"Color revolution" is a rather perky term denoting a bloody, divisive and destructive manufactured effort to crack open, for easy exploitation, any existing democratically elected government insufficiently obedient to the US-led West. Idealistic and unwitting youth, recruited into the cult of Gene Sharp, trained by the progeny of Otpor (tell-tale fist symbol, below), and convinced that their "movement" can change the world for the better, show up in the hundreds and thousands for packaged events, wearing the requisite colors and carrying the pre-printed signs.
The people Hollywood hires for staged crowd scenes are called "Extras" for a reason. Indeed, it's the black-clad provocateurs - funded, trained, equipped and armed by the US - who set the scene, place the props and direct the action for the ubiquitous cameras as well as perpetrate the off-camera death and destruction. Whether "on-stage" or "backstage", these mercenary provocateurs explosively aim at both "sides" in the "conflict" which they themselves have created, stoking it to the maximum.
Color revolutions became the West's weapon of choice in the late '80s, gaining intensity after 2000. (Think "Arab Spring".) One of the most famous is brought back yearly into the melded minds of the masses as a "massacre" (the West's term). Let's call it the Red Color Revolution. This effort to tear a nation and its people's lives apart, or at the very least to cast aspersions on them, is known in Western media as "The Tiananmen Square Massacre," a term bringing instant "recognition" to millions of manipulated minds imbued with a memory of everything that never actually happened.
"We saw it on TV!!"
Shortly after the 2014, $5 billion US color revolution in Ukraine (They'd "colored" democratically elected Yanukovich in 2004, as well, but he was later re-elected.) we re-posted information about this obvious example. Tiki torches? Nazi symbols? The US Assistant Secretary of State handing out cookies in the Maidan square, plus her phone conversation with the US Ambassador to Ukraine, leaked and posted to YouTube? All this should qualify as "obvious" or at least highly suspicious.
Propaganda dissolves reality. This is a problem since only reality-based knowledge can support resilience. And, recognizing propaganda requires work. Therefore, we expend a good deal of effort on this site, as we did formerly with interns, helping others and ourselves improve our propaganda sensors.
Obviously, we don't always succeed.
After our 2014 Ukraine posts, we received an indignant email from a former intern claiming we were spreading "wild tales". He knew what happened because he'd seen it on TV.
He'd no doubt also seen Mary Poppins flying with the aid of an umbrella on TV. "The News" is assumed to be somehow different from the rest of television. On The News, people tell us the truth. They tell us what we "need to know". If we can't rely on this trusted resource, what then can we lean on? This dependence makes the propaganda exponentially more effective, the viewer more easily manipulated.
Truth & Resilience
Manipulation is constant in the 2020s, making it vital to continually build our awareness of all that seems "too pat", overly convenient, suspiciously profitable, lacking basic logic. Our readers have all learned to discern the patterns. But, what about the memories made before we knew what to watch for? Jeff Brown, one of our Special Edition experts, describes his own such experience regarding the Tiananmen lies.
Manipulation through diversion toward an incorrect focus and conflation of two separate events or their outcomes both occurred during the "Red Revolution". Larry Romanoff explains. Finally, Dennis Etler's article deals with people who are not what they seem to be on the surface, leading to events of the same character.
China's leadership realized they were being set up, and the "Red Revolution" failed. But, it caused hideous death to those who tried to keep the peace. It caused China's leaders to be more on guard. It succeeded in smearing China, at least in the Western mind, where the lie lives and continues to help the violent injure the peaceful. Lies do that. This Special Edition is our effort to promote resilience at the expense of propaganda and help push back against the Tiananmen Lie. Thanks for reading.
