I am fairly certain that the term “color revolution is going to see more use over the next few weeks than anyone ever imagined. This is because of the efforts of dataRepublican in exposing what can only be described as the planning of a coup to overthrow our system of government.
What is a color revolution? Wikipedia has a definition.
“[Color revolutions] are a series of often non-violent protests and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government and society taking place in post-Soviet states (particularly Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) and the former Yugoslavia during the 21st century. The aim of the color revolutions is to establish Western-style democracies. They were primarily triggered by election results widely viewed as falsified. The color revolutions are marked by the use of the internet as a method of communication, as well as a strong role of non-governmental organizations [(“NGOs”)] in the protests.”
While the term NGO is used, one has to wonder just how non-government these organizations are when they receive much funding from government sources.
USAID and the CIA were instrumental in fomenting the color revolutions in Serbia (the “Bulldozer Revolution,” 2000), Georgia (the “Rose Revolution,” 2003) and Ukraine (the “Orange Revolution,” 2004-2005), Also Kyrgyzstan (the “Tulip Revolution,” 2005), Lebanon (the “Cedar Revolution”, 2005), Belarus (the “Jeans Revolution,” 2006), Ukraine again (the “Revolution of Dignity,” 2013-2014) and Armenia (the “Velvet Revolution,” 2018).
It should be noted that these are only the ones we know about publicly, and there are also suspicions that similar U.S. governmental actions took place in the “Arab Spring” of 2010 to 2012 while Obama was President. How much knowledge any sitting President has of these activities is not known. What is known is that the CIA sometimes has functioned outside the authority of the Executive branch of our government. Vladimir Putin has expressed on occasion that the President of our country is not fully in charge of what some parts of the Executive branch do.
How about the NGO’s that were involved? There are many of them. There is the National Endowment for Democracy (“NED,” directly congressionally funded), the National Democratic Institute (“NDI,” funded by grants from USAID, the Department of State and NED). Also, the International Republican Institute (“IRI,” similarly funded by grants from USAID, the Department of State and NED), Freedom House (also similarly funded by grants from USAID, the Department of State and NED).
There are many others who receive funding from a variety of sources. This is US tax dollars that fund foreign policy initiatives that are difficult to trace and often are not supported by a majority of Americans.
Supposedly these NGO’s all believe in “protecting democracy.” These people believe that this is the catchall phrase that makes everything they do okay. However, their track record is muddy at best. Many of the regimes that were overthrown were actually democratically elected. It certainly seems that governments that did not adhere with slavish devotion to western standards were often on the wrong end of these efforts.
One such effort was the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically-elected President, Viktor Yanukovych. Why? Because he was friendly to Russia.
It is important to understand the mechanisms, the “how to”, of a color revolution. Once one sees the marionette strings, one cannot unsee them.
Cynical Publius has published six lines of attack for a color revolution.
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Funding.
Those U.S. NGOs you see listed above operate by funding other NGOs and individuals inside the targeted nation. Dark U.S. money becomes even darker money inside the targeted nation. These organizations build parallel structures that can operate outside national control and coordinate/sustain protest capacity at a tightly-organized, high level.
- Training.
The well-funded NGOs and individuals then engage in highly structured activist training programs. Often pyramidal in nature (i.e., “train the trainers”), these programs cover branding, the processing of parallel vote counts, actions that erode the legitimacy of existing governmental institutions and maintaining ostensibly nonviolent discipline to maximize activist legitimacy.
- Narrative and Symbolism.
The narrative of government illegitimacy must be pushed and repeated over and over and over. Complicit media sources are essential to creating and sustaining this narrative (often with cash changing hands to publish a particular story). Very basic symbolism is also vital. The name “color revolution” itself refers to the use of an inspiring color to unify the activists and present a constant reminder of the surge of activism engulfing the country via clothing, signs and banners—the “Orange Revolution” is a perfect example. Logos, slogans, hashtags and similarly pithy symbolic expressions are essential in delegitimizing the targeted regime and present regime change as the only “democratic” outcome.
- Electoral Trigger.
A big part of the dark money is used to deploy “independent” election monitors, create fake pre-election polling and fake exit polling, and rapidly publicize perceived “irregularities” to create a clear trigger for mass protests. NGO networks then convert the disputed vote into sustained mass street action. While the architects of color revolutions consistently highlight the “non-violent” nature of their protests, certain groups are designated to engage in covert (i.e., masked) violent action, and other groups are essentially sent to the slaughter in hopes that the government will violently crack down and create martyrs. (Although this name pre-dates color revolutions, such deliberate martyrdom is what I call the “Horst Wessel Strategy.”)
- Elite pressure.
This is the process of relying on outside agents of high legitimacy to create public statements of support for the protestors and activists, create targeted sanctions or incentives for the current government to step down, and to quietly engage with military, bureaucratic, and business elites in the targeted government. The aim is to isolate the current government internationally and signal that cooperation with the old regime carries higher costs than accommodation with the protesters.
- Defection of Security Forces and Military.
One of the main purposes of all of the above is to convince a nation’s military and security/police forces that they are a part of an illegitimate regime and that the only moral choice is to defect to the opposition. Ramping up violent protests such that these people must choose between firing on their own countrymen or defecting is a fundamental tenet of color revolutions, supposed “non-violent” practices notwithstanding. In high-trust societies where the military is well-respected, this is perhaps the most important tool in the color revolutionary’s tool box. When the military and police defect, the color revolution is over, and it wins.
This has been going on for a long time. For decades disfavored national governments were overthrown by our government with or without the express approval of the President. Then PDJT came along and dismantled USAID. And it all stopped. Or did it? Has our government become a disfavored government in the eyes of these people who used to work for USAID and various NGO’s engaged in these activities?
Think about these lines of attack and what we have seen in this country since Trump came on the scene.
More on this tomorrow.