It was the mask worn by V, the revolutionary leader in the comic book series "V for Vendetta" published in the s. In the plot Britain has become a fascist state ruled by violent corrupt cops, out of control secret police, paedophile priests, broadcasters who make blatant propaganda. As the society collapses, though the hero, V, aims for anarchism, what he gets is anomie - a society of "take what you want" in which rioters and hedonists take power as centralised power collapses.
I think you can see from this brief sketch why people are taking a renewed interest in the world of "V for Vendetta" and the iconic mask. It is rapidly becoming a cultural "meme" - a self-reproducing symbol. It sits, of course, on the mast-head of Britain's most popular right-wing libertarian politics blog - Guido's order-order. I am not sure where it is going. But now I've seen a plumber stopping the traffic outside the English National Opera to protest traffic fines wearing the V-mask, I am pretty sure it is going somewhere.
Image source, Getty Images. The mask was worn by a character who challenged an authoritarian government in the film V for Vendetta. View comments. And for centuries after Britons would use these masks, with that distinct caricature of his face, to make effigies to destroy on the plot's anniversary: Nov.
It's quite possible this story sounds familiar to you, even if you're not the sort to follow history too carefully, and there's a very good reason for that. Portrayed as a blade-wielding, tyranny-shattering vigilante with a Guy Fawkes' facade permanently fixed to his face, the protagonist "V" helped vault the mask back into the public spotlight. Just a couple years later, and they were popping up all over the place, the face of a new generation of high-tech protests.
As for what it really means to the individual wearer, that's harder to know. Fawkes' personal motivations and actions needn't weigh into it quite as much as the resulting history and iconography. Fawkes was part of a group of Catholics who were unhappy with the direction the government was taking. In protest, they sent a threatening letter to Lord Monteagle, a member of the House of Lords who was planning to attend the opening of Parliament. During the second search, a royal official discovered a man guarding a storeroom filled with firewood and 36 barrels of gunpowder.
The man identified himself as John Johnson, but his name was actually Guy Fawkes, and he and his co-conspirators were executed as examples to others. Fawkes and the mask that emerged later became the symbol for what would later be called the Gunpowder Plot of The history of the Guy Fawkes mask dates back to the late s when children reportedly began wearing paper masks with his image on them to beg for money.
But it entered mainstream culture in the s in a comic magazine called Warrior. In , the Guy Fawkes image was introduced even wider in the graphic novel V for Vendetta , which was adapted as a film in That same year, a group of protestors appeared outside the DC Comics office to protest V for Vendetta , with an opposing group wearing Guy Fawkes masks in counterprotest. It was during this event that the Guy Fawkes mask became a symbol of protest.
The Guy Fawkes mask first gained international attention when it appeared in September as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest. The masks had a practical use for Anonymous.
In , the group needed a way to leave the safety of their homes to protest Scientology, and the Guy Fawkes masks seemed the perfect disguise. Since , Anonymous has used its collective technological prowess to launch cyberattacks at various institutions. Using its hacking power, the group became known for shutting down websites and exposing members of hate organizations. However, the group seems to have lost effectiveness in recent years as its membership has split in various directions.
In an interview with Vice , a spokesperson from YourAnonNews revealed that the election divided the group. The last known major cyber-based threat from the group came in when members of the group threatened both the Clinton and Trump campaigns.
The Guy Fawkes mask lives on, though, most recently being used during an attack on a Minnesota county website. Whether aspiring hacktivists are paying homage to the original protestor or Anonymous remains to be seen.
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