(I've posted this almost every year since I had this blog. Posting it does not mean I am a pacifist or a hippie. I just like to share this stuff.)
The “Peace Sign” was created on
February 21, 1958 by British graphic designer and Christian pacifist
Gerald Holtom. Holtom was tasked with creating the banners and signs for
a nuclear disarmament march in London, and he wanted a visual that
would stick in the public’s mind.
The peace symbol debuted on April
4, 1958, Easter weekend that year, at a rally of the Direct Action
Committee Against Nuclear War, which included a march from London to
Aldermaston. The marchers carried 500 of Holtom's peace symbols on
sticks, with half of the signs black on a white background and the other
half white on a green background. In Britain, the symbol became the
emblem for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, thus causing the design
to become synonymous with that Cold War cause. Holtom was a
conscientious objector during World War II and thus a likely supporter
of its message.
The design is, in part, modeled after naval
semaphore flags that sailors use to communicate. Holtom combined the
codes for “N” (two flags angled down at 45 degrees) for “nuclear” and
“D” (one flag pointed straight up and one flag pointed straight down)
for “disarmament.”
Holtom never copyrighted his design for the peace
symbol intentionally, so anyone in the world can use it for any purpose,
in any medium, for free.
Europe is lucky the nuclear disarment crowd didn't get their way. The Soviet Union would have caused WW III by waltzing across Europe in the late 1960s or 1970s if it had not been for nuclear deterrence. I wonder how many idiots in the West would have just welcome them with open arms.
ReplyDeleteOf course, a successful Soviet Union would not have allowed for the Islamization of Europe. So there is that.
I had never taken the Islamization of Europe into account in relation to nuclear disarmament. Good point.
DeleteI always saw it as the foot print of a coward(chicken) and scummy hippie peace freaks. Some one to be mocked and ridiculed.
ReplyDeleteI never was someone who waved the peace sign, and that idea never seemed to come up around anybody I hung out with but then again, like I said, we never went around waving it or promoting it.
DeleteWe used to call it "footprint of the American chicken"
ReplyDeleteBluesman
Well, that seems to be the overwhelming stance on the 'peace sign'. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, because I never developed a negative opinion about it ... never had much of an opinion on it either way actually.
DeleteI've always seen it as an upside-down broken cross.
ReplyDeleteI never connected it with anything religious ... I guess there's a lot of ideas about what it represents.
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