Peace Symbolism

Capitalism and Consumerism of Peace symbolism in the 20th century

In the 20th century, when posters and newspapers were the main sources of news content, symbolism played a major influence on people 's motivation. While researching texts written about peace in the 20th century, there were two very distinct views on peace symbolism: pre-World War II perspective and post-World War II(WWII) perspective. In this paper, I try to argue how dramatization of peace symbolism was used for war propaganda and justifying the capitalism and democracy. I further look into the transformation of peace symbols from allegorical nature to a more literal nature. First, there is a need to show how the people of the early 20th century saw peace. According to an

According to B. Ziemann: “peace was more likely to be 'part of a broader artistic programme, most probably commissioned by a ruler or some governing body to legitimise or symbolise his or its claim to power.”(Ziemann) As these boundaries became clearer, the identification of peace stepped away from Christianity; the concept of peace became more humanitarian and not just limited to any one religion: “allegory fell sharply out of flavor…its traditional figures lost their 'dynamism and authority '.”(239) This made the use of allegory problematic and socially not acceptable . During the Cold War unrest, there were many movements and protests occurring at the time . The people had seen the implication of two World wars and two nuclear strikes, the intensity and emotional understanding of peace was much clearer among people in this time to that of the early 20th century s. There were many protests against nuclear weapons, the most prominent one was the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”, this protest particularly gained the most of the momentum because of its logo/symbol (Figure 2). This was designed by an artist named Gerald Holtom, he was a conscientious objector of WWII, he originally designed the logo to be resembling the Christian cross but later he decided the add a circle which in the end meant C – Campaign, N – Nuclear and D – Disarmament(Holtom) . Apart

Peace symbols and their sense of belongingness towards the world population had diminished and this was subjected to the price tag of the product he/she was buying . According to Kolsbun and Sweeney, the country to first commercialize the symbol was America and the most of the companies that use this logo on their products are mainly American based. As, I had talked about the 20th-century population and their inability to perceive world peace, the present population itself hasn’t seen the absolute world peace that the allied forces had fought to achieve. Many underdeveloped and developing countries are still stuck in a debt circle which cannot end due to the basic ideology on which capitalism is based on –