Anonymous’s mask actually portrays the famous historical fighter against monarchical power in England – Guy Fawkes.
On 31 January 1606 the execution of the famous Guy Fawkes – a conspirator against the British King James VI – took place in England.
It was an attempt by British Catholics to remove the Protestant king. That was the time when Catholics in the UK were cruelly persecuted by the Protestant majority. Being Catholic was dangerous, and families who wanted to remain Catholic often had shelters in their homes that would allow Catholic priests to hide if state control came.
Guy Fawkes and his associates hid a considerable amount of gunpowder in the underground corridors below the British Parliament and were waiting for the opportunity to cause an explosion when the King visited Parliament (the so-called gunpowder conspiracy).
However, the conspiracy was uncovered and Guy Fawkes was arrested and sentenced to death, which was to be carried out in the most cruel way possible – by half-hanging, taking a live bowel and cutting the body in four. Fawkes was able to jump off the gallows and break his neck so that he did not experience the cruelty of the second part of the execution. However, his body was dissected and sent to various parts of the kingdom as a reminder to others.
Today, Guy Fawkes is a symbol of resistance to the central authorities. His character is portrayed as the famous Anonymous mask in the fight against internet censorship.
However, it came about thanks to comic writer Alan Moore and illustrator David Lloyd, who published the comic V for Vendetta in the 1980s – the story of a dystopian future in which Britain was under totalitarian rule. In a moment of creativity, David Lloyd came up with the idea that instead of high-tech espionage designs, a masked protagonist dressed in a Guy Fawkes mask and costume, when the shop already culminates in an explosion of parliament.
The comic was screened in 2005 as an action movie, with a number of action changes, and it appealed to young Internet activists, especially the Anonymous movement, who wore a mask when protesting against a Scientology church in the United States. Subsequently, the mask became a symbol of the Anonymous movement and neo-anarchist movements, and the mask is sold in the hundreds of thousands of pieces each year.
