Shades of Subversion: Is America's "Colour Revolution" Just Hyperbole, or the West's New Normal? By Chris Knight (Florida)

As Thanksgiving leftovers curdle in the fridge, a peculiar spectre haunts the American landscape: billboards taunting soldiers outside Fort Bragg with the barb, "Did you go airborne just to pull security for ICE?" Sponsored by Win Without War, a progressive outfit flush with $1 million from George Soros's Open Society Foundations in 2024 alone, per tax filings and grant records, these signs are more than ad space filler. They're the latest salvo in a narrative framing Trump's second term as an existential threat to "democracy," complete with a DC shooting of National Guard troops by an Afghan migrant and a viral video from six Democratic lawmakers, the so-called "Sedition Six," urging service members to defy "illegal orders." The query echoes across X: "What color is your revolution?" Purple, perhaps, for the bruised ego of a losing side? Or the blood-red of escalating rhetoric? Either way, it's a nod to the "colour revolutions" — those non-violent (at first) uprisings that toppled post-Soviet regimes from Serbia's Bulldozer (2000) to Ukraine's Orange (2004) and Georgia's Rose (2003). But is this the genuine article underway in the US, spilling into the broader West? Or just the fevered projection of a polarised polity?

The Anatomy of a Colour Revolution: A Quick Primer

Colour revolutions aren't spontaneous flower-child romps; they're engineered upheavals, often with Western fingerprints. As Linnea Aronsson details in The Color Revolutions, they hinge on five phases: (1) building opposition networks via NGOs; (2) election disputes as flashpoints; (3) mass protests with catchy symbols (hence the colours); (4) elite defections (military, judiciary); and (5) regime collapse, ideally yielding a pro-Western successor. The US pioneered the playbook through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID, funnelling millions to train activists in Serbia's Otpor! Movement, tactics later exported to Kyiv and Bishkek. Soros's Open Society Foundations? They're the velvet glove, bankrolling civil society with billions since 1979, from Eastern Europe to the Arab Spring. Critics like Russia and China decry them as "hybrid warfare," but proponents frame it as democracy promotion.

In the US context, alarmists like Gen. Mike Flynn and Alex Jones point to leaked USAID calls coordinating "global anti-authoritarian" resistance with foreign NGOs, echoing Otpor's civil disobedience manuals. Billboards near bases? That's Phase 1: erode military loyalty. The DC attack? Provocative optics to paint Trump's deportations as tyrannical. X chatter surges with #ColorRevolution, from DataRepublican's exposés on Soros-funded resistance guides to Tim Pool's civil war warnings. ZeroHedge even forecasts a Democratic "strategic assessment through 2028," mobilising 3.5% of the population (12 million) for sustained unrest. If Belarus 2020 (Snow Revolution) is the template, rigged polls, street heat, Western cheers, then Trump's "stolen" mandate (in blue minds) fits the bill.

Bullish on Bedlam: Why It Feels Like a Revolution

The case for "yes" is visceral. America's fault lines, immigration, January 6 myths, judicial warfare, mirror the grievances that ignited Maidan. Protests have already drawn millions, per organisers, hitting 25% of the 3.5% threshold for tipping points. Foreign ties? Ex-USAID staffers boast of linking with "colleagues from around the world" in "democracy and conflict mitigation spaces," straight out of the NED handbook. Glenn Beck tallies all seven conditions met: semi-authoritarian drift (in their eyes), divided elites, weak opposition (GOP squishes), angry youth, strong civil society (NGOs galore), international backing (EU tut-tuts Trump's "fascism"), and a unifying threat (MAGA). X users like @pepesgrandma unearth 2016 Soros Democracy Alliance meetings plotting "Otpor-style" resistance, sustained for nine years with US taxpayer dollars via State and USAID. It's not coincidence; it's choreography. As one Medium analyst notes, April 2025's "Hands Off" protests resurrected Nazi analogies and targeted Musk as oligarch-in-chief, classic delegitimisation.

Zoom out to the West: Georgia's 2024 "Russian Law" sparked Tbilisi protests, with US/EU flags waving against "foreign agent" NGO curbs, eerily similar to Win Without War's gripes. In France, 2024's pension riots morphed into yellow-vest redux, with Soros-linked funding whispers. Canada's 2022 trucker convoy? Branded a "colour revolution" by Ottawa, crushed with Emergencies Act, mirroring Lukashenko's playbook. The West isn't immune; it's the petri dish, where "democracy defence" blurs into subversion.

The Sceptic's Palette: Not Quite Crimson Yet

But hold the pitchforks, this isn't Euromaidan. Colour revolutions thrive on weak states; America's is a behemoth, with a 6,000-mile border fence, 800 overseas bases, and a populace packing 400 million guns. Brookings' Thomas Wright pegs large-scale unrest as "unlikely but not impossible." No such thing yet. The billboards? Protected speech, per First Amendment precedents from Vietnam to Iraq. The "Sedition Six" video? Boot-camp boilerplate on UCMJ ethics, not treason, though Trump's "punishable by DEATH" retort escalates the farce. Public buy-in? Trump's approvals hover at 55%, with 66% backing deportations; the "revolution" crowd polls under 30%.

Abroad, "colour" tags are often Kremlin disinformation: Kazakhstan 2022 protests? "Western plot," quote Moscow, debunked as organic fuel hikes. Georgia 2024? Genuine EU aspirations, not USAID puppets, though funding flows. In the West, it's more "managed decline": France's riots fizzle without regime topple; Canada's convoy was quashed without colour symbolism. As Nina Jankowicz notes, "colour revolution" spikes on Facebook are often conservative psyops, flipping the script on US meddling. Hyperbole erodes analysis, everything's a "revolution" until it's just gridlock.

Verdict: Taupe Tempest in a Teapot?

We're not in a full-spectrum colour revolution — yet. The US iteration is a hybrid: genuine elite panic laced with Otpor echoes, but hobbled by institutional steel and public apathy. It's Phase 1.5: probing for cracks, like the 2017 airport chaos or 2020 riots, but without the 3.5% firestorm. In the broader West, it's endemic friction, Georgia's protests a cautionary flare, Canada's a smothered spark, fuelled by the same NGO-globalist machine that's now boomeranging home. The colour? Mottled grey: the shade of a cold civil war, where billboards bait guardsmen and X amplifies the din.

Trump's antidote? Purge the deep state, per Flynn, rip out USAID rot, defund Soros conduits, and let courts (now stacked) swat the sedition. But escalation risks the very chaos it decries. The West's real revolution isn't coloured; it's the slow fade of trust, where every protest paints another stroke on democracy's obituary. In the palette of history, most revolutions end in mud, not rainbows.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/11/what-color-is-your-revolution.php