Unionists and Loyalists, the likes of Jamie Bryson, are shouting from the top of bonfire pallets across the North that their culture is under threat.
But what is this culture really?
Irish culture is our language, our music and dance and our Gaelic sports, most of which goes back to the Celts. The Scottish and the Welsh people have their own distinctive languages and cultures.
Unionism/Loyalism can only point to a British identity and this what they claim as being their culture.
What British identity?
The ancient Britons allied themselves with the Romans against the marauding Scots, Picts and Anglo-Saxons. When the Romans finally decided that there was no place like Rome and cleared out, the Anglo-Saxons, who came from Germany, eventually defeated the Britons who became the Welsh.
Then the Normans came over from France.
They were descended from the Vikings of Scandinavia and in 1066 they defeated the Anglo-Saxons, who as I mentioned, came from Germany.
King William was a Dutch man of course and the present British royal family are Germanic (Germany again!!) Their real name being the Saxe-Coburg and Gothas. They had to take the name of Windsor Castle in 1917 because of anti-German sentiment during WW1.
Do you get where I'm coming from?
That's right, somewhere between Germany and France.
The fact is, the British, who the Unionists and Loyalists see as being the basis of their cultural identity, are actually more European than the EU they want to leave.
As for their bonfires.
Saint Patrick came over to Ireland from Roman Britain, aye the Roman Britain of the Britons, the Picts, the Scots, the Anglo-Saxons and of course the Romans. In order to win the pagan Celts over to Christianity Patrick adopted their tradition of lighting bonfires.
The Celts loved their bonfires and before long Patrick had converted them all to Christianity. Not long after that there was the Roman Catholics... The same Roman Catholics who the Dutch man King William, who was backed by the Pope, defeated at the Battle of the Boyne.
No wonder Jamie Bryson looks confused...
Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie
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