Operation American Spring: Guy Fawkes Comes to Washington

On Friday, Washington witnessed
the dawn—and probably the dusk—of Operation American
Spring, a populist protest that was supposed to involve
millions of patriots occupying the National Mall nonviolently until
the president and various other high officials agreed to resign.
Turnout was a bit lower than the organizers anticipated: Instead of
10 to 30 million revolutionaries, they got a couple hundred.
The National Journal‘s
dispatch from the fizzled insurrection makes it all sound
rather charming, with a woman called Momma Bear stepping up to take
charge of the march when it became clear that the formal organizers
weren’t quite up to the task. The issues inspiring the crowd
included Benghazi, the Bundy ranch, and the general state of the
U.S. Constitution.

But the detail that leaped out at me was this:

Two hundred people or so, largely white and near the
age of retirement, milled around among a few scattered college-age
kids, many of whom donned Guy Fawkes masks.

Guy Fawkes masks! At this point those things have taken on
enough contradictory meanings to fuel a dozen semioticians’ PhD
theses.

Well, maybe the meanings aren’t completely
contradictory. Those V for Vendetta masks tend to
show up in networked, decentralized movements that directly defy
authority: Anonymous, Occupy, the Indignados, the Arab
Spring. Operation American Spring was clearly modeled on both the
Arab Spring and Occupy, a fact that dismayed the protest’s
critics on the right. Should it be surprising that some of the
demonstrators decided that this was how to dress for the part?

But even that common ground might be slipping away: Twitter’s
telling
me people put on the masks at a rally for the military
regime in Egypt. At this point someone should start a cable
news show where no one is identified, everyone wears a Guy
Fawkes mask, and nobody agrees about everything. It’ll be like
Crossfire crossed with 4chan.