and Nation in Hungary.” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_10.

This chapter looks at the role of flags as national symbols in Hungary. It does so through three case studies. The first flag discussed is the current national colours (red, white and green). It is followed by the so-called ‘Árpád stripes’ (red and white), the colours attributed to the first royal dynasty of Hungary. Finally, the flag of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, is examined from a historical perspective, with special focus on its relationship with the national colours.

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Messner, Claudius. 2021. “Dislocations. Light and Colour, Flags and Identifications.” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_2.

The symbolic functioning of flags is related to many large topics in philosophy and in social sciences. My interest here is in the dialectics of how flags mean. Flags are polysemic and ambiguous, a kind of symbolic nodes grouping several layers of signification. Flags are not images, though, but objects made to be used not contemplated. Once raised, flags may talk. But what they say when talking depends upon the modes of use in communal practices. When used, flags contribute to the staging of an event. They are performative utterances in a specific situation. The paper begins with a short review of modern discourses on the nexus between light, colour, and emotion as unreflective forms of perceiving the world. Drawing upon studies on the contemporary production and reproduction of ways of seeing the chapter then explores in greater detail specific aspects of the dialectics of sense-making through flags. Aside from symbolising as well as iconic and spectacular modes of use banal forms of performance are taken into account. Once there, flags are signs of their own context. What they promote, the paper suggests, is not unity but configurations of common differences. Finally, the article addresses the role of flags for the assemblage of cultural identities of populations connected by digital media and the formation of society in the age of globalisation.

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Svetlicinii, Alexandr. 2021. “The European Flag in Non-EU Countries: ‘United in Diversity’?” In Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique, edited by Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek. Law and Visual Jurisprudence. Springer International Publishing. Springer Nature Link. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32865-8_15.

The “circle of twelve golden stars on a blue background” initially adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955, was gradually embraced by the European Union (EU) institutions and now is a widely known symbol of the EU, both within and outside of its external borders. Its widespread use was supposed to support the construction of “European identity” in addition to the existing national identities of the peoples of Europe. The present chapter explores the history and semantics of the European banner in order to appreciate its reception by the European citizens. Drawing from the historical circumstances of its adoption, the chapter then proceeds with the discussion on the use of the “EU flag” in two non-EU countries: Moldova and Serbia. A brief overview of the historical and current political contexts in these jurisdictions explores whether the use of the European symbol in these countries contributed to the “unity in diversity” as the motto of the EU suggests.

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