The armed saint in modern war: A visual social semiotic analysis of Saint Javelin

As the Russia–Ukraine war continues into its fifth year, social and digital media have expanded the power and possibilities for non-state actors to participate in its trajectory. A critical example of this phenomenon is Saint Javelin, a sticker-turned-meme-turned-online business that leveraged the religious-inspired visuality of the Virgin Mary’s likeness cradling a Javelin anti-tank weapon to raise funds for and awareness of the ongoing war. Its role as a visual media artefact serving a political purpose begs the question of how its visual rhetoric may have motivated its rise and its impact in the Russia–Ukraine war. This article addresses this topical and scholarly gap through a visual social semiotic analysis of Saint Javelin, exploring its visualized meaning at the intersection of religious traditions and contemporary geopolitics. We argue that the visual integration of modern weaponry with religious iconography catches attention and evokes an emotional response through a metaphoric process that ties the time-and-place-lessness of religious icons with circumscription to the modern political affairs of mankind, for example, war. These findings highlight the potential and pathways for visual rhetoric to affect the trajectory of war and illustrate more generally the value of visual theories for understanding political communication.