Color Revolution

'Color Revolution' is an expression used to stigmatize a popular movement by suggesting that it is artificial and controlled from abroad. Widely used in the contemporary conspiracy lexicon, the term historically referred to a peaceful popular revolution reflecting the genuine aspirations of a civil society exasperated by fraud, corruption and the stifling of civil liberties. Its initial usage had no conspiratorial connotations. It referred to movements such as the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005) or the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005).

Over the years, 'Color Revolution' has become synonymous with American or Western interference or soft coups against regimes, often in former Soviet territories, that are deemed too cooperative with the United States.

Thus, in November 2005, at the Axis for Peace 2005 international conference, a two-day international conference organized in Brussels (Belgium) by Réseau Voltaire, one of the leading French-language conspiracy websites in partnership with Russian, Venezuelan and Iranian state-run media, the American conspiracy theorist Webster G. Tarpley was already denouncing "Colored Revolutions" which he identified with "CIA coups". John Laughland, number two at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation (IDC), a pro-Kremlin think tank based in Paris, also speaks of "colored coups" in a text published by Réseau Voltaire. "In reality," he says, "these are highly organized operations, often staged for the media and usually created and controlled by transnational networks of 'NGOs' that are instruments of Western power". Eva Golinger, a well-known pro-Hugo Chavez blogger, asserts that "the Colored Revolutions are nothing more than a new way of trying to impose the Empire's agenda".

(Last updated on 02/19/2024)