The thing I find interesting / amusing about the "Guy Fawkes" masks from the movie, is the extent to which they have been embraced by at least 3 or 4 fairly different, even seemingly opposing, groups. Looking around, I've seen these masks associated with:
1. Radical libertarian / anti-government types
2. Tea Partiers
3. The OWS movement
4. Anonymous
The moral of this story may just be that these groups have more in common that you would suspect at first blush.
Why does it seem silly to you that the largest and most effective anti-government movement of the modern era would have some sympathizers who adopt the symbol?
Most of those pictures seem to be OWS related. Some of them are clearly Tea Party, though.
And to answer your question, because the Tea Party seemed to be all about being American and Fawkes was not only British but also Catholic. I guess pop culture helps.
Was this an attempt to illustrate "important issues" rather than promoting iconoclasm, or an attempt to say that wedge issues are what drives modern government and thus we shouldn't be paying attention to the man behind the curtain, but discussing the preselected moral issue dujour to keep us distracted and shoulders to the grindwheel rather than looking at the bigger picture?
The latter doesn't much look worth of downvoting to me, in fact I'd go almost so far as to say it's amongst the most vexing problems of humanity at the moment.
Yes, my point (such as it was) is that wedge issues distract from the real "supra-partisan" issues that affect citizens across party lines, like the immunity of bankers from prosecution, how much of a drain military expenditures are on the economy (and therefor quality of life) in the US, the TSA, US foreign policy as a stifle on travel opportunities, and so on.
Oh, but let's talk about some religious people laying a turd of morality on the front page of every newspaper. Birth-control in church insurance? Such a pressing issue!
But to their credit, that's not the point. This is touched upon in the novel--that it's the idea of rebellion that Guy Fawkes has become a symbol of, not what he was fighting for but that he was fighting at all.
1. Radical libertarian / anti-government types
2. Tea Partiers
3. The OWS movement
4. Anonymous
The moral of this story may just be that these groups have more in common that you would suspect at first blush.