Symbolism on the streets

We started this section because a lot of people were confused about anarchist symbols. Some believe that black flag stands for antifa. Other are getting confused about hammer and sickle. We even did a short research on twitter with 7 people out of 58 believing that circled a is a symbol of antifascist movement and 2 thinking that it stands for anti-capitalism. So there is still a long road to go to establish anarchist symbols in German political scene.

However this chapter of circle-a we will dedicate talking about right-wing symbolism. We are not going to explain to you what swastika stands or how does AfD logo looks like. It seems to us that most of the people actually know right wing symbols better than many of their own. It is a captivating dynamic. For sure AfD is quite present in the society with their aggressive advertisement. However the right wing party is also present in progressive parts of the city through its critics. People make a lot of critical visual art that actually incorporates AfD logo into it.

The reproduction of logo, even with critical perspective, is still reproduction of a brand. In modern world we all know that “there is no bad publicity”™. So every time we reproduce symbols of conservatives, extreme-right or straight on nazis we are somehow making their presence in our society bigger even if don’t want that. I believe the place with biggest AfD mention on the walls of the streets is Neustadt in Dresden. In other cities it’s other alternative neighborhoods, where we write “Smash AfD” and so on. The silliness of this situation goes as far as people painting swastikas just to cross them and show their affiliation to the antifascist movement.

We believe the good way to counter this reproduction of enemy propaganda is through positive messages: write slogans that are standing for certain things that anarchist or socialist movement represents. Make it stronger with some nice symbols that can be incorporated to promoted your ideas. You don’t like art that exists around your local resistance movement? Get together with you friends and make new things up. Fight back and create revolutionary symbolism.

But for fuck sake don’t go around painting hammer and sickle or some other reactionary shit!

See you on the streets!

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