In the aftermath of much ugliness connected to discord over the relevance and meaning of Confederate symbols in contemporary America, there is one thought that sparked a smile across my face. It was the idea of one of the knuckle dragging, blood and soil boobs that protest with great vigor against the removal of statues dedicated to Robert E Lee, visiting the UK. They would touch down in Heathrow and venture with trepidation into the fabled Londonistan, but then be taken aback to see hundreds of establishments embellished with the iconography which they are fighting to defend back home. They would then recoil with furious anger that in the land of their ancestors, this iconography has been appropriated to signify the availability of halal fried chicken.

Say what you will about the causes of the American civil war, cultural appropriation or the nutritional value of cheap fried chicken – there is something hilarious about the fact for millions of white British people, the symbols being fought over in the United States, represents neither heritage or hate – but instead, battered drumsticks and donner meat, under one roof and at low low prices.

The halal fried chicken shop in the United Kingdom, be it a Dixy Chicken or Alabama Fried Chicken or whatever, has become an icon for a specifically British sort of multiculturalism. Managed near exclusively by Asian Muslims, they are, as illustrated by the insightful Channel 4 documentary The Fried Chicken Shop, places frequented by people from all walks of British life. While true not all bare a name with confederate connotations, there are still enough that do to render the use of such iconography as a symbol of white pride of this side of the Atlantic ridiculous.

The power and meaning of historic and national symbols is a very complex and contextual matter. Take the Union Jack, the power and meaning of which is completely different when emblazonment on jars of home made jam at a Cotswold country fair, to when painted on the end of Belfast terrace houses. Whether there is any appropriate context for public displays of confederate symbols in modern America is another issue. What is clear though from recent events in Charlottesville is that such symbols are still a rallying point for a lot of deeply unpleasant people with deeply unpleasant views. These people need denied of their means to intimate, and what better way than by forcefully pointing out that, to much of their blood kin, in the land of their ancestors, their flag is the flag of halal fried chicken. Pseudo soul food, made by Muslims, in places where people of all races and religions come to eat together.