Falling for the Propaganda of Fear

I've just finished consolidating what I think is most of my life-remnants from childhood through high school into a single box. I'm donating some items that used to seem like they were keepers but no longer tug at me quite as much.

This is one of them:


It's part of an 18x60" piece of vinyl fabric that Daughter Number Two bought around 1972. I think she intended to cover pillows with it for her bedroom, but the reason I still have it as an intact piece of fabric is because my father would not allow her to use it.

Why? Because he said the peace symbol was, in reality, a symbol of the Devil's foot. Yes, that's what he thought.

According to the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the peace sign was designed by Gerald Holtom, a "professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts.... [he] explained that the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament)." This was in 1958.

According to the Wikipedia and its sources, the association with the Devil came about 10 years later from a John Birch Society pamphlet and other right-wing sources. My parents (especially my mother) were not fans of JBS, and I think she was skeptical of my father's argument in this case, even though she had no way of knowing its source. But the fabric got put away instead of used, nonetheless.

Looking back on this, I realize it was probably the first time I saw my father fall for the type of political fear-mongering that's so common now. The last time I saw him do that was during the Ebola outbreak of 2014. I was home for several weeks at that time, helping my parents downsize and move to assisted living. He was not a Fox News-watcher, but he suddenly started watching Bill O'Reilly and wanted to completely close the borders. The story of the quarantined nurse in New Jersey had him transfixed for days.

It was hard to watch and listen to, and impossible to reason him out of, so I finally gave up trying. Seeing this fabric brought it back, so now I'm glad to put it into the donation box. I hope a peace-loving person will make something from it.