Author Topic: Gunpowder day!  (Read 1391 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

ZOldDude

  • The Unknown Rank!
  • Administrator
  • MasstKer
  • *
  • Posts: 20874
  • Old School TKC
    • View Profile
    • Admin
Gunpowder day!
« on: November 05, 2011, 10:04:06 pm »

Quote
'The real power of it'
While Fawkes' image has been romanticized over the past 400 years, he was a criminal who tried to blow up a government building. It would be hard to imagine Americans one day wearing Timothy McVeigh masks to protest the government or corporate greed.

Lewis Call, an assistant history professor at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo, said the masked protesters are adopting a powerful symbol that has shifted meaning through the centuries.

"You can seize hold of it for any political purpose you want," he said. "That's the real power of it."
Assault arrest highlights 'Occupy' security concerns

Fawkes was a Catholic insurrectionist executed for the bombing attempt. In the years immediately following his execution, Nov. 5 was England's official celebration for defeating Fawkes, said Call, who has written about the nexus of Fawkes, "V for Vendetta" and modern-day protests.

Call said over the next three centuries, people in England started using Fawkes' image in different ways. Some used Fawkes as a symbol for putting limits on state power. Others held him up as a freedom fighter.

Then came the comic book, a nihilistic story set in a futuristic England. And the movie. People began thinking of him as a libertarian or even anarchist hero.

"Gradually over the centuries, the meaning of Guy Fawkes has dramatically changed," said Call. "The reputation of Guy Fawkes has been recuperated. Before he was originally seen as a terrorist trying to destroy England. Now he's seen more as a freedom fighter, a fighter for individual liberty against an oppressive regime. The political meaning of that figure has transformed."

Nearly two years after the film "V for Vendetta" was released, the mod-apper group Anonymous wore the Guy Fawkes masks depicted in the movie during protests against the Church of Scientology. Then came Wikileaks and the Occupy movement.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45162958/ns/us_news-life/#.TrQ_BHKwVbE


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes
« Last Edit: November 06, 2011, 01:18:00 am by ZOldDude »

*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*

ZOldDude

  • The Unknown Rank!
  • Administrator
  • MasstKer
  • *
  • Posts: 20874
  • Old School TKC
    • View Profile
    • Admin
Re: Nov. 5th
« Reply #1 on: November 05, 2011, 11:36:00 pm »
No wonder the King was hated...
Quote
the condemned would be drawn backwards to his death, by a horse, his head near the ground. They were to be "put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both". Their genitals would be cut off and burnt before their eyes, and their bowels and hearts removed. They would then be decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies displayed so that they might become "prey for the fowls of the air".

*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*