“I get it, because society is like a Van, because a Van is a car you put a bunch of people in to move them forward.”
“What? No not…”
“And we are the Guards of the Van.”
“No it doesn’t mean guardians of a van.”
“We Guard the Van as it moves forward, to keep the people inside safe on their journey to their final destination!”
“Tha… Okay, actually that’s not a terrible analogy to what I’m saying.”
Kinda - it’s a shortening of avant-garde, or advance guard in English, which was in physical terms the guard of the Van, or front, of the army, so is also literally the van guard.
Yeah I figured something like that would be the case, I folk etymolygised in my mind it as (cara)van guard, like the few armed scouts agead of a group of people with a donkey making a trek along the silk road. I didn’t think of the French origin wrt avant being shortened to /van/. Interesting, thanks :)