Niall McCrae
21st Century Wire
Over four billion of the world’s people are living under stars. I don’t mean the distant suns of outer space, which flicker in the night shy, but the symbolic depiction on national flags. Why is this pointed shape so ubiquitous, and what is it its significance?
‘Hold our star for us’, Remainers plead to their friends in Europe. They are still wishing on the star that represented Britain’s membership of the EU. The celestial circle has grown with expansion of the federalist bloc, but had its first reverse when the UK finally left in 2020, four years after the vote for Brexit.
With our iconic union flag, and the crosses of constituent nations (as well as the Welsh dragon), we have never had stars as a national symbol. At the Last Night of the Proms, the BBC gave prominence to the EU fanatics in the crowd who politicise this annual patriotic celebration by flying the flag of the Brussels-based superstate. If the EU flag seems alien to our culture, it is also overriding the distinct heritage of our continental neighbours, whose flags are striped rather than astral (Germany, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, France, Austria, etcetera), or with Christo-pagan crosses (Scandinavia). .
I’m no vexillogist, but clearly the star is a pervasive symbol in national and supernational insignia. The five-pointed star is the standard depiction on flags or symbols of merit, but there are variations on the theme. The easiest way to draw a star is with two equilateral triangles, one pointing upwards and the other downwards, partially overlapping each other. Hey presto – a Star of David. Another exceptions is the seven-pointed Australian display of the Southern Cross constellation.
Elsewhere, five points are the rule: the EU, numerous African and Middle-Eastern countries, and the Stars and Stripes with a star for each state (emphasising constitutional autonomy).
Despite being sworn adversaries of the USA, the communist regimes of China and other Far-Eastern revolutionary states also used the five-point star. In the 1920s Leon Trotsky chose this as the symbol for international communism. He was inspired by the Jewish mystical Kabbalah with its iconic pentagram in the middle of a Star of David. The US military establishment in Washington is another five-edged shape: the Pentagon. What is the significance of this phenomenon?
The late Maltese psychologist Edward de Bono, in I am Right – You are Wrong (1990) observed: –
‘If, in the scene we are confronting, there is something we recognise, we may ignore the rest and follow only that pattern.’
According to de Bono, symbolic associations are wired into neural circuitry. Have we been trained to see the state as a source of brightness, and thus power? The star is rooted in the principle of monarchy as spiritually empowered rule, deigning the divine rights of kings. Today, it is impersonalised as the state, but as in the past, it conveys a message of unquestionable authority.
The EU flag is a grand deception, suggesting sovereign states in fraternity. As the united states of Europe is controlled from the centre, there should be a large star in the middle of the flag. Perhaps a more apt presentation would be a black hole, sucking the nation states into an abyss, depriving them of light. Whether their people know it or not, the civic democracies of Europe are being sucked into a void.
The EU was the first great accomplishment for the secular globalists. We have lost our way, misguided by star power with pretence of progress. The stars are now aligning for a totalitarian new world order. A new Enlightenment is needed, or perhaps a Second Coming, and a another Star of Bethlehem?
Acknowledgment – The author would like to thank James McCarthy and Bob Lawrence for cogent advice.
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Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018). See his 21WIRE archive here.
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