Raised fist

The raised , stretched or clenched fist is a symbol of various social movements and serves as a sign of solidarity , strength or resistance. The symbol is used as a greeting gesture and in graphic form as an emblem or logo .

history

Children in the Spanish Civil War with clenched fists

Monument of the revolutionary labor movement in Halle (Saale) from 1969, dismantled in 2003 (photo 1988)

Clenched and raised fists have appeared in political iconography since the 19th century, among other things in propaganda depictions and caricatures; after the First World War , the symbol gained a higher status. An example of early use in the U.S. is a drawing in the Industrial Workers of the World's union newspaper Solidarity in 1917.

In the Weimar Republic , the raised fist was the greeting and symbol of the Red Front Fighter League . His badge was designed by John Heartfield based on a drawing by George Grosz . In a contribution on the symbolism of social movements in Germany, Gottfried Korff and Harry Drost state that this development of the symbol as a creative creation by an artist has shown the proximity of the labor movement to the artistic avant-garde . With a clenched fist, Heartfield converted an elementary expression of anger into a fixed symbolic form that was easy to convey as a gesture and image, according to Korff and Drost. The Faust was thus an answer to the greeting of the Italian fascists . According to Lutz Heusinger in the Political Iconography Handbook, “a symbol that was not yet politically bound” became a “symbol of anti-fascist resistance”.

“The greeting with the raised fist is known to be the greeting of the communists. [...] For the communists the raised fist is the revolutionary threat to capitalism and fascism, ready to fight, and the fist is raised in order to bring it down on the enemies of the proletariat. "

- Article in Die Rote Fahne from July 13, 1932

The raised fist was also used in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republic and by the International Brigades . In 1937 Joan Miró used the symbol for an anti-fascist poster. After the Second World War, the raised fist became a “ socialist greeting” and appeared on numerous monuments and art in the construction of socialist countries.

A popular variant of the clenched fist symbol goes back to a woodcut by the American graphic artist Frank Cieciorka , who originally made it in 1967 for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee . After it had spread on buttons , the symbol was incorporated into their logo by various organizations or used for campaigns.

With reference to the various uses of the raised fist by protesters in the 2000s , Lutz Heusinger comes to the conclusion that the fist is "the ultimate symbol of resistance in contemporary political practice ".

variants

The clenched or raised fist made use of a certain color scheme or additional elements as a logo for itself. While socialist movements often use a red fist or a fist in connection with a rose - according to the Socialist International - the following variants are also in use:

• Black Fist: Black Power , African American civil rights movement . The protest at the 1968 Olympic Games by the Afro-American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos , in which the raised fist gesture was used, is one of the most famous political protests of the 20th century.
• White fist: White Power , in the context of the neo-Nazi scene and the Ku Klux Klan as "Aryan fist". The right-wing terrorist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik saluted in front of the Oslo court in 2012 with a raised fist.
• Combined with the Venus symbol : feminism , women's movement , women power . A tattoo by the Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti , which was discussed in the media in 2016, can be cited as an exemplary use .

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  Red fist

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  Black Power

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  White power

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  Women power

The raised fist gesture is also given different meanings depending on whether the left or right fist is raised. So Tommie Smith expressed in connection with the protests in 1968 that he had raised his right fist as a symbol of "black power in America," while at the same time raised left fist of John Carlos for "black unity" (black unity) had confessed.

The raised fist ✊ (U + 270A) has been part of the Unicode standard since version 6.0 from 2010, with which emojis were included in the standard for the first time . It is one of the most common emojis used in viral campaigns on the internet.

Web links

Commons : Fists Raised  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lutz Heusinger: Faust . In: Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler (Eds.): Political Iconography. A manual . tape 1 . CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67009-1 , p. 296-298 .
2. ↑ Joyce L. Kornbluh (Ed.): Rebel Voices. To IWW Anthology . 2nd Edition. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1972, ISBN 0-472-06139-9 , pp. 25 ( can be borrowed online from archive.org ).
3. ^ ^{A b c} Gottfried Korff, Harry Drost: History of Symbols as Social History? Ten Preliminary Notes on the Image and Sign Systems of Social Movements in Germany . In: International Review of Social History . tape 38 , 1993, pp. 105-125 , here p. 117 , JSTOR : 44735369 .
4. ^ Lutz Heusinger: Faust . In: Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler (Eds.): Political Iconography. A manual . tape 1 . CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67009-1 , p. 297 .
5. ↑ "Freedom!" In:  The wake-up call / The social revolution / Die Rote Fahne , July 13, 1932, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Lutz Heusinger: Faust . In: Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler (Eds.): Political Iconography. A manual . tape 1 . CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67009-1 , p. 298 .
7. ^ ^{A b} Steven Heller: Frank Cieciorka, Designer for the Left, Is Dead at 69 ( English ) In: The New York Times . November 27, 2008. Accessed May 1, 2020.
8. ^ Lutz Heusinger: Faust . In: Uwe Fleckner, Martin Warnke, Hendrik Ziegler (Eds.): Political Iconography. A manual . tape 1 . CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-67009-1 , p. 299 .
9. ^ Margaret Chadbourn: A Look at the History of the Clenched Fist ( English ) In: ABC News . May 11, 2016. Accessed May 1, 2020.
10. ^ Aryan Fist ( English ) Anti-Defamation League . Retrieved May 1, 2020.
11. ^ J. David Goodman: Raised-Fist Salute Has Varied Meanings ( English ) In: The Lede . The New York Times. April 16, 2012. Accessed May 1, 2020.
12. ↑ Thomas Erdbrink: In Iran, an Actress, a Bared Arm and a 'Woman Power' Tattoo ( English ) In: The New York Times . May 31, 2016. Accessed May 1, 2020.
13. ↑ 1968: Black athletes make silent protest ( English ) In: On This Day . BBC. 2008. Accessed May 1, 2020.
14. ↑ Full Emoji List, v13.0 ( English ) Unicode. January 29, 2020. Accessed May 1, 2020.
15. ↑ Unicode Version 6.0 ( English ) In: Emojipedia . Retrieved May 1, 2020.
16. ↑ Jenna Amatulli: The Raised Fist Emoji Is Social Media's Resistance Symbol ( English ) In: Huffpost . July 2, 2017. Accessed May 1, 2020.