Liberal Lies: It is just a peace sign. Truth: It is a political and a propaganda tool.
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It is not just a peace sign. It is a political message -
The British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament details the origins of its logo.
Designed by British artist and conscientious objector Gerald Holtom for what then was the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, the bisected circle with two downward spokes combined the semaphores for the letters "N" - two flags held down at a 45 degree angle - and "D," one up, one down.
The symbol was unveiled Feb. 21, 1958, according to the New York Public Radio show "On the Media," and made its public debut at a 1958 Easter weekend anti-nuclear march, according to CND. (1)
Gerold Holtom, the same guy whose deeply felt pacifism led him to spend World War II working on a farm in Norfolk as a conscientious objector. (2) We can understand that right? What with Hitler bombing the snot out of London and all, we can understand how an englishman could conscientiously object to England defending herself.
Holtom had been commissioned by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The CND, headed by philosopher Bertrand Russell, was planning an Easter march to Canterbury Cathedral to protest the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.
After doodling around with several versions of the Christian cross set in a circle, Holtom hit on the crow's-foot idea. This had a couple things going for it.
First, it was a combination of the semaphore signals for N and D, standing for Nuclear Disarmament. N is two flags held in an upside-down V, and D is one flag pointed straight up and the other pointed straight down.
Second, the crow's-foot has an ancient history as a symbol of death and despair--it looks like somebody spreading his hands in a gesture of defeat. The symbol is shown in a 1955 tome called The Book of Signs by Rudolph Koch, a German calligrapher, although it's unclear whether Holtom saw it there.
The circle, finally, can mean "eternity," "the unborn child," and so on. From this you can no doubt cook up a suitably apocalyptic interpretation of the symbol as a whole.
During the heyday of the peace movement, other interpretations of the symbol were also offered. A national Republican newsletter noted that it looked a lot like an emblem used by the Nazis during World War II--an apparent coincidence. (3)
We all know Bertrand Russell, right?
Still, Russell is best known in many circles as a result of his campaigns against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and against western involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1950s and 1960s. However, Russell's social activism stretches back at least as far as 1910, when he published his Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, and to 1916, when he was convicted and fined in connection with anti-war protests during World War I. (4)
Yes, and a socialist , bolshevist , pacifist , and admired by Chomsky .
1. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/21/7209
2. http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5146
3. http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/435/what-is-the-origin-of-the-peace-symbol
