Should anti-imperialist US socialists at the heart of the Anglo-American empire appropriate their national flag? Yes.
The argument that they should not because the crimes of US imperialism have forever tainted that symbol ignores the following, which I will explain via the distinction made by Aleksandr Dugin between land-power ‘tellurocracy’, and naval-power ‘thalassocracy’.
In the global struggle between the ‘thalassocratic’ West & the ‘tellurocratic’ Eurasian bloc, the latter has an obvious ally in the ‘tellurocratic’ impulses within the US and within the Anglo-American world more broadly, Australia included.
These impulses are from those impoverished by deindustrialisation, which is the price paid for US Dollar hegemony. They come from a place of wanting to restore past productive greatness, hence #MAGA in the US, however, this can only be realised by ending the ability of the US to print its imports, which has decimated local productive capacity, causing inflation.
These tellurocratic impulses are also *potentially* anti-imperialist insofar as rebuilding US industrial capacity means the US would no longer need to sabotage the trajectory of Eurasian integration with the broader postcolonial world.
If these tellurocratic impulses within the US were to gain hegemony, the US could wean itself off the need to sabotage the outside world as its means to control inflation. Therefore, yes, US socialists should adopt their national flag to give expression to these impulses.
In Australia, the equivalent of the US flag is not the official Australian flag, but the Eureka flag. The official flag represents the failure to seize independence by force of arms, and the failure to shake off the ‘convict mentality’ of being culturally and ideologically brainwashed by US and British influence.
Most Australians cannot tell the difference between the Anglo-American thalassocratic interests that are leading us to war with China, and Australia’s own independent interests. We have enough natural resources to become an isolationist utopia, but our refusal to embrace economic nationalism as a consequence of that brainwashing limits our potential.