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I never felt the need to display a flag around the house. I’m not overly patriotic, and I am not a big fan of our royal family, so I never saw the use of having a flag.

But that changed this week. There was an attack against the COC, the Dutch association for LGBTQIA+, where people were attacked and the rainbow flag was set on fire. They asked people to fly the rainbow flag today, to show their support. And I got so angry that I ordered a flag set and a progress flag just so that I could do exactly that.

LGBTQIA+ people (with trans people getting the worst attacks at the moment) are the canary in the coalmine of human rights. Fascists everywhere are undertaking a coordinated attack against this group that is socially the weakest, and a lot of people are falling for it. But trans rights are human rights. And once you are OK with violating the human rights of others, then no amount of privilege will insulate you from what will come next.

Fascism is built on exclusion, on identifying an ‘other’ to attack, and that circle will get smaller and smaller. Even if you don’t care now, you will get into the firing line sooner or later. Nazi eye colour charts were a thing, and their obsession with ‘purity’ meant that fewer and fewer people were deemed ‘acceptable’…

Solidarity with everyone whose human rights are being violated because of their sexuality is an anti-fascist stance.

The expected delivery date was Friday, which would have been nicely on time, but the package was delayed. Luckily the package was delivered just before we had to leave to the cinema (we had tickets for Makoto Shinkai’s most recent movie, Suzume) and when we returned we hung the holder and for the rest of the day we proudly flew the progress flag.