Churchill’s “V-Sign” and the Peace Symbol
I was wanting to find out about the two-finger gesture in the picture. It appears to be either the earliest peace symbol, and/or rabbit ears?

I’m not sure where Churchill picked up his two-finger V-sign (palm facing out), but he certainly popularized it during World War II.
The V-sign when made the other way (palm facing in) is equivalent in Britain to the “one-finger salute” in America. I am told it had its origins at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, when the French promised to cut off the index and middle finger of the English archers. They lost, and the English flashed their intact middle fingers at the vanquished French as a gesture of disdain. It has been so in England ever since.
I don’t think Churchill was conscious of the insulting meaning of the palm-in V-sign, when on occasion he used it instead of the palm-out.
3 thoughts on “Churchill’s “V-Sign” and the Peace Symbol”
The peace sign was never an upside-down, broken cross (that’s asinine) but a reverse Algis rune (Nordic), which upright represents protection, with the inverse meaning the opposite, an attempt at “magically” disarming the natural defenses of the public with notions of “peace and love”. 100% CIA psyop.
You need to read more in the Wikipedia entry. It’s much older than that.
According to my information (and Wikipedia’s, too), what is now called the ‘peace’ symbol originated as the badge of the CND, designed by Gerald Holtom in 1958. It represented:
a) The World divided.
b) A stylised rocket.
c) The letters ND in semaphore.
At least, this is what we were told in 1960.