Is black the color of radicalism par excellence? It represents both pirates and anarchists, including Italian fascists, the Black Panthers and, more recently, the…

Black, the banner of radicalism

Demonstration of "black blocks", May 22, 2018 in Paris.

Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow

7 mins

Is black the color of radicalism par excellence?

She represents both pirates and anarchists, including Italian fascists, the Black Panthers and, more recently, the Islamic State group.

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The black pirate flag would have appeared for the first time in 1700 off Santiago de Cuba, at the mast of a boat led by a Frenchman. The objective: to scare and intimidate the attacked ships to surrender without a fight, otherwise the red flag was hoisted, meaning “no quarter”. The black flag, to better terrorize, could represent a skull, crossed femurs or a skeleton and an hourglass, allusion to the short side of life.

Can we make colors say what we want, because of meanings that pile up over time?

Black, paradoxical, is as much a sign of mourning as of revolt or its opposite, the established order.

It is the color of the priest's cassock, the attorney's gown and the magistrate's robe, and today a mark of elegance ("the little black dress"), even of power (black sedans for official travel).

From "anars" to "black shirts"

The black standard, both a sign of mourning and of revolt, floated in 1871 during the

Paris Commune

, a violently suppressed insurrection. Eleven years later, in 1882, the French anarchist movement baptized its newspaper

Le Drapeau Noir,

while the feminist writer and libertarian activist Louise Michel paraded with a black petticoat hanging from the end of a broomstick, as a sign of "

mourning. of our deaths and our illusions

”. Black then passes for a "non-color" and refers to the "non-state" of the anarchists, a universal ideal.

The dark banner passes through Mexico, where the revolutionary Emiliano Zapata appropriated it in 1910 associated with the slogan “Land and freedom”. In Ukraine, the anarchist Nestor Makhno distinguished himself between 1918 and 1921 by raising under the black flag an insurrectionary army of 50,000 men, ready to do battle with the white Russians as with the Red Army of the Soviets. These troops end up crushed and Nestor Makhno in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, after having been a worker at Renault during his French exile.

For their part, Mussolini's “black shirts” of Italy appeared in 1919, the exact opposite of “anars” on the political spectrum.

The militiamen of the “Italian Combat Groups” (

Fasci Italiani di Combattimento

), a term borrowed from ancient Rome, thus give their name to “fascism”.

The paramilitary organization defends a "new man" and an authoritarianism opposed to the liberal values of the Age of Enlightenment.

He prefigures Nazism, which prefers brown.

Mussolini and the “black shirts”, in October 1922. © AFP

May 1968, rockers, Islamic sacredness

The black flag of the anarchists resurfaced in May 1968 on the “Boul'Mich '” in Paris. Should we see an extension of the signs of revolt? Black becomes one of the rallying signs of rockers of all stripes, from Black Socks (France, 1960) to the Black Keys (United States, 2001) through hard rock and “post-punk”, notably at followers of the gothic look. "

It is a sociological evolution,"

explains Hervé Fischer, author of

Colors in the West, from prehistory to the 21st century

(Illustrated Library of Histories, 2019).

Black, refused by a long Christian tradition […] is no longer considered as an absence of color of the Puritan bourgeois, but as a color.

Symbol of the revolt against the caste system in India, brandished in the 1940s by the Self-Respect movement (Thantai Periyar), black has a positive meaning in the Muslim world.

It appears in half of the 22 flags of the member countries of the Arab League, in reference to the Kaaba ("the cube") of Mecca, the most sacred place of Islam.

Covered with the

kiswa

, a black silk fabric, the pre-Islamic building was emptied of its idols during the conquest of Mecca by Muhammad in 630. It has since symbolized the absence of figures of worship and representations of God in the Muslim religion.

Millions of pilgrims gather in Mecca every year.

Reuters / Ammar Awad

The color black is, here again, taken up by radicals, extremists and other "ultras". It is one of the colors of the caftans and turbans of the Ayatollahs in Iran, and that of the flag of the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.

The black banner or "raya", also called "the flag of the eagle", was the standard of the Prophet Muhammad on the battlefield, explains Abdelasiem El Difraoui in his book

Al-Qaïda par l'image

(Presses Universitaires de France , 2013): “

This flag regained a preeminent role during the 8th century, when it was employed by the leader of the Abbasid revolution who led a revolt against the Umayyad clan and caliphate. Since then, the image of the black flag has symbolized religious revolt and jihad.

"In doing so, it was hijacked by the Islamists to the detriment of the majority of Muslims, with the inscription in white on a black background of the beginning of the

shahada

(" There is no god but God "), profession of faith Muslims.

Black Panthers and the Black Consciousness Movement

Finally, black is also the essential symbol of the struggle movements of Africans and Afro-descendants, wherever they have been segregated.

The black line on the multicolored flag of South Africa thus represents the majority African community, known as “black” by the former racist apartheid regime.

In California, the flag of the Black Panther Party (BPP), a revolutionary movement for the liberation and self-defense of African Americans founded in 1966, shows a leaping feline, claws out.

A resolutely closed black fist, a sign of struggle and mobilization widely shared in South Africa, represents the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) created by Steve Biko from 1968. This black fist reappears in Brazil, brandished by the Black Movement , then in the United States with Black Lives Matter.

It should be noted that the BCM has achieved the feat of changing the weight of the word “black” in South Africa - stripping it of its racial value and making it a liberating political choice.

Thus, a number of mixed-race or South Africans of Indian origin, who do not belong to the former “black” racial group as defined by apartheid, may very well declare themselves to be “black”. no one can fault it.

To be "black" is a manifesto and a posture of combat for freedom, and not a skin color.

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Black, the banner of radicalism

Black, the banner of radicalism

From "anars" to "black shirts"

May 1968, rockers, Islamic sacredness

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