When the Solidarity movement was getting started in Poland in the early 1980s, any obvious public display of sympathy with the nascent union was dangerous, and immediate arrest (perhaps with a beating) was certainly a possibility. Media were suppressed, tanks guarded television stations, propaganda and lies were the party line, and the very word ”truth” was bandied about in a meaningless Orwellian polit-speak. Taking back the language was as big a piece of the movement as was the trade union. The Solidarnosc badge having been banned, union supporters took to wearing a small resistor…an electrical resistor…the way we might wear a campaign button. According to a Finnish reporter, “School children removed electronic resistors from old radios and attached them as visible badges on their clothes.” Add to that, the symbol of the disassembled (silenced) radio. Add to that the fact that movement leader Lech Walesa was a shipyard electrician, so the “electrical connection” (sorry!) meant something as well.
I love the complex symbolism that comes from such a simple signifier.
Elsewhere I read about people picking resistors based on the coloured bands.
