THE #CIRCULATED | A (A + O = #ANARCHY IS #ORDER) | #History #Anarchists
Channel: Anarquistas
Date: 2021-01-11

THE CIRCULATED A (A + O = #ANARCHY IS ORDER)

 The #circled #A

 (Based on Jason Wehling's 1995 essay "Anarchism and the History of the Black Flag")

 A + O = Anarchy is Order.

     The A in a circle is already widespread and is so well known and recognized that it has ended up being considered a traditional symbol, giving the impression of being "old time".  Thus, for example, the American magazine Fight the State (1997) thinks it sees an A in a circle on the helmet of an anarchist militiaman in the Spanish revolution.  Some even claim to go back to Proudhon… In reality, the A is little more than an upstart in libertarian iconography: the A in a circle was born in 1964 in Paris and in 1966 in Milan.  Two dates and two places of birth?  Yes, and we'll see how.  Indeed, it is in April 1964 when the internal bulletin of the Jeunesses Libertaries (that is, of the young French anarchists: four cats, at that time, the young anarchists in France, as in Italy) appears the proposal of a graphic sign  for the whole anarchist movement, beyond different tendencies, groups and federations.  Why this proposal?

 We have been driven by two main reasons: above all to facilitate and make more effective graffiti and posters and, furthermore, to ensure a greater presence of the anarchist movement in the eyes of the people and a common character to all expressions of anarchism in its public manifestations.  More specifically, it was a question, for us, of finding a practical means that would allow, on the one hand, to reduce to a minimum the time taken to sign our slogans on the walls and, on the other, to choose a sufficiently general sign to be adopted by  all the anarchists.  The acronym proposed by us seems to meet these criteria.  By constantly associating it with anarchist verbal expressions, he will end up, by a well-known mental automatism, evoking in people, by themselves, the idea of ​​anarchism.

 The proposed graphic sign is a capital A inscribed in a circle.  Why?  Perhaps due to the derivation of the already widespread antimilitarist symbol, in which the "chicken foot" is replaced by the initial letter of the word anarchy in all European languages.  Perhaps by other suggestions.  For example, the secretary of the Alliance Ouvriére Anarchiste (a tiny French-speaking anarchist federation), Raymond Beaulaton, wrote to me in 1984 that, from 1956-57, the first members of the AOA used in their correspondence, after  signature, an acronym that was first an A inscribed in a circle, in turn inscribed in another A (to effectively give AOA), later converted into a double A inscribed in an O.

 The truth is that the first "public" use of the A in a circle by such Alliance appears in June 1968 in its cyclo-styled bulletin L'Anarchie.

 But, let's go back to 1964. The Jeunesses Libertaires proposal does not bear, at the moment, any fruit.  In December of the same year the A in a circle reappears in the title of an article signed by Tomás Ibáñez, in the Action Directe newspaper, edited by the same group of young anarchists who, in the aforementioned bulletin eight months earlier, had proposed  that identity sign.  But, again, no replica in the French anarchist movement (far from it, international).

 It is necessary to wait until the beginning of 1966 for the symbol of the circulated A, proposed by the Jenuesses Libertaires, to be taken up and used, initially "experimental", then regularly, by the Gioventú Libertaria de Milan, a group of young people  anarchists, who had fraternal relations with young Parisians, with whom he had formed a short-lived but bombastic Federation Internationale des Jeunesses Libertaires.  It is since then when the sign begins its public life.  First in Milan, where it became a common signature on the pamphlets and posters of young anarchists, and then returned to France and spread fairly quickly throughout the world.  Marianne Enckell says there is no proof of the use of the A circulated in the Parisian May and she found little evidence of its presence outside of Italy until 1972-73.

 It is at the beginning of the 70s, when the circulated A "explodes" with a spontaneous mimetic appropriation by anarchists all over the world: a resounding success that has made some say that, if its inventor had patented the circulated A, it would be  today billionaire.

 What are the causes of rapid and intense fortune?  More or less expressed by the JJSS.  That is, on the one hand, the simplicity that makes the circled A one of the most immediate symbols, such as the hammer and sickle, the swastika, ... On the other hand, a "new" movement, young, expanding, which sought  a unifying sign.  Thus, in the absence of an anarchist graphic symbol, the A in a circle actually prevailed.

 This is the true story of the circulated A, which is made of both conscious will and spontaneity.  A typically libertarian cocktail.