Gabon/Benin mixup 😩

Pick a lane!

Some of those exiles pictured here in 1959. Unusually both these Tibetan exiles and the Kuomintang in Taiwan used a raised fist salute that had reached China via the CCP about 25 years prior. It had become less specifically ideological by this point but the PRC still used it as well.

There's lots more to share, but I'll close out with this. This is the only time in the early 20th century that I could find where a fascist movement adopts a raised fist as their salute. The Acción Revolucionaria Mexicanista called it the "Aztec salute", and it doesn't appear to have lasted.

Although the raised fist spread through Communist parties in the early days and retained a close association with communism (or at least radical socialism) through at least the 1960s, the Soviet Union never used it much except in illustrations of foreign struggle, such as this one.

That design concept stuck around, even after the fist had been more formalized as a salute and symbol. Here are two more examples, from 1930 (left) and 1948 (right), but it's been used to this day.

Most sources credit the image on the right, by Ralph Chaplin in a 1917 edition of Solidarity (the newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World) as the progenitor. I'd disagree in a couple ways, but I think the more interesting thing is this very similar image 5 years earlier by Mihaly Biro.

Finished (at least the first version) of my presentation on the history of the raised fist as symbol and salute. Thought I'd share a few of the most interesting images I found.

The first time I ever played Tetris was on this beast. I remember thinking "Wow, what a good idea to include a typewriter in your computer, at home those are two different things!"

Two deliveries so far to the IAM kitchens serving the Boeing picket line. Having friends who have a farm is cool.

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