Home > News > Where did all the Danish flags come from?

It's a fair question, following a weekend of protests in the cartoon controversy. Danish flags were reportedly burned as far afield as Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. Are we really to suppose that the flag shops of Jakarta happened to have plenty in stock, just in case it was Denmark that became the focus of Muslim demonstrators? Or that some entrepreneur in the Palestinian territories (trading as Danish Flags of Gaza Inc, perhaps?) is finally watching the money roll in, after years spent enduring sarcastic jibes? Obviously not. But on the other hand, there's no evidence for the murmur - gaining volume on rightwing blogs and in the Daily Telegraph - that the availability of flags might mean the protests were not truly spontaneous. To explain why, we're going to have to get a bit vexillological. (Look it up.)

First, not all flags are equal: printing a design on to fabric is far easier, cheaper and quicker than sewing the various pieces together. "You could whizz up hundreds of printed flags in a matter of hours," says Judy Johnstone, of the UK flag manufacturer Portland. The Danish flag, an off-centred white cross on a red background, would be much quicker to improvise than, say, the flag of Montserrat, which features a woman in a long flowing green dress holding a crucifix and a harp. Additionally, judging by the photos, a number of protesters have got the flags wrong: one looked Swiss, one looked wobbly, and several (according to the flag-obsessed blog Vexillarium, at vexillarium.blogspot.com) are "technically ... flags of the French province of Savoy". Much as the demonstrations seem to have been at least partially organised, everything about these flags smacks of improvisation.

The current uproar is certainly one of those disputes where it can be difficult to know what to think. (Just because you support free speech, do you have to applaud bigoted, unfunny cartoonists? Just because you support freedom of belief, do you have to internalise some religion's special rule against portraying certain historical figures?) Conspiracy theories offer an appealing alternative - but, on the evidence so far, there is no conspiracy here.

2006-02-07

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