At London's gay pride parade on Sunday, a man showed up with a parody ISIS flag — with dildos and butt plugs instead of Arabic script. CNN, bless their hearts, mistook it for an actual ISIS flag, breathlessly reporting fears that ISIS was in the midst of the London rally, making both the flag and the mystery man somewhat famous.
ISIS dildo man: I’m the ISIS dildo man and there’s nothing funny about ISIS dildos
Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he covers ideology and challenges to democracy, both at home and abroad. His book on democracy, The Reactionary Spirit, was published 0n July 16. You can purchase it here.
It turns out that the man carrying the flag was an artist named Paul Coombs. And Coombs, in a new Guardian op-ed, gives the story of what really happened, along with his thoughts on it.
First, he says, it’s important that we know the flag is a serious attempt to profane ISIS’s most recognizable symbol. Coombs wanted to show “as little respect to this flag as ISIS shows to the religion and people they claim to represent” so that “when people saw it they would think, ‘dildos.’”
Fair enough.
Was Coombs worried about anyone thinking it was an ISIS flag? Nah:
Three policemen held out the flag and inspected it, grinning, acknowledging immediately that these were definitely dildos and butt plugs.
The police asked him to take it down anyway, because they were getting complaints. But then, “several hours later,” CNN began its breathless live report on an ISIS presence at London Pride:
CNN correspondent Lucy Pawle described my flag as a “very bad mimicry” but the only bad mimicry I could see was CNN’s impression of a reputable news organization.
#Sickburn. To Coombs, the whole thing feels like a job well done:
On a message board someone posted: “Whenever I see the Isis flag anywhere, all I can see is dildos!” Mission accomplished.
In conclusion, ISIS is bad; dildos can be good or bad depending on how they’re used; ISIS dildos would probably be bad — but who’s to say.
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