By Alex Reeves - @afreeves23

It’s very confusing this patriotism business. Flags, parades, hysteria. Just how far are we willing to go to express our love for one’s country? It’s not often the media at both ends of the places I call home, Việt Nam and the UK, are captivated by the same issue. Normally the news cycles are divided by more geopolitical facets than I can shake a sociology textbook at. Yet here we are, painted roundabouts and roadblocks. How much is enough and what are we willing to sacrifice to showcase it? 

Back in the UK, the debate revolves around whether we should even fly the national flag at all, sporting events aside. Many feel that excessive patriotism has become a mask for something more sinister. Peel that mask away and nationalism stares back: an ideology based in supremacy, superiority is granted by nothing more than the geographical coincidence of where someone is born. Dig deeper and you find xenophobia and racism all too often bubbling in the groundwater of this particular hate-well.

Việt Nam, in contrast, has somewhat converted me, showing off a very different kind of patriotism. In Britain, a parade of flag-waving patriots can feel hostile to outsiders, a signal that foreigners are not welcome. Here, it’s quite the opposite. Strangers cheer, shake my hand and drag me into the celebration. Handshakes and hugs, it’s not a show of exclusion, but a celebration of how far the country has come since conquering the grim ideology of supremacy that once occupied it.

In Britain, patriotism often risks, perhaps unintentionally, glorifying a colonial legacy. In Việt Nam, it commemorates overcoming one. That is the clearest way I can explain to friends back home why I wince at waving a Union Jack but will happily paint my face with the Vietnamese flag. It’s almost as if there’s nuance in the issues of history, pride, and identity, something we seem to care little for in a modern world that’s keen to grasp at any convenient false equivalency, so long as it serves as justification.

Still, no country is immune to excess. My weekly whinge is that both of my 'homes' have gone a little road crazy. Back in Blighty’, to my confusion and amusement, it’s vigilante roundabouts painters. Here, to my frustration in equal measure, the entire city centre is shut down, repeatedly, for days of pageantry. Once might be fine. Five times in a fortnight, though? You tell me. Maybe I’m still not much of a patriot after all. VNS