On Flags and Fascism

I cannot continue to fly the Israeli flag.

With apologies to The Grateful Dead, ‘what a long, strange trip’ it has been since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. That is when I hoisted the Ukrainian flag in front of my house and put 200 little Ukrainian flags on my lawn with a note inviting neighbors to please take one if they wanted to show opposition to a ground war in Europe in the 21st century. Although they have faded now, they were all taken and planted around my neighborhood in Maryland.

I had offices in Ukraine before and after the break-up of the USSR, have travelled to many of the cities now devastated by war and had arranged for Western news crews to visit the now precariously operating nuclear power station in Zaporizhzhia.

While Putin denies complicity in the death of his most successful, outspoken, and globally recognized opponent, Alexei Navalny, Trump admonishes European nations to ‘pay their bills’ to NATO and invites Russia to invade those countries that do not. This bombast from the leader of a party once led by Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan is beyond bizarre. But it is equally mind-bending from a man who has rarely paid any of his bills with his own money but has instead masterfully extracted money from a seemingly endless stream of gullible investors, campaign contributors, students, and customers to pay his own bills. Whether his reduced bond will stand or fall remains to be seen.

As Trump’s fealty to Putin, and the Republican leadership’s fealty to Trump can no longer be a surprise, a speaker at the recent “Conservative” Political Action Conference (CPAC) takes us a step further into the theatre of the absurd. From the stage as part of a panel chaired by Steve Bannon. Jack Posobiec gleefully welcomed participants to “the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.” He went on, excitedly explaining that “we didn’t get all the way there on January 6th but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this…” He then holds up a cross on a necklace and Bannon responds, “Amen.” And this unabashed white supremacist and antisemite continues: “all glory is not to government; all glory to God.”

Last October I hoisted the Israeli flag after Hamas terrorists massacred and brutalized more than 1,000 Israeli citizens. Then I added the peace flag which was an ever-present symbol of the 1960s and ‘70s, often at Grateful Dead concerts. And then I cut the Israeli flag into tattered strips, reflecting what Israel’s current leaders have done to the moral fabric of the nation.

Then I added the Keffiyeh, the traditional head scarf that was worn proudly in the past by Palestinian villagers and farmers to distinguish themselves from more urban Palestinians (and to deflect sun and sand). Yasser Arafat the founding leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization brought the Keffiyeh into global focus and was awarded the Nobel peace prize alongside Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in 1994.

When I added the Keffiyeh, I offered my neighbors an explanation, with a little note on the lawn: “If you are wondering, I would love to fly another flag that would let me distinguish the horrific suffering of the Palestinian people from the horrific acts of the Hamas organization.”

I posted another little note eight years ago, in November 2016, after Trump was elected -- but on twitter rather than my lawn: “We elected a fascist and are all now part of a reality TV show. Facts are props. Citizens are just viewers, audiences to be manipulated.”

While that tweet will continue floating around the digiverse, the Israeli flag no longer flaps in the Spring wind near my front steps.