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Antifa
(thelemmy.club)
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Call to Arms
Of course it is.
You joke, but after looking at this post I immediately went out to my gun dungeon and polished my gatling whilst grabbing my grenades!!
On the other side of a badge: always depressed.
Ok but where can I get this?
Probably on Etsy
Sometimes?
Well.. sometimes
Ok, but that’s the iron front logo
Pretty sure it's been used by antifascists in America for decades.
Well the anti-communist ones at least. I see it as a symbol of anarchist leftism. I guess it varies by person and how they wear it.
Well the anti-communist ones at least.
Idk, I think its meaning has been pretty abstracted by this point. Not unlike the floppy disk becoming the generic symbol for saving something.
For instance, I bought a two-pack of patches once, where one was a 3 arrows, and the other was a hammer and sickle.
Hell, even when it was in use by the Iron Front, the symbols meaning was varied and contested.
To some it stood for anti-fascism, anti-monarchism, and anti-Communism, to others that third arrow meant anti-capitalism.
To others still, it stood for the three areas of working class struggle: political, economic, and physical. Or sometimes even Liberty, Equally, and Fraternity, the slogan of the French Revolution
Who "owns" a symbol?
Who has exclusive, absolute-right, absolute-possession, with no other having any validity to have their-own meaning for it?
The swastika ( that is a Sanskrit word ) is "claimed" by nazis.
"blue" is claimed by depression ( I'm feeling blue ) AND by happiness ( happy as a clear blue sky ).
Hindus, Hopis, Buddhists, & Navahos, and many others, used the swastika for centuries before the nazis & the Jews claimed that the ONLY valid association for it is nazi.
Disinformational-hogwash: others are valid, too.
The same is true of words, the same is true of symbols.
NO "nation" has universally-exclusive possession/ownership of ANY symbol.
Don't let the ideologues who claim otherwise stand on false-ground.
The best example of it that I ever came across was a Hindu/Buddhist symbol, but being interpreted by a European:
The symbol was a person standing on the corpse of another person, in this case a "man" standing on a "woman", & the European was adamant that this was misogyny-intent.
What it WAS, was a Soul, who had conquered animal-desire, & earned its completeness, what Buddhists call Enlightenment.
What that symbol meant through eyes holding to DIFFERENT symbol-interpretation-systems, was different meanings.
But NObody has the "exclusive validity" to somehow magically-negate all other cultures, all other symbol-systems, etc.
Is the "star of david" a symbol of terrorism?
Ask the Palestinians, & see what they say.
But then ask the Buddhists who used the same symbol to represent the "6 realms": of 3 unfortunate-realms { hell-sentience ; desolation/purgatory-sentience, & mere-plant/mere-animal sentience } & the 3 fortunate-realms { middle-realm/human-category ; demigods/"angels" ( note the old term "fallen angels" for "demons": in the old way, both were called "angels", it was a term of MAGNITUDE, not a term of alignment ) ; "gods"/archangels }
Same symbol, totally-different-meaning.
That is consistently true.
Please understand, I'm backing the person I'm replying-to, & contradicting others in this discussion.
There is no inherently-valid-exclusive-possession of any worldly-symbol, that universe bows to.
Not for any worldly-symbol, not for any worldly-word.
Oh, & the swastika, comically, is simply what the Big Dipper looks-like, when diagrammed during the 4 "points" of the year: the 2 solstices & the 2 equinoxes.
So anybody claiming that it has "inherent" meaning, is speaking idiocy.
Every 26-millenia, Earth's polar-axis points at the current North Star, & during those centuries/millenia, the Big Dipper forms that pattern, those 4 times of the year..
& 13-millenia from now, it'll be completely irrelevant: nobody'll be seeing that happen, then another 13-millenia later, it'll be back happening.
Anybody claiming that some symbol has only ONE valid-interpretation, is just demonstrating their cultural-narcissism.
I can't even think of any symbol which can't have opposite-interpretation, from some other culture's perspective.
The garland-of-skulls worn by some Buddhas in Vajrayana, e.g. .. in my religion it means that the Soul has taken all the worth of those lives, symbolized by no-flesh-left, ( previous human-category-life & 49x bardo-lives, & possibly 1-more human-category-life ), & has shed getting-caught-in-universes forever: enlightenment/nirvana: death itself cannot ever touch one's awareness, then.
It could be interpreted as each-skull-representing-a-shedding-of-another-layer-of-"self", of a Continuum/Soul, until that Continuum/Soul finally is free of that delusion/mental-defect.
Other cultures look at that & presume monstrous human-sacrifices/slaughter/evil.
Diversity-of-meaning's both real & valid.
Ideologues who pretend that it isn't valid.. that ONLY their-meaning-to-symbol-map is "valid".. can go eat rocks.
It isn't only meaning-drift that is valid, it is that what something means in one's-own culture DOESN'T somehow define all other people's experience in this world:
there is meaning-drift in time, AND there is meaning-drift in space, is what I'm probably blundering.
& the diversity can be incomprehensibly great, & it is itself.
_ /\ _
Just because you bought a package with mixed patches doesn't mean anything. Capitalists will literally sell you anything to make money.
The three arrow's origin is in the Germany of the 1930s, from the Social Democratic Party, fighting royalists, nazis and communists, as they considered them a threat to Germany.
I'm familiar with the poster and the origins of the Iron Front. You're not adding anything to the conversation.
Just because you bought a package with mixed patches doesn't mean anything
When you click that floppy disk in Word, do you actually think you're saving your document to an actual floppy disk? I'd certainly hope not.
You're missing the point of what I'm saying. I'm asserting that the original intent of the Three Arrows symbol is far enough removed from its modern usage that the meaning of the symbol has abstracted to a generic anti-fascist symbol.
Many anti-fascists today also use the logo of Antifaschistische Aktion, an explicitly Marxist-Leninist paramilitary group. That's the one with the two flags. Sometimes Anarchists will change the semiotics of the symbol, by making the flag in front black, to signal their specific ideological commitments.
But you don't see people coming out of the woodwork saying "Urm Akchually! That symbol wasn't originally meant to mean that". Because the symbol's meaning, like the Three Arrows, or the floppy disk, have been renegotiated as the world around those symbols has changed.
I don't think this is difficult to grasp
Hey, my dude I actually did come here and say “this is the iron front logo”
So you're saying that because people use the AntiFa logo by adapting the flag colors to reflect their political ideology according to the intended and understood meaning of said logo, that if makes sense to use an anti-extremist (left and right) logo?
And because the floppy is now and then still a symbol of saving something on your storage medium, like it always used to?
The three arrows are a centrist antifascist and anti communist logo. Use it, if you want, but don't be surprised if people will understand what the symbol is meant to transport. That you're opposing Nazis and Communists.
I really can't grasp how you stand here saying "symbols don't have meanings anymore, because I bought it in a bundle on Amazon". You're like the guy that wears a Che T-shirt and doesn't know anything about what he achieved, and what his goals were.
Always antisocial, always antifascist o7
o7
Keep puggin' away
We don't survive without community guys, arm up, get your patches on, dress however you want, be yourself, and meet up, volunteer, make awkward small-talk and learn how strong you really are.
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2026
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