Guy Fawkes Day, made popular by the movie V For Vendetta, is a celebration of Guy Fawkes (aka Guido Fawkes)–the man who tried to kill Protestant King James I with a ton of gunpowder loaded under the House of Parliament.
Since V For Vendetta, in which the hero who tries to take down an tyrannical government wears a Guy Fawkes mask, the hacker group Anonymous have started using the mask for their own purposes. It’s now a symbol of fighting oppression, the Occupy movement, and defeating the 1%.
But just because you’ve donned a Guy Fawkes mask doesn’t automatically make you a anarchist, a fact that seems lost on most. That’s kind of why we like these Guy Fawkes memes so much.
