I support Cuba and understand that regime change would make things much worse. My twitter timeline is full of MLs going "this is color revolution" as if it explains things. It made me wonder, what exactly makes a color revolution a color revolution.

I've read the wikipedia article and what I got is most of them are started by nonviolent student protests during disputed elections or other point of instability. Many are supported by western NGOs. What makes them inherently bad though? They sound like a strategy without specific ideological leaning...

    • StLangoustine [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Just read this exact thread but I'm not sure I'm sold on point 10, where she writes that as opposed to real protests color revolutions mainly exist as spectacle for foreign audience to legitimize foreign intervention. A lot of archetypical color revolutions seem to have happened without direct foreign intervention. Or is NED funneling money the foreign intervention we're talking about?

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Or is NED funneling money the foreign intervention we’re talking about?

        I'd imagine it's this. I'm sure with many of these there's outside help in the form of NGOs and whatnot.

      • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Study the history of Solidarnosc in Poland, it's one of the Ur-examples I can think of.

        Dock workers in Gdansk do mass wildcat strikes because wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living. The strikes coalesce into a new trade union called Solidarnosc (lit. Solidarity).

        Many strikers have legitimate grievenaces with the ruling Polish United Workers' Party, and a good number are avowed socialists. But the party is wary of non-party unions or strikes and cracks down on them.

        CIA and the Vatican play on people's frustration and the generally religious, nationalist sentiment of Poles in general; they drum up support for Solidarnisc against evil Soviet communism in W. Europe and the U.S.

        Suddenly Solidarnosc is flush with resources, cash, and international popular backing. The Workers Party has a legitimacy crisis and is sll but voted out of the Sejm in 1989. NATO gains a new foothold, Capital gets a major symbolic victory, the USSR loses one of its most important satelites, and communism becomes the ideology of evil repressive autocrats.

        Color revolution.

      • comi [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Ah,” revolutions” which has happened didn’t get foreign direct aid, but which has failed kinda sorta veered there

          • comi [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            I mean georgia/ukraine mainly, allegedly georgia expected nato aid with that whole shitshow in 2009, ukraine receives direct aid now (but their initial color revolution actually didn’t do anything, the second one (maidan) did)

        • StLangoustine [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Point 10 is kinda important for the whole thing. It's the difference between those people basically being PR for a foreign coup and them partaking in a bunch of NGO money, because why turn down free money?