(www.smithsonianmag.com)
into the void, or off the edge?
"off the edge" is a clear interpretation of the statue. "into the void" is a bit more of a stretch. IMHO.
But that's art for you. Everyone has their own take on it.
but fanaticism is more often a problem than not. fanatics tend to not really understand what they're talking about, or twist it to fit what they want it to be about.
> Fanaticism: Excessive enthusiasm, unreasoning zeal, or wild and extravagant notions, on any subject, especially religion, politics or ideology; religious frenzy.
note -- not talking about any particular "thing" here. just commenting about passion vs. fanaticism in general.
I am not religious, but this quote keeps coming up... And people keep forgetting about it.
But more to the point, while you may think the meaning is a bit obvious, the fact that the flag is unadorned (which/whose flag is it?), and the man is unknown, makes me think this statue could be the ultimate Rorschach test. I'm sure there are tons of people thinking "Ha ha, this is the perfect commentary on all those idiot <people on the other side who I disagree with> wrapping themselves up in their ideology of <patriotism/social justice/cause du jour> as they march <some particular country/society/the world at large off a cliff>".
In other words, I'm guessing you probably felt the meaning was "obvious" because you filled in the blanks in the above madlibs-style statement in a way that feels obvious to you, and I think folks on "the other side" would probably fill in the blanks with the exact opposite notions in a way that feels "obvious" to them.
From a British perspective there's no ambiguity, flag shagging is a right-wing activity.
Political movements in general don't seem to be particularly immune to flag shagging, only the colors vary a lot.
But I am pretty sure that Banksy means right-wing flag worship as well. He is a master of "provocative conformism" and wouldn't produce anything that would get him into a real risk of controversy. His art is very fine-tuned to the sensibilities of the English and American chattering class; same recipe for success as Paul Krugman or Malcolm Gladwell.
(I’m more likely to see the white rose of the House of York in “opposition” to the flag shaggers than a rainbow or anything else, in my neck of the woods, but there’s only a few of these flying)
I do like the wider interpretation though, that any ideology can blind you.
Idiots.
Banksy is from Bris'l which is sort of north Somerset (Somerset keeps on morphing faster than a sci-fi shapeshifter).
Cornwall has had a white cross on a black flag since 18something. Devon decided to adopt a black edged white cross on a green flag. I remember seeing Devon flag car stickers in the '80s - its a little older than that. Somerset now has ... a flag. Yellow and red I think.
No idea why because people can't decide what it is! The land itself knows exactly what and where it is but the political boundaries ebb and flow with the phases of the moon. Is Avon included ... what is Avon? Ooh, BANES - Somerset? Not today thank you. It goes on. Anyway, do Devon and Somerset and co really need a flag? No of course not.
What we really need is a Wessex flag, which will take over Mercia ... and a few other regional efforts ... and end up as a red cross on a white background. Then we could munge that with a couple of other flags and confuse the entire world with something called the Union Flag.
Then we can really get complicated ... hi Hawaii!
The seats in parliament that represent it and the local authority structure have changed, of course, the same as everywhere else in the country, but the boundaries of Somerset have remained constant for a long time.
Bristol is absolutely not "North Somerset" as a general case (though certain suburbs do extend into Somerset counties, but on that basis Bristol is as much "South Gloucestershire").
> Ooh, BANES - Somerset? Not today thank you. It goes on.
Bath has always been in Somerset and "BANES" literally stands for "Bath and North East Somerset".
Welsh for river.
I often feel like I would understand a lot more names if I bothered learning Welsh. It's pretty popular for made up climbing route names too, because Wales is so good for it I guess. Allegedly some of the classics in the Avon gorge are Welsh derived but I could never figure them out to be sure.
I'm often surprised that Bristol (a lefty city) is surrounded by very right-leaning areas, but I suppose that's the nature of a bubble. I don't think it makes a huge amount of sense to try to lump us in all together, at least politically.
As an aside, it still annoys me when websites put "Avon" as the county - it no longer exists and even the Post Office does this and they're the ones who should definitely know about it.
As far as flags go, I'm very much against the "flag-shaggers" who go around putting up England's St George Cross flag - most of the time, the flags are seen as threatening to minorities which is very much NOT the general Bristolian attitude. (I actually live in St George, Bristol, so somewhat ironic that I'm cross about that flag).
You'd be very surprised.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musicians_who_oppose_Donald_Tr...
This is part of what's obvious. The whole thing, including this oooh aahh Rorschach part, is obvious. It's thoughts that we all had in high school, and it is hack.
※ I admit that Xi Jinping wears a suit, but I'm still classifying that theory under "plausible deniability".
I went and looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_art but couldn't find it there. The "anti-essentialist" section is good, though, I think. It has Berys Gaut listing ten properties of art, all of which are nice-to-have but none of which are essential. Then if a piece ticks lots of boxes it's a shoo-in, but if it doesn't tick many of them you can argue about it.
Some of those involve eliciting some sort of response, but you could also have a decorative piece with this combo:
(i) aesthetic, (iv) complex, (v) meaningful, (vi) idiosyncratic, (vii) imaginative, (viii) skillful, (ix) art-shaped, (x) intentional
Which would be 8 out of 10, to which we could add "completely ignorable" and it could still be art. I don't see why attention-grabbing and provocation is important, and it certainly isn't sufficient on its own, plus it's irritating.
You said, "Whether we think he's a hack", which fundamentally changes what is being discussed.
The only reason we're talking about this is because of Banksy. Not because it is a clever or "deep" piece. It's disappointingly surface level, and the fact that we're talking about that doesn't suggest otherwise.
Baloney. It's a guerilla sculpture put up in the center of London. My guess is we might be talking about it more if it were unsigned as a case of whodunnit.
But for me personally, I roll my eyes at all the ex-art students who always complain "it's a hack" for any piece of art that appeals to a wide audience and isn't some obnoxious 8-layers deep meaning. You literally see it all the time, and half the time it just strikes me as thinly-veiled jealousy, if not from the art student perspective than from the "I'm so much more sophisticated than the unwashed masses" perspective.
It happened on HN a few months ago in a post about Simon Berger, an artist who makes portraits with cracked glass. The artist has achieved relatively wide appeal, and many of the comments here were along the lines of "Meh, he's a talentless hack, he just stumbled along a 'cool' technique but the subjects are boring."
I'd have a lot more respect for folks that could just say "it's not my bag" and move on, rather than pretend they're so much more sophisticated than people who enjoy this art.
To deface it would first have to have a face.
It's got just the right mix of highbrow disdain, unironic self righteousness and naughty language to titillate the average guardian reader though.
(Also, if you're familiar with Charlie Brooker's output, he's not really a 'highbrow' type. He started out in games journalism.)
I suppose I should've figured that one out.
His other works aren't subtle.
I don’t understand this. What speaks pro-establishment in this piece?
If the man holding the flag had been wearing a thawb instead of a suit, or if the statue had been of a woman, I think the establishment's response would be quite different.
1. From https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y9wlnwl85o "We're excited to see Banksy's latest sculpture in Westminster, making a striking addition to the city's vibrant public art scene. While we have taken initial steps to protect the statue, at this time it will remain accessible for the public to view and enjoy."
2. From https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/30/world/europe/banksy-londo... "Banksy has a great ability to inspire people from a range of backgrounds to enjoy modern art. His work always draws great interest and debate, and the mayor is hopeful that his latest piece can be preserved for Londoners and visitors to enjoy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_art_in_St_James...
It's not exactly subtle. A man goose stepping while blinded by a flag is a contrast to the other military figures portrayed in victorious poses.
That's argumentum ad speculum[0]. You can speculate what the response would be if the statue was different in a way you imagine, but the thing is, it's not.
[0]: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Hypothe...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/29/uk/st-george-flag-england...
As for Banksy who incidentally also likes making surreptitious additions to other people's property, he's never exactly been subtle about which school of politics he doesn't like
That says more about "the people below" on HN to me. There's a strong strand of contrarian, pseudo-intellectual sophistry. I.e. it's "clever" to talk yourself out of seeing the obvious.
It's also referencing the recent flag controversies in the UK over the past year.
Not sure if you are serious, but my experience is the exact opposite…
It's not like Banksy is known for being a sophisticated highfalutin MFA student anyway. Like it or not, appealing to the masses with simple and clear moral messages has always been his deal.
Which flag? Or, what kind of flag? Or does it matter?
"It's clearly the national flag"
If you asked 100 people to imagine a particular flag to attach to that statue, 95% of them are going to be current, unrecognized, or former states.
I have no idea what it is supposed to mean.
Did you look at his artwork of a judge hitting a protestor with a gavel while the protestor was bleeding on the ground and think “huh, I wonder what this means” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2z30p033ro).
By those standards a man wrapped in the flag walking off the edge is the height of subtlety. I guarantee you this - none of the people it should be offending will realise he’s talking about them.
Now? He makes millions off his work while still thumbing his nose at capitalism? Doesn't ring the same any more. You can't claim to be fighting against the same system that you use to make millions.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
There really is no winning when you become famous. When people liked you before and you are effectively still the same but just richer they call you part of the problem, if you aren't richer people just don't know you and you most likely arent actually famous. Usually money follows the fame and vice versa (unless you specifically use your money to remain anonymous).
What makes you think so? I think it depends on what happens to the money extracted from the system. Do we know how Banksy uses it?
It depends on what you do with that money, no?
I'll be one of the first to agree that most rich people have likely gotten where the are by doing at least some immoral or unethical things, and that many of those people try to whitewash their image with philanthropy. But there certainly exist rich people who got there as ethically as one can in this world, and use that money to try to change things.
Sure, there are many fewer of the latter people than the former, but I think it's unfair to automatically assume that "made some money" = "part of the system".
You absolutely can though. This is a false dichotomy.
Example: "I'm rich and think I should pay more in taxes because I have it more than good enough" vs "I'm rich and think that I'm already paying too much in taxes". Neither is inconsistent or hypocritical.
Other example: "I got rich by extracting more from my workers than was justifiable compared to what they produced, and that should probably be regulated" vs "I got rich by providing value I got paid for, and created a lot of jobs, and we should have less regulation so I could do more of it".
There's nothing about subtly in that claim, and all forms of art are equally valid, if not the same quality.
Bansky's art has always been blunt and whimsical, probably because he makes popular street art. It's meant to be "accessible" for your average passerby who might only engage with it for a fraction of a second, but maybe get a little surprise when they do.
Sadly, in this day and age, that simple one-punch obvious meaning is just what's needed.
“I remember when all this was trees” [1] is maybe the best example. Detroit hasn’t been “trees” in something like two centuries. Platitudes doused in treacle.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/01/ba...
For clarity, the shredder was part of the work and the sale was of the half destroyed piece along with shredder and chaff.
(Statue (of a man (blinded by a flag (put up by Banksy)))) in central London
It is intended to be
((Statue (of a man (blinded by a flag))) (put up by Banksy)) in central London
You really don't see any good ol' fashioned short and sweet headlines that read best to the ear in a Mid-Atlantic accent anymore.
It's an offence against public decency however you slice it!
It's not so much a secret as it is simply not public.
I think his name not being blasted everywhere has more to do with it being thoroughly uninteresting than any gentlemen's agreement.
There's a (mostly terrible) documentary about a previous bansky "statue" deposited in London that, in one of its better moments, tracks down the people who actually make statues for artists like banksy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Banksy_Job
edit: I feel I should clarify that this is not an official Banksy documentary. He made "Exit Through the Gift Shop" which is an amazing film which I highly recommend to anyone.
The Wall Street Bull was a guerilla art piece too. It's a real bronze. Weighs about three metric tons. It's hugely popular, although it's been moved a few times. Banksy's work should be replicated in bronze and stone and placed permanently.
The statue is in Westminster, right by Whitehall. The heart of British government. It depicts a figure in a suit, marching off a ledge, completely blinded by a flag.
Who wears a suit and marches through Westminster under a flag?
- Businessmen? No. Merchants have no country.
- Officials? They wear suits but don't march
- Old-guard politicians? Rarely march or flag-wave with any conviction.
So who are we left with? The populist. The Nigel Farage archetype. The suited firebrand who wrap themselves in nationalist fervor, stoke the rabble, and blindly march everyone right off a cliff.
Banksy isn't known for complex, multi-layered messaging. He is popular precisely because he uses visual shorthand to say plainly what the general public is already thinking. There is no hidden 4D chess; it's just blunt satire about blind patriotism.
Edit: This also explains why the government is happy to keep this particular Banksy on display.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raise_the_Colours https://manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-raised-the-flags/
The Union Jack is a symbol of empire and colonialism which the St. George's Cross isn't.
However, the football thing is more recent. If you watch "the Italian Job" from the 1960s, the England fans wave around Union Jacks instead of their own specific flag (as Scotland and Wales fans would). Clearly in the intervening years, England fans have discovered the England flag.
Scottish and Welsh people seem to be a lot more comfortable with their identity than English do. And that includes their flags. I have seen countless bits of research which suggest that ethnic minorities happily identify as Scottish and Welsh in Scotland and Wales, but in England, they identify as British rather than English. I suggest you read Billy Bragg's "the Progressive Patriot". He is an English socialist who has tried to reclaim English identity from the far right, which he is entitled to.
In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the Union Flag is a reminder that the UK countries are ultimately run by England, where there isn’t a true acknowledgement that the countries are culturally different, let alone able to rule themselves.
Within England the St George’s Cross has become a symbol of exceptionalism and superiority, not least because it is prominently flown on nationalist and supremacist marches. Since the Union Jack includes the other countries in the Union, use of St George is often seen as a snub to the other countries.
So England can’t win? No. Correctly so, IMO, because of history and context (I am English).
Oh, and you'll find it at plenty of football matches, notably Glasgow Rangers, who fly it while singing songs about wanting to be "up to our knees in Fenian blood".
Even the new positioning of the art on a plinth in some open space is enigmatic. If it were a critique of the powers that be, why would officialdom collaborate in propping it up?
Seriously, this is part of the fun of art. Neither of you are wrong for reading different messages into it.
Communists are blinded by the flag with the hammer and sickle.
Teachers and doctors are blinded by trans ideology and its flag.
Examples abound, but wanna transgressor blanksy knows who butters his bread.
Interesting fact: the creator of the trans flag, Robert Hogge (later known as Monica Helms), used to steal his mother's underwear, then moved on to stealing random women's underwear for sexual reasons, and wrote fantasy fiction about a man marrying a child who doesn't age.
You're going to get a bunch of downvotes, but I'm also going to take the time to personally tell you how stupid this is as well.
“Nations” as synonym for country started appearing only recently, in last two/three hundred years.
Flags have thousands of years of history.
Which spate and which nation? The one the local flags were in response to, or the local flags?
It is vague enough to appear deep to those trying to find something deep but not concrete enough to appear as anything that will stick in people's minds for more than a week. Unfortunately a lot of modern art is like this.
Waving a flag is not a problem in itself. You can be proud of being part of whatever group you like and not hurt anyone. The problem is when the flag becomes the prism through which you see the world. Or, as the statue puts it, when you’re blinded by it.
Clearly it depends on your actual object-level position on the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or in general, what specific nationalisms you mean when you talk about being "blinded by nationalism".
And that's the main reason why I think this is a mediocre piece of art. Very few people actually are genuinely anti-nationalist for all possible human groups that have some sense of themselves as a nation. All anti-nationalist rhetoric is implicitly aimed at a specific nationalism that someone has a problem with - and also everyone knows this. So everyone wants to use the blank slate of bansky's featureless flag as a canvas upon which to paint a nationalism they don't like in order to discredit it. And I personally think that's boring. Maybe engendering that reaction was itself part of Bansky's artistic vision, but I still don't think that makes for good art.
Personally I don't mind it. I think it would be difficult to convey well thought out points in art (the world is too complicated) and it's fine that they're just fun visual wordplays.
You wouldn't criticise a newspaper political cartoon for taking liberties with reality; these are basically the same.
Plus the execution is also part of the art.
(I'm a fan of Banksy because he isn't afraid to speak out against the blatant murder carried out because of flags and nationalism)
There are many examples of the same thing: Andy Warhol and the soup cans and screen-printed portraits with different color backgrounds or Led Zeppelin and English folk hard rock songs that have hobbits in them are two of them.
Eventually, it's hard to even process their work in the context of how predictable and trite it seems to be a few decades later.
There are fights worth fighting: for example there are 300 million women alive who have undergone forced genital mutilation. 300 million ain't cheap change. There are also hundreds of millions of people who applauded the killing of 1200 young civilians who were enjoying life at a music festival "because it's resistance".
Applauding the killing of young unarmed civilians, genitally mutilating women and turning a blind-eye to a regime slaughtering 30 000+ of its own unarmed civilians is where I personally draw the line and consider there are maybe more important things to complain about than, say, "the patriarchal western society built by heterosexual white men" or some other woke non-sense like that.
Now to be honest Banksy did art criticizing war overall, not just war started by the west. So a generous reading could consider that he also criticizes things like the 800 000 deaths during the Hutu vs Tutsi war.
But still overall: lots of balls from western artists when it's about criticizing the west, but tiny tiny nuts when it's about, say, attacking the ideology that is responsible for 300 people enjoying music at the Bataclan and then getting slaughtered.
But these people can live with their own conscience: I speak up and I've got mine.
The moral posture you're criticising is not actually a thing, I personally don't know of any Western intellectual who criticises the West but is fine with FGM for example. But it seems that the fault you find in them is that when they criticise the West, for example, they don't also add a list of grievances against all the other countries (but surely they'd have to speak for 10 hours every time they open their mouths?).
It's also funny how you take the 30,000 Iranian civilians killed at face value, but don't talk about the wrongs of the British empire. And you didn't even mention North Korea once. You see the issue with your reqs?
Or maybe, we should look at the problems in our society and try to make it better, instead of just shouting into the void about things we, as nations, can't and wouldn't be and perhaps, shouldn't able to change?
Art will always be about speaking truth to power, and that power will usually be the one closest felt. There's not much value in a swede speaking truth to Nigerian warlords.
Unfortunately, they often don't meet that bar, so the message has to be in a form they can understand.
There's no point to complexity or subtlety in art anymore, or even any kind of symbolism at all. Anything that needs to be interpreted, that doesn't have a single objective meaning which gets spelled out for you. Flag man is silly. Everyone is twelve now.
You are wrong.
This contradiction at the heart of it does a lot of work and is a very valuable part of the art. This contradiction has led me to think a lot about rules and their role in society and to what extent pure strict rules based societies are a worthwhile goal and on the other hand what it means of we make exceptions.
Westminster City Council has told the BBC it did not grant permission, as it was not given advance warning that Banksy's team was planning this installation.
Council permits are usually quite public (in my country). Sneaking it in becomes part of the artwork.
(Though it's not in /the/ City of London. That wouldn't happen in a million years! City of Westminster is way more culturally flexible)
The City is dead at night. If an artist wants to put art there, they'd just as somebody else said, dress up like they are workmen and be fine.
Criticizing someone of being popular is just a way to silence them. If they are popular then they are "cringe", and if they are unpopular, they can be safely ignored and that statue would have been removed by the police and forgotten without any news coverage.
Banksy may be popular, but he is not completely establishment, because well look at the statue. Its an obvious critique of the Iran war, and yet the Iran war still grinds on and UK bases continue to be used for Iran war operations. So apparently there is someone in the establishment that does not agree with Banksy. Someone boldly stepping into the void.
One of my favorite contemporary musicians is a Socialist Filipino rapper who lives in LA. I can enjoy the music while finding the ideology abhorrent because they are two separate things.
And of course there was a fucking gift shop at the end.
Being cynical that all effort is wasted is played out at this point. Fight for something real. Name what you're against. It should be easy in the UK.
exactly. i mean only to point out that the Banksy work intentionally invokes the figure of Blind Justice to inform the work, however you may interpret it.
Will Banksy's legacy be more or less the same?
Did you miss the whole Brexit thing?
Not sure who you think "they" are but "This is England" is superb. It deals with a lot of issues, way beyond just nationalism and the like.
Perhaps you would like to fix your gimlet gaze on "A Clockwork Orange" and deliver a further withering critique.
A simple explanation regarding the increase of the number of nationalists within England is the population has increased. QED.
This is the better spot: https://maps.app.goo.gl/6EmX2jPiaKRNtNtr8 51°30'19.0"N 0°08'16.0"W
And very likely had very little to do with the current state of the place. Pride at age 21? Meaningless vanity, like being proud of being born with a silver spoon. Pride at age 80? Sure, if it was a life well-lived.
Ouch. How warped does one's thinking have to be to call "A theory of justice" (1971) for pluralistic, democratic societies, a "religion"?
It seems to me that right-wingers love hyperbole and rhetoric, without addressing the meat of the matter.
Your post is no different, being entirely free of reason. A good day to you, Sir.
Still, aren't you at least a little bit curious? Why did it have to be invented in 1971? What is it replacing?
> There's no luck involved in the fact that you were born to your parents, as they were to theirs.
You did not choose your parents, country, ancestry, class, era, genes, language, or inherited institutions. You may be inseparable from those facts, but you did not earn them.
> There's no luck involved in the fact that you were born to your parents
> we were so fortunate to inherit from them.
> It is right to be proud of the achievements of your ancestors
You have to be careful to not fall into the trap of borrowed glory: treating an ancestor’s achievement as your own personal merit, or using ancestry to rank yourself above others.
> toiled and strived to deliver the place that we were so fortunate to inherit
> our responsibility to defend and improve that place for the coming generations of our people.
So then Native Americans have a stronger claim than European descendants? Or is that a standard to only be applied moving forward?
That's also like the caste system in India: only children of brahmins can be brahmins, children of shudras can only be shudras. One is superior to another by inheritance, not merit.
That's ugly and abhorrent.
> It is right to be proud of the achievements of your ancestors
My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
>you did not earn them
My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
Everything I have today has been hard-earned by my ancestors. Everything my children have will be hard-earned by my ancestors and I. We earned them.
>These two statements appear to be contradictory
Only if you believe such things to be due to purely random chance. I can feel 'fortunate' that my parents got me the bike I really wanted for Christmas, but there's no randomness in my parents working overtime and budgeting responsibly that made it possible.
>And what was your contribution to those achievements to justify this pride?
I am a part of the same collective, the long and continued story of my people. I am proud of those who came before me.
>You have to be careful to not fall into the trap of borrowed glory
You have to be careful not to fall into the trap of nihilistic individualism. You are part of something much bigger than yourself. Be suspicious of anyone trying to sever your connection to your people and your history.
>Are you implying that the place belongs more fully to descendants of earlier inhabitants than to newer members of the community?
That makes sense, yes. To your example, I would say that Native Americans have very little claim to the modern USA as practically everything was built by Europeans. They failed to defend their lands and were successfully conquered. In the same way, it would be absurd in my view for the majority non-White population of London (almost all of whom are very recent colonisers) to gaze around at the infrastructure and architecture and think "We made this."
>Are you then also ashamed of their crimes?
Sure, but not nearly as ashamed as our enemies would like us to be. Isn't it funny how we are supposed to recoil in shame and horror with the constant reminders of the worst parts of our people's history, yet we are condemned for also proudly owning our best?
>> Are you claiming to have controlled where and to whom you were born?
> My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
>> you did not earn them
> My parents did. Their parents did. My children will.
> Everything I have today has been hard-earned by my ancestors.
> Everything my children have will be hard-earned by my ancestors and I. *We* earned them.
Correct. But there is randomness, or luck, or whatever you want to call it, that you were born to parents who worked overtime and budgeted responsibly so that you could have nice things. You could just have easily been born to parents who were lazy and irresponsible, and couldn't give you nice things.
> I am a part of the same collective, the long and continued story of my people.
Sure, but you did not contribute to the achievements of your ancestors. You will (and/or have) presumably achieve things on your own, built on top of your ancestors' achievements, and pass that legacy to your children. But that's something different. Be (non-arrogantly) proud of your own achievements, because you had a hand in them.
> You have to be careful not to fall into the trap of nihilistic individualism. You are part of something much bigger than yourself.
I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that. But being a part of something doesn't mean that you've personally done something. I didn't do the things my ancestors did to get me to where I am today. I'm grateful, as I would probably not be happy doing many of the things they had to do. And I hope any children I may have will be grateful to me for the same reasons (but that also would depend on me actually being a good parent to them; I don't just get it for free).
Re: that penultimate paragraph... oof, I'm struggling with what to say here. While yes, the vast majority of the modern USA was built by the colonizers and not the natives who came before, we need to temper our enthusiasm for our achievements with an acknowledgement of the barbaric actions of our ancestors who came to the New World and deceived, sickened, and slaughtered those who already lived there.
> Isn't it funny how we are supposed to recoil in shame and horror with the constant reminders of the worst parts of our people's history, yet we are condemned for also proudly owning our best?
I don't think that condemnation is as strong as you think it is, and your aversion to it is worrying. As I said, our best is tempered with acknowledgement of our worst. Be proud, if you must, of what you, personally, have accomplished. Look on the accomplishments of others (both contemporary and long-dead) with awe and respect, as appropriate. Acknowledge that many of those accomplishments involved slave labor, murder, and other atrocities. Vow to work toward your own future accomplishments in only moral and ethical ways.
You correctly state that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. Some of that "something" is good, and some of that "something" is bad. And everything in between. We have to live with all parts, and learn from both the good and the bad.
I disagree with this view and I think it's harmful. Look at it from the perspective of the parents. There is no luck or randomness involved in their responsibility and discipline to build a happy and stable home, and of course there's no randomness or luck involved in them doing the action that created me. It is impossible that I could have been born to a broke drug addict in Bolivia. I could only ever have been born to my parents.
>but you did not contribute to the achievements of your ancestors
Why should this exclude me from being proud of my people and our history? Why shouldn't I be proud of who I am, as part of that great story, and where we are and where we are headed? Every part of my modern life is a result of wars won, famines survived, breakthroughs achieved, phenomena discovered, nature harnessed, etc etc. Consider, too, that I am literally an achievement of my ancestors; my DNA carries all of this history and progression within me.
Why shouldn't I be proud of who we are? It seems that only people who hate us want me to abandon my identity for deracinated nihilism, which only motivates me further towards the opposite extreme.
Go tell a Native American to completely abandon their ethnic identity, sever connection with their ancestry, and forego any sense of pride in the history and culture of their people on your basis that they had no direct role in its creation. Remind them of the shame and horror of their crimes against my people: the scalping, pedophilia, gang-rape, torture, cannibalism, etc.
Of course, you would not dare. This is a propaganda that you reserve only for my family. We unapologetically reject it. You should too.
I think it is right to be grateful to your ancestors for their achievements in ultimately giving you the life that you have.
But proud? Hubris lies down that path.
Re: luck, yes, it is absolutely luck that you were born to the parents you were born to, located in the place you were born in. I think you have the sense of the luck direction flipped from what GP meant. If you look at it from the perspective of your ancestors, then sure, your birth wasn't luck: it was a choice (or an accident, I suppose).
But from the perspective of you, it's luck: you didn't get to choose the circumstances surrounding your birth. You got lucky in that sense; you could have instead had bad luck and been born on the streets in a third-world country to a drug-addicted single parent with no money and no prospects.
No I couldn't, it's totally impossible for the embryo formed by my mother and father to have teleported into the womb of a junkie on the other side of the world. I was always and only going to be born to my parents.
I do agree that it feels like we're arguing different things, as I know you know this. And I am very suspicious of people who argue the "luck" angle here as it is usually an attempt to erase my entire history and assert that some random "unlucky" starving Ethiopian has just as much right to be in my shoes instead. When zoomed out, this can clearly be weaponised as a justification for mass migration.
both the blinding and defiant fist are intentional. there is only one way to die and he controls it
This should go quickly away unless they confirm he had official permit and he is just "anti-establishment" hipster.
The whole piece is great - https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-...
Or if you have 5 mins to spare, the album version with Bill Laswell is even better - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nt9vMF01Pd8
I suspect that Banksy and his fans are sure that it's "the other" Britons that are blinded, it's not a self-reflection prompt for them. Maybe I am wrong.
Maybe a more powerful piece of art would have that self reflection effect across the board. As is it feels about as nuanced as "fuck trump" and similar. If you already agree you already agree, if not then you just think it's stupid. So ultimately feels like impotent art unless I am totally misunderstanding.
What if the design was made by generative model, does the statue become more or less valuable?
> Maybe a more powerful piece of art would have that self reflection effect across the board. As is it feels about as nuanced as "fuck trump" and similar. If you already agree you already agree, if not then you just think it's stupid.
So close. Based on your own statement, it appears that you disagree with the proposed thesis by this piece of art.
> So ultimately feels like impotent art unless I am totally misunderstanding.
Maybe you should re-examine why you think it is stupid/lame. Is it because it calls you out and you don't like that feeling?
i.e., as a member of the group of people represented by the statue?
I think you're wildly overestimating the general population's capacity for nuance.
Particularly in a world where nuance goes the same way as wood logs near a fire place.
Baby, psyop me, one more time
1. https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/global-a...
Sure, they might have had generated enough sacred reverence, those bloodbaths of past.
I would like to disagree on this point.
... that blinds you to any alternative; that indoctrinates distrust in different perspectives; that elevates the humanity of fellow believers above others.
Some artists have questioned if Banksy, once considered anti-establishment, now enjoys special treatment from Britain's powers that be.
In 2014, Vice Media asked: 'Why Is Banksy the Only Person Allowed to Vandalize Britain’s Walls?' The story quoted David Speed, a street artist who ran a British graffiti collective. "It's very much one rule for him and another rule for everyone else ... When street artists do it, it's vandalism. When Banksy does it, it's an art piece."
Contacted by Reuters, Speed praised Banksy as "a really important artist of modern times." Yet he still wonders why "one artist should be able to have carte blanche and everyone else would be subject to penalties."
I know firsthand what can be done with a hardhat, clipboard, and high-viz vest. IMO it is far more likely that Banksy is just really good at social engineering in ways that other street artists are not.
As seen by the raised fist, the man is angry because the operation Epic Fiber has caused a blockage just in the strait of Trump, so is a metaphor about the dangers of having too much nuts in the world. Banski has planned also that the flag ends totally white by seagull activity; so this, always evolving and deceivingly simple piece of art, gives us hope for a future restoration of the blockage soon before we end nuking everybody on the process.
Denouncing the raise to nuttionalism while providing hope for the future. A powerful message.
See?, this is art, everybody can sell anything with a little practice. If they can sell a banana taped in a wall, so you can too.
Historically, the black flag is strongly associated with anarchism, anti-state politics, revolt, and rejection of national authority.
Had he colored it in the union jack, then I would've said it was nationalism, and the person is blinded by nationalism.
But. This is Banksy, black-and-white Banksy, so there may be no symbolism behind the black flag, but it's just very interesting. I can't accept that he would not have considered the color of the flag.
But from an American perspective a guy wearing a suit while carrying an "anarchist" flag wouldn't be inappropriate, either.
We anarchists with careers do in fact exist. There are probably dozens of us outside of tech, even!
If I had to ballpark it, I’d guess something like 1:5 people in tech are broadly aligned with me politically (meaning “less extreme, but directionally similar”) while maybe 1:100 would self-identify as an anarchist and 1:500 both self-identify and align fully with me.
Does that help?
Whose flag is blinding whom?
But this is kind of "water is wet" message.
The Brexit vote was a decade ago and though many mourn the outcome, it’s a bit late to be erecting artwork about it. References to being blinded by a flag now are probably about the particular far-right organizing of the last year or so that employs the English and UK flags in a very particular way. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Raise_the_Colours
This campaign, which has been highly visible on social media and in physical neighborhoods, claims to promote patriotism. However, it has been deeply polarising, with critics and anti-racism groups arguing it is being used by far-right groups to mark territory and intimidate immigrant communities.
I feel more that it is a commentary on "blind nationalism" of which Brexit is one example, but not the only one, or the most recent. Brexit may be "over" now, but the mindset is still very much with us in the UK and elsewhere. In other words, any successful art relates to more than one specific situation, and allows more than one reading.
“Rage against the machine” by doing what the machine wants type thing.
Much of the media relentlessly continues with its gaslighting of course because the establishment wants and needs immigration.
But people know they barely hear English in many parts of England, see high streets full of criminal fronts [0], know that many are a net tax drain, know an increased population is straining services and housing and so on.
It's about failed immigration - regardless if they're from Poland or from Pakistan.
It is ironically many on the left who are stupid and manipulated by the presence of some far right loons, which gives them a convenient excuse to listen to nobody except themselves. They are blinded by their own smugness and have been manipulated by the pro-immigration establishment sadly
[0] https://www.tradingstandards.uk/media/3183107/hidden-in-plai...
Nationalismus ist eine Kinderkrankheit. Er ist die Masern der Menschheit.
"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
... quote via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
The guy is well known and very much part of the establishment.
I know saying RTFA is supposed to be against the HN guidelines, but it takes an amazing amount of confidently ignorant chutzpah to declare something "a complete myth perpetuated by the popular press" when the subtitle of this article literally states:
> less than two months after a journalism investigation into Banksy’s true identity was published
long been known as establishment friendly