[http://lezgetreal.com/2011/04/arizona-state-promotes-communism/]
The buzz all over the blogosphere is over Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum accusing Arizona State University of spreading a “leftist message” with a video promoting their athletic department. The statement from the brilliant folks at Eagle reads as follows:
[begin extract]
“The Sun Devils of ASU are gearing up for this year’s football season with redesigned uniforms and logos. The school is promoting this greatly anticipated change with several YouTube videos. Several of these videos end with an image of a clenched fist. After a second or two, the fist lifts three fingers, turning into the Sun Devil’s “pitchfolk” hand-symbol. The raised fist is a symbol of socialism, communism, and other extreme left-wing organizations, according to Wikipedia. It was first used as the Emblem of the Red Front Fighter’s League of the Communist Party of Germany in 1932 and has since been used by groups such as the Black Panther Party and the Socialist Workers Party of the UK. Why would ASU choose to put a symbol representing left-wing organizations at the end of a video promoting its football teacm? Will this symbol be used to express the Sun Devil’s team spirit or will it continue to communicate its traditional leftist message on the ASU campus?”
[end extract]
Arizona? Seriously? The state with the anti-immigration laws, the birther law, the “eat shit and die” cuts in Medicaid? This would be funny if there weren’t so many uneducated idiots out there who will believe this.
People didn’t just start raising their fists in 1932. It is an ancient symbol of defiance and solidarity.
The Eagle Forum had to look it up in Wikipedia? Really? Does that mean that the symbol is not universally recognized? Probably. And the people who believe in the whole socialism-communism conspiracy theory explanation of the Democratic Party won’t bother to look it up and find out what’s in the rest of the Wikipedia entry - that if the fist is white, it represents the skinhead Aryan Nation, if it’s black is can respresent white soul music and if the fist is red, it represents the red hand of Ulster, the Protestant supremicist movement. Further, the ASU promotional campaign is not limited to their football team. The video I watched was heavily promoting women’s sports, something guaranteed to upset Schlafly who believes that women should be barefoot and pregnant, unless they are Republican activists like herself.
If the raised fist ends with the index finger and pinkie raised, will the Eagle Forum say that is communist or will they instantly recognize it as the symbol for “I love you?” Since they didn’t bother to follow through on their raised fist research, you can probably make book on the former.
The offending logo:
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