Stevenage, England – A tide of red and white rises across England – hoisted on lampposts, below pedestrian crossing, stuck on apartment windows.
Those who insist there insists on this campaign to raise the English flag, known as St. George, is an expression of patriotism; Others see the sudden prevalence of the banner, sometimes associated with football hooliganism and racism, as a hostile declaration of the rise in far -right fall.
The feverish debate has become global this week when Elon Musk, the former adviser to President Donald Trump and the donor of far-right movements in the world, published a photo of the flag on X. The vice-president JD Vance also organized his last intervention in British life, urging people to “repel the crazies” who criticize the pilot.
“ The operation increases colors’
In a country where the national flag is rare outside of sporting events, the banners who now float above a highway here in Stevenage are typical of those who have appeared at the national level in recent weeks as part of the basic operation “The operation increases colors”.
The flags were installed here last week by a group of five people, including Louis Turvey, who read the National Movement on Facebook, where he said that he obtained most of his news.
Turvey, 33, who has a Roma-Gitan heritage and was raised in London, 30 minutes by train, says he was in no way motivated by extreme right or hostile feelings. Rather, he wanted to do something positive and pilot his national flag “as you see on vacation in Greece or Spain,” he said.
“I saw all the flags go up across the country and I thought:” How beautiful is it? ” But I went for a small car trip Stevennage and I did not see it, “said NBC News in a cafe near Turvey, a former demolition worker with Auburn loops, a hipster mustache, a shirt at low end and a single ear. “I kept thinking: who will do it” here? “Well, you know what, I’m going to do it.”
He met his flag comrades through his online round “Stevenage Patriots” and had never met them before, he said. “I’m gay and many of my friends are girls, so I was quite nervous with four consecutive guys,” he added. “But it was such a beautiful evening, quite spiritual in fact, quite soothing.”
However, he quickly knew how much this debate became when, just when his group made his luggage, someone threw two Molotov cocktails on them, the second head of Turvey and covering his blood. “I thought I was going to die,” he said, visibly shaken by an incident which, according to him, has taken a break from his Switch activities at least.
Critics see darker sous-lights on the wider flag campaign.
They consider this wave of land as a little more than an aggressive and provocative message to people with immigrant training and non -white residents.
The anti-racist campaign group Hope Not Hate reported that the founders of Operation Raish The Colors include “well-known extreme extremists” and the allies of Tommy Robinson, the real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a fraudster condemned with a violent criminal record which has become a leading nationalist voice in Great Britain. Indeed, Musk himself used his audience X of 223 million to express his support for Robinson, as well as other far-right personalities in Great Britain and across Europe.
NBC News sent a message to the three administrators of the operation to return the color Facebook page, asking for comments and interviews with these founders, but has not received an answer.
These fears are widespread. When a cross of Saint-Georges was painted on the wall of the Baptist church of St. John, in the city of Lincoln, the vicar, Rachel Heskins, saw him as an “attempt to intimidate” the diversified local community.
“The Cross of St. George has become a symbol of nationalism which has become confused with patriotism-the two are very different,” she told the BBC.
All this occurs while immigration is now the first issue for voters in England, after having exceeded the cost of living cost which weakens millions, according to polls. The most popular political party is Reform UK, led by Trump Ally and his friend Nigel Farage, who recently declared that he would make a mass deportation of 600,000 people if he won the next elections in 2029.
National identity in Great Britain is doubly complicated because the United Kingdom includes the nations of England, Wales and Scotland and the province of Northern Ireland. During the Football World Cup and during certain holidays, the banner of England is widely used by people of all political and demographic stripes, but apart from these events, it was co -opted by nationalists, the extreme right and even fascists.
All data show that most people in Great Britain become more tolerant and less racist, said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, an identity-based reflection group. But the small minority that has extreme and racist opinions received a megaphone and a meeting place by poorly regulated social media platforms, he said.
It is certainly the experience of Moj, 44, a Briton with the Bangladais heritage, seated with his 11-year-old daughter on the Place de la Ville post-war faded in Stevenage.
“I remember being a child and having been called all kinds of racist names. I no longer understand,” said Moj, who, like many in this city of 80,000, refused to give his second name for fear of the local backlash.
Despite the improvement, the flag still has negative connotations for it. “In some areas, if I see an English flag, there is always a part of me who thinks, ok, I must be a little careful here,” he said.
Stevenage was imagined in 1946 as an example of modernism of “new city”, an integrated residential and residential space in which shelters families disseminated by war. Today – despite an essential regeneration system ($ 1.35 billion) on the way – its pebble pebble and dated glass stores feel like a figure for modern Britain.
As is the case in the West, many British are increasingly concerned and angry with the rise in prices, the decrepit public services, the lack of housing – and the perception that immigration has been poorly managed.
All this leaves “the United Kingdom seated on a disconnection and division tinderbox”, according to a long report last month by British Future. Composed by the cost of living crisis and supercharged by social media, it is a question of “transforming the chronic crisis of social disconnection into an acute threat of social division”.
Turvey suspended from flags in his community and then struck by a Molotov cocktail saw these divisions turn into life. He was bandaged, received stitches and made a statement to the police, although he has not seen his attackers and has not heard of officers since, he said.
At first, he thought that the blood flowing on his face was acidic (acid attacks are up in the United Kingdom), and he said that the incident had only added to chronic anxiety resulting from a homophobic attack in 2018.
Although it decreases any form of racism or negativity associated with the movement of the flag, he says that part of his motivation comes from the perception that the current Labor government “does not turn with the English” and “it is probably why people are so upset at the moment”.
Indeed, polls have been showing the work at its lowest support since 2019, going to only 20% of the vote in a Yougov survey this week. The Farage Reform Party, meanwhile, climbed to 28%, according to the same sounder, the highest of all parties, but not enough to govern without coalition, there was a national vote held today. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has taken an increasingly harsh rhetorical line on immigration.
He is under pressure to cope with the “small boats” crisis, in which more than 50,000 people arrived in small dangerous ships through the Channel in France since he won a landslide last year. Meanwhile, the government won a Battle of the Supreme Court on Friday so that asylum seekers can continue to be accommodated in a hotel in Epping, northeast of London, a site that has triggered numerous demonstrations and counter-protection.
The scandal of the so-called scandal of the so-called gangs: the sexual exploitation of young women and girls of men in British cities. An examination in June which revealed that, although most of the alleged authors are white, in certain regions, there were higher rates of men of Asian and Pakistani inheritance than their equivalent share of the population. At the same time, the examination warned that many of those who claimed indignation simply tried “to spread the division and hatred between the communities”.
And so, in the midst of all this, Up goes the English flag.
“There is probably one or two places where he is organic and he started below,” said Katawala, director of British Future. “Then there is another group – again, it is a fairly small group – which is very politically radicalized, knows what it does and why it does it.”
