Yesterday I criticised totalitarian forces who have draped themselves in rainbow flags but instead of promoting tolerance, they‘re censoring and abusing women, targeting children and blackmailing institutions into supporting their self-identification, reality-denying ideology.

It didn’t go well with some people, who maintained that rainbow flag should not be criticised because it also legitimately represents fight of LGB people against enduring discrimination. I understand this. However, from personal experience, this worries me.

In 1991 Croatia, then still in Yugoslavia, raised the flag under which almost a million Serbs were exterminated, alongside, Jews, Gypsies, partisans, gays and disabled people, in Croatian nazi concentration camps. My country is riddled with monuments on the sites of mass graves

Serbs who still lived in Croatia, then some 40% of the population, objected very strongly. And they were goaded and abused while the international community was gaslighted that all that was only designed to “empower” Croatian people. War ensued, I’m sure you heard about it.

Following the war, Serbian population in Croatia was culled. People exiled and murdered in the name of a flag. A flag many Croatians are draping themselves with to this day, with no remorse for the vast human tragedy that was perpetrated in its name. Flags and symbols can do this

There are many more learned people than me who can tell you why symbols are so dangerous, when they are seen as sacred and above criticism. Thugs take over legitimate causes all the time and use familiar symbols to shut up opposition. See swastika.

Now I’m obviously not equating the rainbow flag with a swastika flag. But the totalitarian push that is being enacted, while the rainbow flag is used to assume the “goodness and righteousness” of anyone who uses it is exactly the kind of danger we have seen before.

Totalitarian regimes almost always masquerade as “progressive” and rely on passionate yet gullible and naive young people to act as its foot soldiers. This is how we got to the point where official LGBT organisations are maligning lesbians for being same-sex attracted, but

Because they do it while draped in rainbow flags, and while repeating mantras about inclusivity and tolerance, anyone who points out their wrong doing is automatically accused of homophobia. Social media driven outrage culture is the instrument of force in this sense, and

If you’ve been paying any attention to the travesties that have occured so far, sterilisation of gnc children, forced removal of single sex spaces, women being raped in prisons, shelters and bathrooms, destruction of women’s sport, women losing their livelihoods because they

Offended the rainbow brigade, you will know that we are knees deep in totalitarian chaos already. How many human victims of this do we deem acceptable collateral damage before we dare challenge a misuse of a symbol?

I will tell you this much. My entire life and lives of my ancestors have been marked by abuse of symbols and humanitarian catastrophes. I don’t care about your false accusations. I will speak against totalitarianism wherever. see it. I will not be silenced on account of a flag.

And if you care about all of our future, you will be wise to understand that there are no sacred cows. There are just people, and their suffering and that needs to be your moral compass and a trigger, not a colourful piece of cloth, a name or a symbol.