{"id":178431,"date":"2018-11-28T19:59:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T00:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/28\/whos-an-antifa-icon-again\/"},"modified":"2018-11-28T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T00:59:00","slug":"whos-an-antifa-icon-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/28\/whos-an-antifa-icon-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Who’s an Antifa Icon Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>
Libert\u00e9, Egalit\u00e9, Gritt\u00e9!<\/p>\n

<\/a>
At his day job<\/p>\n

<\/a>
My favorite non political Gritty meme<\/i><\/div>\n

It appears that the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty has become an icon of the left<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Last week, a headline on neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer read like something from an alternate universe: \u201cAlt-Right Icon Gritty Seeks to Follow Adolf Hitler\u2019s Footsteps and Become Time\u2019s 2018 Man Of The Year\u201d. It was at least the third piece the site has posted in the last month proclaiming Gritty \u2013 the googly-eyed, giant, orange, hockey-playing monster mascot for the NHL\u2019s Philadelphia Flyers<\/a> \u2013 as a symbol of the far right. <\/p>\n

As it happens, the Daily Stormer is playing catch-up, in reality trying to re-appropriate Gritty as a symbol \u2013 to take him away from their ideological opponents on the left. Because, you see, Gritty was already a partisan. Gritty, this smiling muppety nightmare on skates, is antifa<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

When Gritty was unveiled<\/a> in September, the immediate reaction was horror and revulsion (including from this very publication<\/a>). But within hours, the tide began to turn, thanks largely to Gritty\u2019s early Twitter activity \u2013 particularly when he told cross-state rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins to \u201cSleep with one eye open tonight, bird\u201d \u2013 as well as his instant visual meme-ability. The gigantic face, the wide mouth set in a permanently crazed smile, and the massive swirling eyeballs made Gritty a grotesque underdog in a social media world of aesthetic perfection. He is hideous, yes, but one cannot help love him for it \u2013 recalling for many hockey fans the historically rough-and-tumble Flyers, or, for others, the city of Philadelphia itself and its famously aggressive sports fans<\/a>. His entrance to the Flyers\u2019 first home game of the season further solidified his status as a sympathetic destructive force: he came in on a wrecking ball.<\/p>\n

Then, very quickly, Gritty\u2019s relationship to hockey, or sports, fell by the wayside. Into the mix, another underdog cause attached itself to Gritty: the political left. <\/p>\n

A few days after Gritty first appeared, Jacobin magazine, a socialist publication, tweeted<\/a> simply: \u201cGritty is a worker.\u201d Whether it was this tweet which sparked what has come since, or whether Jacobin caught on very early to Gritty\u2019s leftist memeification is difficult to ascertain, but in the weeks since, Gritty\u2019s image has been used by anti-fascist protesters, anti-Trump protesters, and in countless left-wing memes.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I am amused, and completely flummoxed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Libert\u00e9, Egalit\u00e9, Gritt\u00e9! At his day job My favorite non political Gritty meme It appears that the Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty has become an icon of the left: Last week, a headline on neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer read like something from an alternate universe: \u201cAlt-Right Icon Gritty Seeks to Follow Adolf Hitler\u2019s Footsteps and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[626,374,503,421],"class_list":["post-178431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-memes","tag-politics","tag-sports","tag-weird"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}