Made a jab online about an artist posting it, and getting pushback saying that since it’s creation, it has been adopted by some communist orgs.

From what I can find, it seems to have been used by a French socialist party for a few decades, but nothing beyond that that isn’t socdem parties.

So i guess yeah, anyone know of any full on commie groups that have ever adopted it?

  • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    46·
    10 days ago

    It has a loathsome provenance.

    SPD collaborators, who went to great lengths to suppress the KPD and its affiliated groups while the SPD were in government yet turning a blind eye to the fascist paramilitaries, developed the three arrows. You don’t need to be a semiotician to interpret their primary target:

    You also don’t need to be a historian to recognize that they collaborated with an arch-monarchist to install Nazi party leaders at all the levers of power in the Weimar Republic in its final days and that this vindicates the argument that the SPD saw communists as their primary political opponent.

    Unless you see that third arrow being pointed in the opposite direction as a way of reclaiming the symbol, I’d give anyone who touts the three arrows a wide berth; either they don’t know the history of the symbol they have adopted (which is itself a big yikes) or they do know its history and they have consciously adopted it because of that fact (which is a bigger yikes).
    Lookin’ at you Dan Arrows on YouTube, who has a 6-figure Patreon income despite having not produced a single video for over a year now.

  • Owl [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    32·
    10 days ago

    It doesn’t come from a good place, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re picking a symbol for your new communist group, but if someone who supports communism is using it communistically, you should just trust them on that. It’s not a magic seal that secretly corrupts their intent. It’s just a symbol, meanings can change over time.

  • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    31·
    10 days ago

    As far as I’m aware it’s only been used by anti-communists.

    Anecdotally it seems to be used mostly by baby leftists still figuring out their political ideology and ends up being a crossroads where one end leads to anarchism and the other to NATOists depending on whether they actually go outside and do antifascist praxis.

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    10 days ago

    Yeah I dislike it because it is explicitly anticommunist, made by people who didn’t realize that anti-communism only helps fascists, and look where they ended up. I don’t get how it’s become an “antifascist” symbol and think it really doesn’t belong in our library of icons

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    10 days ago

    Bad because of its association with the SPD in Germany using it as an expression of “both sides” style anti-communism ( “we oppose all forms of authoritarianism, now off to snitch out Rosa and the KPD to the freikorps so they all get murdered!”), which helped usher in Nazism.

    IMO, if a symbol has any significant popularity among western leftists in particular, it probably sucks.

  • mayo_cider [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    10 days ago

    Living in a country where even this would be too radical for sdp I loathe it

    It might not be rational, but I hate you more if you pretend to like me out of politeness instead of just saying it with your chest

    • mayo_cider [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      10·
      10 days ago
      First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
  • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.netEnglish
    15·
    10 days ago

    in the SPD electoralism webgame you get to change the anticommunist arrow to something else. i think it’s fairly mutable as a symbol because it just says ‘we’re against three things’ and you could certainly change what those things are

    but painfully online liberals that para-socially(?) para-historically(?) identify with SPD have been using it these past few years so i think it’d need a comprehensive rehabilitation before i’m not fry at someone using it

  • anarchoilluminati [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    10 days ago

    It was common for me to see it in anarchy world, but, knowing better now, I wouldn’t be a fan of others using it so you’re right to jab.

    I know a lot of anarchists primarily think it’s an antifascist symbol, without realizing that or fully understanding how it’s also anticommunist.