{"id":4548,"date":"2025-02-06T18:37:50","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T18:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=4548"},"modified":"2025-02-06T18:37:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T18:37:51","slug":"sign-of-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/?p=4548","title":{"rendered":"Sign of Peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even the modern day symbol for peace (see symbol above) isn\u2019t without its controversy. Just like we can\u2019t all seem to agree on how to create peace, we can\u2019t even agree on a symbol to represent it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The symbol that we all recognize as the peace sign was designed by an English designer Gerald Holtom for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.
Holtom based his design on signs from semaphore \u2014 a code that involves a signaler positioning two flags to represent letters. Semaphore was used a long time ago in the British navy to communicate over long distances.\u00a0
To represent nuclear disarmament, the designer combined the semaphore characters for N (two flags held in an upside-down V) and D (one flag held straight up and one held straight down.) This gave him \u201cN\u201d and \u201cD\u201d \u2014 for nuclear disarmament and he enclosed the combination in a circle.\u00a0
Noncom said that the symbol also represented despair with its suggestion of a human with its outstretched arms against the back-up of a white Earth. He later regretted this dour interpretation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CND first used the symbol during a march to protest the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston, England. In the 1960s, activists in Europe and the United States picked it up. It was often used in protests against the Vietnam War, and it came to represent peace in general rather than just nuclear disarmament.
I would guess that the symbol\u2019s popularity had a lot to do with its simplicity \u2014 it\u2019s easier to draw three lines in a circle than to draw a flying dove \u2014 that was probably the most common peace symbol before Holtom\u2019s. By the end of the 1960s, this peace symbol was entrenched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as I said, seems like nothing much is without controversy\u2026. as the symbol gained popularity, critics of the antiwar movement said it was actually an old anti-Christian sign called Nero\u2019s Cross. Supposedly Roman Emperor Nero crucified Saint Peter upside down in A.D. 67 and popularized the symbol \u2014 a representation of an inverted, broken cross \u2014 to mock Christianity. Some critics also claimed that Satanists used the symbol in the Middle Ages and that Nazis adopted it in the 1930s. Some people still see it primarily as an anti-Christian symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From what I can tell, there have been variations on the design long before 1958. Something very similar can be found in Germanic and Scandinavian runic alphabets \u2014 and those date back to A.D. 150.
There doesn\u2019t seem to be any evidence that Holtom had anti-Christian or Nazi connotations in mind when he created the symbol. But he probably should have done a little more research \u2014 if you\u2019re trying to promote peace, the last thing you\u2019d want is Nazi implications\u2026.
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Even the modern day symbol for peace (see symbol above) isn\u2019t without its controversy. Just like we can\u2019t all seem to agree on how to create peace, we can\u2019t even agree on a symbol to represent it.  The symbol that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4550,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4548\/revisions\/4550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jimmy.ekota.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}