Anarchist symbolism

Since the latter half of the 20th century, the movement has been rejuvenated by the use of new symbols, easier to draw and more recognizable, the most famous of them being the circle-A.

Anarchist cultural symbols have become more prevalent in popular culture since around the turn of the 21st century, concurrent with the anti-globalization movement and with the punk subculture.

Flags

Red flag

The red flag was one of the first anarchist symbols; it was widely used in late 19th century by anarchists worldwide. Peter Kropotkin wrote that he preferred the use of the red flag. French anarchist Louise Michel wrote that the flag "frightens the executioners because it is so red with our blood. [...] Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking."

Use of the red flag by anarchists largely disappeared after the October Revolution, when red flags started to be associated only with Bolshevism and communist parties and authoritarian, bureaucratic and reformist social democracy, or authoritarian socialism.

Black flag

The origins of the black flag as an anarchist symbol are uncertain. In any case, by the early 1880, Black was already an anarchist color; for example, Black International was the name of a London-based British anarchist group founded in July 1881, and the Mano Negra ('Black Hand'), an alleged anarchist organization in Spain, was strongly associated with anarchism.

For the black flag specifically, it was flown in the 1831 Canut revolt, in which black represented the mourning of liberty lost for those Lyonnese silk workers - although they weren't anarchist. The question of the black flag was debated in 1881 in Lyon's circles, when the anarchist Claude Bernard opposed the removal of the black flag during a meeting. He declared that keeping this flag was necessary to honour the Canut revolt, the Lyon revolts of 1848, and the Lyon Commune (1871).

The following year, the Black Band, a group or groups of insurrectionary anarchist miners connected to the anarchists of Lyon, published communiqués in the Lyonnese anarchist L'Étendard révolutionnaire ('The Revolutionary Standard') where they retook the black flag as a symbol - on the first such occurrence, they said :

'The 'Black Band' is the 'Band of Misery', the black flag we have raised is the flag of hunger, of strike, of all-out struggle on the ground of the social revolution, of the annihilation of capital, of employers, of the exploitation of man by man'.

However, this association of a specific black flag with anarchism did not occur on a big scale until the demonstration of 9 March 1883. During this demonstration, Louise Michel, a figure of anarchism - who was in Lyon in early 1883 while Kropotkin and 65 other anarchists were targeted for their alleged support to the Black Band activities, and who was herself always dressed in black, carried a black flag made from a rag and a broom, against hunger and poverty.

This use of the black flag by Michel made it 'enter history', according to the historian Félix Chartreux. From this demonstration and Michel's action onwards, it began to be reused. Michel gave the following meanings to her use of the black flag during her trial, before being sentenced to six years in prison:

Ah certainly, Mr. Attorney General, you find it strange that a woman dares to defend the black flag. Why did we shelter the demonstration under the black flag? Because this flag is the flag of strikes and it indicates that the worker has no bread. [...] The people are dying of hunger, and they do not even have the right to say that they are dying of hunger. Well, I took the black flag and went to say that the people were without work and without bread. That is my crime; judge it as you will.

After this, the black flag started to be gradually associated with anarchism, when several anarchist organizations and journals adopted the name Black Flag and retook this legacy. Anarchism has a shared tradition with—among other ideologies—socialism, a movement strongly associated with the red flag. As anarchism became more and more distinct from socialism in the 1880s, the black flag was also a good way to differentiate itself.

The French anarchist paper Le Drapeau Noir (The Black Flag), which printed its first issue in August 1883, shortly after Michel's trial for the protest, is one of the first published references to use the black flag in its name. The black flag soon made its way to the United States. The black flag was displayed in Chicago at an anarchist demonstration in November 1884. According to the English-language newspaper of the Chicago anarchists, it was "the fearful symbol of hunger, misery and death". Thousands of anarchists attended Kropotkin's 1921 funeral behind the black flag.

The black flag has since been reinterpreted by various anarchists as signifying other meanings in addition to those noted by Michel; the researcher and anarchist Howard J. Ehrlich, for example, wrote in 1996 that:

The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood ... Black is a mood of anger and outrage at all the hideous crimes against humanity perpetrated in the name of allegiance to one state or another ... But black is also beautiful. It is a colour of determination, of resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and defined ... So black is negation, is anger, is outrage, is mourning, is beauty, is hope, is the fostering and sheltering of new forms of human life and relationship on and with this earth.

Bisected flag

The colors black and red have been used by anarchists since at least the late 1800s when they were used on cockades by Italian anarchists in the 1874 Bologna insurrection and in 1877 when anarchists entered the Italian town of Letino carrying red and black flags to promote the First International.

Diagonally divided red and black flags were used by anarcho-syndicalists in Spain such as the labor union CNT during the Spanish Civil War.

Other tendencies within anarchism, such as anarcha-feminism, reused this split design by choosing colours other than red, symbols that have appeared at least since the early 2000s.