From a post on /r/leftistvexillology/
"Capitalism, fascism, reaction; beat the three and humanity is free!"
.......
"Of course, the three arrows representing the struggle against capitalism, fascism and reaction have quickly found their way into other social democratic parties."
:stalin-stressed: :stalin-stressed: :stalin-stressed:
That election poster that gets thrown around alot is just that. An election poster where the socialdemocrats were trying to position themselves as the preservers of the democratic republic(which should be remembered, had not existed for long). It's not the only way to interpret the symbol.
https://www.reddit.com/r/leftistvexillology/comments/dx5jky/three_arrows_without_the_big_lib/
What do you think? What do you associate the arrows with? I always assumed it was 'down with monarchism, Nazism, and capitalism' before reading that thread. It's amazing how fast the meaning of the symbol was co-opted and altered (although notable that not everyone recognizes it as such).
i associate the three arrows with killing rosa luxemburg, and so does any european leftist worth their salt. americans once again proving theyre uneducated politically
I am curious, in Europe do you discuss the history of these groups in a political context at school?
In the American education system (at least in the midwest), they not only teach insane revisionism like that one meme: "the Native Americans taught the settlers how to grow corn =)" But you can actually make it out of college with a bachelor's of science without ever really learning about history in a context that matters (like the political groups who were fighting one another)
The Weimar years are covered extensively in German schools, but it's usually lib shit that tries to explain the failure of the Weimar Republic with "people not yet being democratically minded enough" without giving a materialist answer for why they thought liberal democracy is a fuck.
All the facts are there, the SPD's role in the violent supression of communism, the catastrophic economic situation, the murderous violence during the later years that came almost entirely from the nazis, the glaring blindness of the courts to said violence, while the same courts where draconically clamping down on the left. And the "conservative revolution", the monarchist revanchism that was necessary to give Hitler a majority instead of a plurality, is also covered. Just from the data presented, it's not a "both sides bad" thing.
But when the dots are connected, an answer like "a socialist revolution in 1920 would have prevented the nazis" or "conservatives side with fascists because they prefer fascism over socialism" is obviously avoided and things veer deeply into horseshoe theory land.
I'm too old to see any trends with the youth lol. Seriously, though, the kids seem to care a lot about the climate issue. The weekly school strikes have stopped since the Covid shit began, but the youth is a lot greener than previous generations and i'm under the impression that for them, green means a lot more anti-capitalism and a lot less of the new agey stuff that was a hallmark of previous greens here. I think the kids are alright, it's the boomers and the gen x chuds that i worry about.
Maybe I'm also too old to be down with the youth, but for my fellow mid-20s, idk if green means anti-capitalism. Everybody's green, but in more of a personal-consumer way (thrifting, using less plastic, taking the train more). That's not bad obviously, but I don't feel like it relates to leftist thought or action in more than a very vague "corporations bad" way. Maybe it's different for the actual teens!
i have an a level in history and didn’t learn about anything like this until well after i left school. in my experience, pretty much all of what i’d consider a “meaningful” historical education has been self administered.
That's interesting, like Wolff says, he was drawn to Marxism because all his educators specifically avoided it in academia
i remember wolff talking about how all his university work was written using marxist theory, and that he did so well in uni because his economics professors had never read marx. it wasn’t mere avoidance, it was outright ignorance.
Hmm interesting, do you have any idea which of his shows that may have been from? It's hard to locate stuff of his because of the sheer amount of content he produces. I really enjoy hearing about his experiences from his education
i’m almost certain that he talks about his educational background at length in this interview with yer uncle yanis: https://youtu.be/RhFw-s5IUT4
in Europe do you discuss the history of these groups in a political context at school?
In the UK. No. We study the Victorians, Tudors and the monarchs. Socialists are never ever touched. In fact anyone or thing that is connected to literature individuals or organisations advocating for anti-capitalism is now illegal in schools as of a few weeks ago. Not that it matters too much because it was never touched.
In Irish high school (maybe 16 yrs) we had probably a whole semester on post-WWI Germany, which was pretty cool. I can't recall all the details, but we did cover the different factions and learned about Rosa Luxemburg. By no means a radical education or anything, but still we covered the basics, I guess.
more just i have family that explains stuff cause theyre from the soviet bloc
Iron front is socdem anti-communist "both sides are the same!" shit, always rubs me the wrong way when i see people calling themselves socialist using that fuckin symbol
The logo was not originally an Iron Front thing, though. And there's some hope that it could be wrestled back from them.
I think it is morphing in modern usage as a broad antifascist symbol, ignoring done if the Iron Front baggage. If we can kill The IF ties, it's a very useful symbol.
the symbol itself is socdem anti-communist "both sides are the same" garbage though
i dont understand why the symbol would be useful at all
Because it's easier to draw and use than the red and black flag.
The symbol itself began as just anti Nazi. It was adopted by the SocDems and the Iron Front. There's no inherent anticommunist or "both sides" in the symbol.
i did some research, and idk where you got this information from. The symbol was thought up by this guy called Sergei Chakotin who found a swastika crossed out in chalk. He was literally working for the social democrats and the iron front at the time, and the symbol specifically represented social democrats against nazis. and that quickly transformed into social democrats against nazis and communists, as in the famous poster.
Granted, there was a brief period in which it was explicitly anti-fascist, but there has never been a time when it was not associated with socdems / the iron front, and those same socdems are the ones who used it for anti-communism.
come up with a new fucking symbol
It was literally the spds response to antifa. "DAE Nazis and communists are bad"
I've looked into this a bit due to the resurgence of the Three Arrows as an antifascist symbol in American soccer circles.
The original use of the logo was only counter to Nazis. It would be displayed like this, three arrows striking through a swastika. It was originally inspired by Soviet avant-garde artwork.
It later became used for a variety of meanings. I've seen the arrows used to be against reaction, monarchism, religion, papism, Nazism, capital, and communism.
The most popular use was by the Iron Front, against monarchism, Nazism, and Stalinism. They also were in opposition too the German communists, who stood in solidarity with the Soviet Union. It's basically synonymous with the Iron Front at this point.
I'd love to be able to take the image back as a symbol of antifascism, anti-reaction, and anti-capitalism, but I think the history is too tied to the Social Democrats who allied with the Freikorps and assisted the rise of fascism in Germany.
I'm gonna keep using it in certain contexts, with the hopes that the meaning shifts for modern usage. It's clean and easy to add to shit, rather than the red and black flags of Antifaschistische Action.
I thought it was originally down with religion, fascism, and communism.
I associate the arrows with socdems and the third arrow as anti-communist, yes. I'm European. Maybe it's not the best symbol to use in 2020 if people interpret it differently depending on how much 1930s German+Austrian history they remember.
On a related note, one of the funniest little moments of 2020 was when Trump designated antifa as a terrorist organisation and the SPD tweeted that they are antifa "of course".
