Dismember, Dismember / The Fifth of November
Several months ago, this phrase came to me, hoping that Guy Fawkes was drawn & quartered. It turns out, the punishment was even more cruel and unusual than that. Private collection, illustration of the Hanging, drawing and quartering of Guy Fawkes. This print shows what happened to the Gunpowder Plotters of 1605. The punishment for treason was gruesome: the offender was dragged on hurdles through the streets to the execution-place, hanged, but taken down while still alive, castrated, disembowelled and cut into quarters.
I've always thought the activist proclivity to wearing V for Vendetta masks seemed like a poor choice of association. Is this the conclusion you want from an #occupy event? Not to mention, as someone pointed out today, that Guy Fawkes was trying to blow up a symbol of representative democracy in favor of a 9-year-old religiously-aligned monarch.
(Expanded from a Google+ post I made in June.)