{"id":6314,"date":"2023-11-11T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6314"},"modified":"2023-11-11T09:00:27","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T09:00:27","slug":"the-remembrance-poppy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6314","title":{"rendered":"The Remembrance Poppy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I don&#8217;t usually wear one of those red poppies &#8211; not out of a lack of respect for the war dead or veterans of wars, but because of &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/magazine-34720464\">poppy fascism<\/a>&#8220;. It&#8217;s all very well choosing to wear the red poppy, but it should also be fine to choose not to wear the red poppy &#8211; even the Royal British Legion supports those who don&#8217;t choose to wear it: &#8220;If the poppy became compulsory it would lose its meaning and significance.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just look at the abuse those in the public eye who choose not to wear it receive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And some of the reasons for not wearing it are perfectly reasonable &#8211; some politicians <em>do<\/em> use it as a means of promoting war and nationalism. Distasteful in the extreme. And very much associated with the far-right &#8211; the very kind of people many of the war dead were fighting against. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, some of the reasons for not wearing it can sometimes seem inappropriate. It&#8217;s all very well being against some of Britain&#8217;s wars and even against some of the actions of British soldiers (such as <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)\">Bloody Sunday<\/a>), but the poppy is about remembering the war dead and veterans. A group who very rarely had any choice about where they were sent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"695\" height=\"695\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=695%2C695&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-6315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=96%2C96&amp;ssl=1 96w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=24%2C24&amp;ssl=1 24w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=36%2C36&amp;ssl=1 36w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=48%2C48&amp;ssl=1 48w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?resize=64%2C64&amp;ssl=1 64w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/1916-motrhead.jpg?w=1400&amp;ssl=1 1400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t usually wear one of those red poppies &#8211; not out of a lack of respect for the war dead or veterans of wars, but because of &#8220;poppy fascism&#8220;. It&#8217;s all very well choosing to wear the red poppy, but it should also be fine to choose not to wear the red poppy &#8211; <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=6314' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7,3],"tags":[106,2181,1424,103],"class_list":["post-6314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-politics","tag-poppy","tag-rbl","tag-ww1","tag-wwii","category-7-id","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mstdn.social\/@grumpygrimnir\/111391095264999833","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1DQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6316,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6314\/revisions\/6316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}