Anarchist symbolism#Flag

{{main article|Red flag (politics)}}

File:Red flag II.svg

The red flag was one of first anarchist symbols and it was widely used in late 19th century by anarchists worldwide.{{cite web |url=http://cia.media.pl/symbole_ruchu_anarchistycznego |title=Barwy anarchistyczne: Skąd czarne i czarno-czerwone flagi? |author= |date=19 June 2012 |website=cia.media.pl |publisher=Centrum Informacji Anarchistycznej |language=pl |trans-title=Anarchist colours: Where are black and black-red flags from |access-date=4 September 2016 |archive-date=February 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224091417/https://cia.media.pl/symbole_ruchu_anarchistycznego |url-status=live}} Peter Kropotkin wrote that he preferred the use of the red flag.{{cite book |last=Kropotkin |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Kropotkin |title=Act for Yourselves. Articles from Freedom 1886-1907 |publisher=Freedom Press |year=1998 |isbn=0900384387 |page=128}} French anarchist Louise Michel wrote that the flag "frightens the executioners because it is so red with our blood. [...] Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking."{{cite book |title=The Red Virgin: Memoirs Of Louise Michel |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3uQMzo8yyD8C&q=%22The+red+banner%2C+which+has+always+stood+for+liberty%22 |year=1981 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |editor1-last=Lowry |editor1-first=Bullitt |editor2-last=Gunter |editor2-first=Elizabeth |isbn=0-81730063-5 |pages=193–194 |access-date=November 8, 2020 |archive-date=September 22, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922142421/https://books.google.com/books?id=3uQMzo8yyD8C&q=%22The+red+banner%2C+which+has+always+stood+for+liberty%22 |url-status=live}}

Use of the red flag by anarchists largely disappeared after the October Revolution, when red flags started to be associated only with Bolshevism and communist parties and authoritarian, bureaucratic and reformist social democracy, or authoritarian socialism.

File:BlackFlagSymbol.svg

The black flag has been associated with anarchism since the 1880s, when several anarchist organizations and journals adopted the name Black Flag.{{r|Baillargeon}}

Howard J. Ehrlich writes in Reinventing Anarchy, Again:

{{Quote

|The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood ... Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another ... But black is also beautiful. It is a colour of determination, of resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and defined ... So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth.{{r|An Anarchist FAQ}}{{cite book |editor-last=Ehrlich |editor-first=Howard J. |editor-link=Howard J. Ehrlich |title=Reinventing Anarchy, Again |date=1996 |publisher=AK Press |location=Edinburgh |isbn=978-1-873176-88-7 |pages=31–32 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ik9Io2muuuEC&q=%22why+the+black+flag%22 |chapter=Why the Black Flag? |access-date=October 30, 2020 |archive-date=September 22, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922142533/https://books.google.com/books?id=ik9Io2muuuEC&q=%22why+the+black+flag%22 |url-status=live}}

}}

The origins of the black flag are uncertain.{{r|Baillargeon}} Modern anarchism has a shared ancestry with—among other ideologies—socialism, a movement strongly associated with the red flag. As anarchism became more and more distinct from socialism in the 1880s, it adopted the black flag in an attempt to differentiate itself. It was flown in the 1831 Canut revolt,{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=33-TAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA170 |title=Reigniting the Labor Movement: Restoring Means to Ends in a Democratic Labor Movement |isbn=9781135985837 |last1=Friedman |first1=Gerald |author-link1=Gerald Friedman (economist) |date=October 4, 2007 |publisher=Routledge}} in which black represented the mourning of liberty lost.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V5eBAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA178 |title=Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil 1870-1871 |isbn=9781134554027 |last1=Taithe |first1=Bertrand |date=September 2, 2003 |publisher=Routledge}}

The French anarchist paper Le Drapeau Noir (The Black Flag), which printed its first issue in August 1883,{{Cite web |orig-date=August 12, 1883 |title=The Black Flag |url=https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-the-black-flag |access-date=2024-03-15 |website=The Anarchist Library |language=en}} is one of the first published references to use black as an anarchist color. Black International was the name of a London-based British anarchist group founded in July 1881.{{pb}}One of the first known anarchist uses of the black flag was by Louise Michel, participant in the Paris Commune in 1871.{{r|Baillargeon}}{{cite news |url=http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/sp001492/blackflg.html |title=Anarchism and the History of the Black Flag |first=Jason |last=Wehling |website=Spunk Library |date=July 14, 1995 |access-date=October 7, 2020 |archive-date=February 25, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225230332/http://www.spunk.org/library/intro/sp001492/blackflg.html |url-status=live}} Michel flew the black flag during a demonstration of the unemployed which took place in Paris on March 9, 1883. With Michel at the front carrying a black flag and shouting "Bread, work, or lead!" the crowd of 500 protesters soon marched off towards the boulevard Saint-Germain and pillaged three baker's shops before the police arrested them. Michel was arrested and sentenced to six years solitary confinement. Public pressure soon forced the granting of an amnesty.{{cite book |last=Woodcock |first=George |author-link=George Woodcock |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ub9sDwAAQBAJ&q=red+black+flag |title=Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements |date=2018 |publisher=Borodino Books |isbn=978-1-78912-230-5 |location=Chicago |pages=251–252 |access-date=November 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114085416/https://books.google.com/books?id=ub9sDwAAQBAJ&q=red+black+flag |archive-date=November 14, 2020 |url-status=live |orig-year=1962}} She wrote, "The black flag is the flag of strikes and the flag of those who are hungry".{{sfnp|Lowry|Gunter|1981|p=168}}

The black flag soon made its way to the United States. The black flag was displayed in Chicago at an anarchist demonstration in November 1884.{{cite book |last=Avrich |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Avrich |title=The Haymarket Tragedy |year=1986 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=0-6910-0600-8 |page=145}} According to the English-language newspaper of the Chicago anarchists, it was "the fearful symbol of hunger, misery and death".{{sfnp|Avrich|1986|p=144}} Thousands of anarchists attended Kropotkin's 1921 funeral behind the black flag.{{r|Baillargeon}}

{{see also|Communist symbolism#Red and black flag}}

File:Anarchist 2011 protest.jpg march in London, 2011]]

The colors black and red have been used by anarchists since at least the late 1800s when they were used on cockades by Italian anarchists in the 1874 Bologna insurrection and in 1877 when anarchists entered the Italian town of Letino carrying red and black flags to promote the First International. Diagonally divided red and black flags were used by anarcho-syndicalists in Spain{{sfnp|Woodcock|2018|p=}} such as the labor union CNT during the Spanish Civil War. George Woodcock writes that the bisected black-and-red flag symbolized a uniting of "the spirit of later anarchism with the mass appeal of the [First] International".{{sfnp|Woodcock|2018|p=}}

{{See also|Black rose symbolism}}

{{Redirect|Enclosed A|the Unicode character|Enclosed Alphanumerics|the email address symbol (@)|At sign|other uses|Circled a (disambiguation){{!}}Circled a}}

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The symbol composed of the capital letter A surrounded by a circle is universally recognized as a symbol of anarchism{{cite book |last1=Baillargeon |first1=Normand |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hu0j22luZ_oC&q=%22circle+A%22 |title=Order Without Power: An Introduction to Anarchism: History and Current Challenges |date=2013 |publisher=Seven Stories Press |isbn=978-1-60980-472-5 |location=New York |translator=Mary Foster |access-date=October 30, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922142448/https://books.google.com/books?id=hu0j22luZ_oC&q=%22circle+A%22 |archive-date=September 22, 2021 |url-status=live |orig-year=2008}} and has been established in global youth culture since the 1970s.{{cite web |last1=Woodcock |first1=George |author-link1=George Woodcock |last2=Dirlik |first2=Arif |last3=Rosemont |first3=Franklin |last4=Miller |first4=Martin A. |author-link4=Martin A. Miller |title=Anarchism {{!}} Contemporary anarchism |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/anarchism/Contemporary-anarchism |website=Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date=6 November 2020 |archive-date=October 27, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201027041517/https://www.britannica.com/topic/anarchism/Contemporary-anarchism |url-status=live}} An interpretation held by anarchists such as Cindy Milstein is that the A represents the Greek {{lang|el|anarkhia}} ('without ruler/authority'), and the circle can be read as the letter O, standing for order or organization, a reference to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's definition of anarchism from his 1840 book What Is Property?: "As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy"{{cite book |last=Milstein |first=Cindy |author-link=Cindy Milstein |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FQLRDgAAQBAJ&q=%22circle+A%22 |title=Anarchism and Its Aspirations |date=2010 |publisher=AK Press |isbn=978-1-8493-5001-3 |pages=12–13 |access-date=November 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922142540/https://books.google.com/books?id=FQLRDgAAQBAJ&q=%22circle+A%22 |archive-date=September 22, 2021 |url-status=live}} ({{langx|fr|la société cherche l'ordre dans l'anarchie}}).{{cite book |last=Proudhon |first=Piere-Joseph |author-link=Pierre-Joseph Proudhon |title=Proudhon: What is Property? |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ELTq6WIulyEC&q=%22society+seeks+order+in%20anarchy%22 |editor1-last=Kelley |editor1-first=Donald R. |editor2-last=Smith |editor2-first=Bonnie G. |editor-link2=Bonnie G. Smith |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1994 |page=209 |isbn=978-0-521-40556-0 |access-date=November 8, 2020 |archive-date=November 22, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201122073831/https://books.google.com/books?id=ELTq6WIulyEC&q=%22society+seeks+order+in%20anarchy%22 |url-status=live}}{{cite book |last=Proudhon |first=Pierre-Joseph |author-link=Pierre-Joseph Proudhon |title=Qu'est-ce que la propriété ? ou Recherche sur le principe du Droit et du Gouvernement |trans-title=What is ownership? or Research on the principle of Law and Government |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hu_-vQAACAAJ&q=%22la+société+cherche+l'ordre+dans+l'anarchie%22&pg=PA235 |publisher=Brocard |location=Paris |year=1840 |edition=1st |page=235 |language=fr |access-date=September 22, 2021 |archive-date=September 22, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210922142445/https://books.google.com/books?id=hu_-vQAACAAJ&q=%22la+soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9+cherche+l%27ordre+dans+l%27anarchie%22&pg=PA235 |url-status=live}}

In the 1970s, anarcho-punk and punk rock bands such as Crass began using the circle-A symbol in red,{{cite book |last1=Sartwell |first1=Crispin |author-link1=Crispin Sartwell |title=Political Aesthetics |date=2010 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0-8014-5800-2 |page=107 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=To_aj7_esCsC&q=%22circle+A%22 |access-date=October 30, 2020 |archive-date=November 5, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201105220814/https://books.google.com/books?id=To_aj7_esCsC&q=%22circle+A%22 |url-status=live}} thereby introducing it to non-anarchists. Crass founder Penny Rimbaud would later say that the band probably first saw the symbol while traveling through France.{{cite web |last=Appleford |first=Steve |url=http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2696&IssueNum=122 |title=The Only Way to Be – Anarchy! |date=June 10, 2005 |work=LA CityBeat |publisher=Southland Publishing |location=Los Angeles, California |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051224205914/http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=2696&IssueNum=122 |archive-date=December 24, 2005 |access-date=August 30, 2007 |url-status=usurped |df=mdy-all}}

{{see also|Black cat#Anarcho-syndicalism}}

File:I.W.W. One Big Union "Sab Cat".tif stickerette or silent agitator]]

The origin of the black cat symbol, also known as the "sabocat", is unclear, but according to one story it came from an Industrial Workers of the World strike that was going badly. Several members had been beaten up and were put in a hospital. At that time a skinny, black cat walked into the striker's camp. The cat was fed by the striking workers and as the cat regained its health, the strike took a turn for the better. Eventually the striking workers won some of their demands, and they adopted the cat as their mascot.{{cite web |url=http://www.eskimo.com/~jonkonnu/cat&shoe.html |archive-date=August 15, 1997 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970815195121/http://www.eskimo.com/~jonkonnu/cat%26shoe.html |title=What's this with a black cat & a wooden shoe? What do they have to do with anarchy? |website=Left Bank Books Collective |publisher=Left Bank Books |location=Seattle |access-date=September 22, 2021 |url-status=live}}

The Swiss anarchist Théophile Steinlen made use of the black cat (Le Chat Noir) in a number of his paintings. In an 1890 oil painting, he depicted a black cat raising a red banner emblazoned with the word "Gaudeamus" ({{langx|en|Rejoice}}). And in the large landscape painting Apotheosis of the Cats of Montmartre, he showed a clowder of cats on the rooftops of a working-class Parisian neighbourhood, beneath the moon. Francophone anarchists like Steilein and Zo d'Axa were inspired by the independent and undomesticated nature of the cat.{{cite journal |last=Antliff |first=Allan |author-link=Allan Antliff |date=June 2023 |title=Anarchy and Cats |url=https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/adcs/article/view/21422 |journal=Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies |volume=2023 |issue=1 |pages=126–127 |issn=1923-5615}}

The name Black Cat has been used for numerous anarchist-affiliated collectives and cooperatives, including a music venue in Austin, Texas (which was closed following a July 6, 2002 fire) and a now-defunct "collective kitchen" in the University District of Seattle, Washington.

"Do as you wish! Do what you want!" is a slogan of Errico Malatesta's Anarchist Program. It is explained in his pamphlet Anarchy.Malatesta 1891

{{Quote

|The freedom we want, for ourselves and for others, is not an absolute metaphysical, abstract freedom which in practice is inevitably translated into the oppression of the wealthy; but it is real freedom, possible freedom, which is the conscious community of interests, voluntary solidarity. We proclaim the maxim DO AS YOU WISH, and with it we almost summarize our program, for we maintain—and it doesn't take much to understand why—that in a harmonious society, in a society without government and without property, each one will WANT WHAT HE MUST DO.

}}

{{redirects here|No gods, no masters}}

File:Graffiti "No Gods, No Masters" and anarchy symbol at central bus station ZOB in Munich, Germany.jpg with the slogan "no gods, no masters" and the anarchist "A" symbol on a concrete wall in the central bus station of Munich, Germany, in 2022]]

"No gods, no masters" is a phrase associated with anarchist philosophy and the leftist labor movement. Perhaps originating from a 15th-century German proverb, a similar phrase appeared in an 1870 pamphlet by a disciple of Auguste Blanqui. The exact phrase appeared as the title of Blanqui's 1880 newspaper {{ill|Ni Dieu ni maître|fr|Ni Dieu ni Maître (journal)|vertical-align=sup}} before it spread throughout the anarchist movement,{{Cite book |title=No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism |date=2005 |publisher=AK Press |isbn=978-1-904859-25-3 |editor1-last=Guérin |editor1-first=Daniel |editor-link=Daniel Guérin |location=Oakland |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=g4YncZ8MgRsC&pg=PA1 1] |language=en |translator-last1=Sharkey |translator-first1=Paul}} appearing in Kropotkin's 1885 Words of a Rebel and an 1896 Bordeaux anarchist manifesto. Sébastien Faure resuscitated the slogan during World War I, after which Paris's Libertarian Youth adopted the name.{{sfn|Guérin|2005|p=2}} It has appeared on tombstones of revolutionaries,{{Cite journal |last1=Lalouette |first1=Jacqueline |author-link1=:fr:Jacqueline Lalouette |title=Dimensions anticléricales de la culture républicaine (1870-1914) |journal=Histoire, économie & société |volume=10 |issue=1 |date=1991 |url=https://www.persee.fr/doc/hes_0752-5702_1991_num_10_1_1598 |language=fr |doi=10.3406/hes.1991.1598 |page=138}} as the slogan of birth control activist Margaret Sanger's newspaper The Woman Rebel,{{Cite book |last1=Ratner-Rosenhagen |first1=Jennifer |author-link=Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen |title=American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas |date=2012 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0-226-70581-1 |location=Chicago |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=P0BhVJqlhPQC&pg=PA115 115] |language=English}} and as the title of a {{ill|Ni Dieu ni Maître (song)|lt=1964 song|fr|Ni Dieu ni Maître (chanson)|vertical-align=sup}} against capital punishment by Léo Ferré.{{Cite book |editor1-last=Abecassis |editor1-first=Michaël |title=An Anthology of French and Francophone Singers from A to Z: 'Singin' in French' |date=2018 |language=en |isbn=978-1-5275-1205-4 |publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=VJ9fDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA252 252]}} In the 21st century, it has featured as a slogan for the secularization of Croatia.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mwxoDQAAQBAJ |title=The Atheist Bus Campaign |chapter=Chapter 5: Croatia |page=114 |editor1-first=Spencer Culham |editor1-last=Bullivant |editor2-first=Steven |editor2-last=Tomlins |date=November 2016 |publisher=Brill |isbn=9789004328532}}

{{portal|Anarchism|Heraldry and vexillology}}

{{div col|colwidth=18em}}

• Anarchism and the arts
• Anarchist Black Cross
• Anarchist schools of thought
• Black bloc
• Black rose (symbolism)
• Communist symbolism
• Extinction symbol
• Political colour
• Property is theft!
• Sabotage
• Inflatable rat

{{div col end}}

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{{reflist}}

{{Commons category|Anarchist symbols}}

• [http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/qt-a.html "Anarchism"]. Flags of the World.
• {{spunk|intro/sp001492/blackflg.html|Anarchism and the History of the Black Flag}}
• [https://heartinaheartlessworld.blog/ "Blog: Heart in a Heartless World"].
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160305232721/http://anarchyisorder.org/cd "History of anarchist symbols"]. [http://www.anarchyisorder.org Anarchy Is Order].
• [http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append2.html "The Symbols of Anarchy"]. An Anarchist FAQ.
• Errico Malatesta, [https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy "Anarchy,"] 1891.

{{anarchism}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anarchist Symbolism}}

Category:Activism flags

Symbolism

Symbolism