The
raised fist, or the clenched fist, is a long-standing image of activism, often a symbol of social
revolution and political
solidarity. It is also a common symbol of
anarchism and
communism, but can also be used as a salute to express
unity, strength, or
resistance. The origin of the
raised fist as a symbol is unclear. Its use in trade
unionism,
anarchism, and the labor movement had begun by the 1910s. William "Big Bill" Haywood, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, used the metaphor of a fist as something greater than the sum of its parts during a speech at the 1913 Paterson silk
strike. The
raised fist logo may represent
unity or
solidarity, generally with
… Read more oppressed peoples. The black fist is a variation of the logo generally associated with the
Black Power movement. Its most widely known usage is by the
Black Panther Party, a Black Marxist group in the 1960s.
A
police state describes a state where its
government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil
society and liberties characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities. A
police state typically exhibits elements of totalitarianism and authoritarian regimes. The best-known literary treatment of the
police state is
George Orwell's novel
1984, which describes Britain under a totalitarian régime that continuously invokes (and feeds) a perpetual
war as a pretext for subjecting
the people to mass surveillance, policing, and modification of language and the way people
think in order to make dissent not only swiftly punished, but also grammatically and logically
… Read more impossible to conceive and express. The state destroys not only the literal
freedom after action and thought meant by expressions like "
freedom of thought", but also literal
freedom of thought.
Printed in USA
