Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Famous revolutionaries from other countries include Che, who is the most famous, but Lenin is a close second. However, Great Britain gives celebrity to Guy Fawkes, famous for the “Gunpowder Plot” to blow up the British House of Lords in 1605. Adding to the legend, after he was sentenced to being hanged, drawn & quartered, just before his execution, he fell off the scaffold and died from a broken neck. There's even a Guy Fawkes day in Great Britain, November 5th, Bonfire Night, where in the past, children would make effigies of Guy Fawkes and roll them around in wheelbarrows asking neighbors: “penny for the guy,” then buy fireworks and throw the effigies on a bonfire. In 1982, the graphic novel "V is for Vendetta" by Alan Moore popularized the Guy Fawkes mask: the iconic smiling mustache & goatee. In the book and subsequent movie, the mask was dawned by the populace as part of their rebellion against tyranny. The mask was also adopted by the famously anti-authoritarian hacker group, Anonymous. From there it naturally became the de rigueur costume of anti-state repression demonstrators in Canada, so-much-so that in 2013 the Canadian parliament passed Bill C-309 which specifically made wearing the mask in such a setting a criminal offense: the same Canada that makes wearing a COVID mask mandatory: you can smell the irony from Guy Fawkes’ grave.