Capturing the Flag
I have a confession to make: I have a Southern Cross tattoo. It’s a ‘Eureka Stockade’ cross, to be specific. 12 years ago, in a pique of patriotism after spending nearly a year living in Canada as a university student, I got the ink. I was proud of it at the time, because of its association with Australian independence and rebellion, and with our admiration of the underdog. But that started to change after a while. After a few years I started to worry about people seeing it. I recall going for a run in multi-cultural Melbourne a couple of years back, and having only a tank-top. I found myself actually covering the tattoo with my hand when passing groups of people. I had no particular desire to be mistaken for a white supremacist.
A close friend of mine also has the Southern Cross tattoo; he too got it about ten years ago. Though his problem with it was quite different from mine; you see his mother was originally from Malaysia. This heritage wasn’t a problem at the start, not at all really, up until around 2005. Then of course the Cronulla riots occurred, egged on by unscrupulous, bully-boy radio hosts and inspired by the appalling behaviour of just a few individuals. Then we all saw it, on every television there’d be some goon with a Southern Cross tattoo and the flag draped over their shoulders screaming "fuck off, we’re full". A symbol of national pride had transformed into one of racial pride. Sigh.
Anyway, this friend of mine found himself walking through a music festival one summer a couple of years back when a skinny, red-headed tweaker challenged him, saying “You’re not Aussie enough to wear that on your arm”. Wow. Really? My friend was shocked. How can one respond to such unprovoked idiocy? How do you reason with someone over-endowed with the moron gene? Nothing happened that day; he just walked away. His response didn’t come until sometime later, when he told me he was thinking of getting the tattoo removed. To which my response was “fuck that”.
And here’s why.
You know what will drive the racist goons to despair? Non-whites with a Southern Cross tattoo, that’s what. You know what will cause the simple-minded, narrow view of Australian patriotism to experience a flash of self doubt? Why, Australian Muslims, or Sikhs, or Hindus proudly waving the flag. I think everyone should reclaim the flag (even if it has the British flag in the corner) and – more importantly – the Southern Cross.
You see, if you take away this one symbol the goons have in their view of nationalism, you jar them into the realization that a lot of people, who are not white, are actually extremely proud to call themselves Australian. When people from all different backgrounds decide to go and get the ink, they are reclaiming a historical symbol (which as all symbols is malleable in its meaning) and re-orienting it to a modern Australian identity. And without the Southern Cross, I’m not sure where the racists are going to go. The Iron Cross perhaps? The Swastika? These are tough to pull off, because of their unambiguously repugnant history. It de-legitimizes those bearing them, whereas the Southern Cross can give scoundrels a veneer of respectability.
But I have a solution for the ‘fuck off we’re full’ crowd. They get all get big Smurf tattoos. Think about it: the Smurfs are a homogenous race; they all look the same, they have short man syndrome and there isn't many women in their tribe. Yeah, replace those Southern Crosses with big ol’ Smurf tattoos.
So when the hipster-hat wearing Sydney Band ‘Waiting for Guinness’ sings, mockingly – ‘can my Muslim friends get a southern cross tattoo just like youse?’. The answer is: bloody oath. Did you know of the 13 people brought to trial for treason or sedition for instigating the Eureka Stockade rebellion, only one was actually born in Australia? That’s right: the other 12 were immigrants, fighting for an Australia independent of British rule. Sure, quite a few were Irish, but one was Jamaican, one was African-American, one was Jewish, another Italian. Our first great rebellion was multi-cultural; the only all-white contingent that day was the British troops laying waste to that haphazard stockade.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, Nationalism is neither good nor bad, but thinking makes it so. What matters is how it is used, how it is channeled. While Hitler appealed to the dark side of nationalism, Churchill appealed to all that is best in the national character when the British held out against the Nazis during the Second World War. It was Gandhi who appealed to Indian nationalism when they went about kicking the British out of the country. It’s nationalism that brings Australians together in a crisis, reaching out to help those affected by natural disasters, whether it be floods in Queensland or fires in Victoria.
Speaking of hipsters (well, not really, but) may I digress and say this: anyone identified as a hipster must have the Eureka Flag forcibly tattooed onto them. They are all obviously too cool to say anything positive about Australia, to recognize that this country has blessed them with the freedom to wear high pants, and buy second-hand ‘vintage’ shirts for 500 dollars while voting for the socialist party. They’re far too busy regarding their own navels to recognize that this country has allowed them the freedom to sit around drinking Chai Lattes in their all-white suburbs, while denouncing the Southern Cross as racist. So for the sake of unity I say we need to ink the lot, right above the belly-button.
But hipsters aside, most of us are not too coolly ironic or hip to be above a bit of patriotism now and again. When Cathy Freeman won the gold, whose heart didn’t swell with pride? When Bob Hawke skoals a beer at the cricket to the cheers of a crowd, where else would you see such blatant binge drinking celebrated? When John Aloisi kicked the winning penalty goal in 2006 to qualify the Socceroos (a multicultural team, by any standard) for the World Cup, who wasn’t screaming in triumph?
Call me a bogan (and many do), but I love the Eureka flag. I like that it represents defiance of authority (even if that defiance is doomed); that it represented our first moves to independence; and that 12 of the 13 who got charged with fighting underneath it weren’t even born here. Like I said, symbols are malleable, and there’s no reason this one can’t be taken back by mainstream Australia.
As the song by Waiting for Guinness ends: ‘the Southern Cross shines on everyone’.
