How do you know if protests in a country are actual protests or just western backed color revolution protests?
like a general litmus test or something
Litmus test: Are they suddenly getting widespread positive coverage in western news?
But the real answer is that every protest is on a spectrum between the two. What makes a color revolution so effective is that it redirects legitimate alienation towards reactionary ends
This is hexbear, we use Moscow time to plan our movie nights /j
Seriously though, the backpedaling is going to get more pushback than criticizing the oligarchs and their pet banderites.
Name a leftist forum that would do that to you and I’ll invoke the “no true marxist” defense. /joke
It legitimately displays a childlike understand of the world to ignore material reality in favor of vibes. /not joke
Furthermore, I invite you to hang out in our news comm. you’ll find people who actually investigate the root causes of current events there.
pronoun push
I don't want to detract from the main line of discussion here, but I find this to be a weird hangup. It's been a normal thing since at least Facebook's founding for social media sites to list the user's gender. I kind of wish there was a more elegant solution in broadly-understood culture, but I think listing how the user would like to be referred to if you discuss them in the third person is, if anything, far less invasive with labeling than the common alternatives (including not including such information, which produces endless little worthless discursive circles of "actually I'm not a he" from assuming everyone on the internet is a man).
Well, I’m here to be rational and have a nice discussion. Maybe we can work through that?
If you don’t mind me asking: what do you ID as politically? Believe it or not we won’t ban you just for not being marxist-Leninist. We tolerate all sorts of liberals.
What do you mean by pronoun push? Hexbear had a pronoun field, yes. We respect the pronouns people ask us to use, yes. We are never going to force you to use or ID pronouns for yourself. Our site explored has “none/use name” as an option. I personally use the comrade option, because I think that’s nifty and wish it existed irl.
Yeah this place might be perfect for you. We don't bother couching our language when it comes to Ukraine
yes, that was horrible of Russia to start a war.
Honestly not really. The alternative was allow Ukraine to set up as a springboard for operation Barbarossa 2, which would mean nuclear war. Russia objectively saved the world by destroying a decades worth of western plans in Ukraine. Feel bad for the citizens of the Donbas obviously, but even western Ukrainian citizens only have so much of my sympathy. Now they’re being picked up off the street and suddenly war in the east isn’t so fun anymore.
but even western Ukrainian citizens only have so much of my sympathy
Ukrainians voted in Zelenskyy because he ran on a platform of stopping the conflict and killings in Donbas, remember
You are both correct. On an individual oblast level his highest support was in the east. That being said he did win the other oblasts except for Lviv but by a more narrow margin
That is a good point and I agree up to a point, but like I said my sympathy is limited, not nonexistent.
Ukraine is actually resisting, they were couped at least 5 times to keep them in fold, 1991, 2004, 2014, 2021, 2022. I'm afraid that they are on their last legs though.
operation Barbaross 2
I doubt that was the endgame here, the west doesnt want to do a real war with russia they just want to pressure them into letting western companies extract all that natural gas for themselves. Nuclear winter is not very profitable.
The invasion is not a good thing and I dont see russia as justified here, given the harm on the civilian poulation is far worse in this scenerio, and the west still managed to profit off it anyway.
I doubt that was the endgame here, the west doesnt want to do a real war with russia they just want to pressure them into letting western companies extract all that natural gas for themselves.
I’m going to heavily disagree obviously. It’s very clear that nato was building up a military force to push into the Donbas, that’s the entire premise the special military operation was built on. The Donbas has a large portion of Ukraines natural resources and also a majority of its production capacity. I’m not trying to be argumentative or anything, but I gotta ask, why exactly would nato want that stuff if the plan was not to take Russian resources by force at a later time? They could simply buy it on the market right now, but instead they chose to coup a government on Russias border, arm and train them to nato standards, make war with its Eastern oblasts, then once Russia actually did something about it, nato dumps even more billions of dollars into its armed forces. Ultimately what you’re saying is “nato wouldn’t do that” but that’s IS exactly what I expected from nato to be honest.
Nuclear winter is not very profitable.
You and I understand that, but profit seeking is not always logical. In nato stockpiles right now there are tactical nukes (nukes that have a small enough payload that they could theoretically destroy one city or so) as if any nuclear nation on this planet would not immediately release their entire nuclear arsenal at the thought of being nuked in any capacity. Being nuked isn’t profitable, neither is climate change ultimately, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing it though.
The invasion is not a good thing and I dont see russia as justified here, given the harm on the civilian poulation is far worse in this scenerio.
Time and time again Russia has been shown to take great care NOT to deliberately attack civilian populations. For example civilian casualties in European wars have historically been 1:1 with military casualties. Ukraine has suffered losses estimated to be closing in on 500,000. Their civilian population however has casualties in the ~20-30,000 range. No where near a 1:1 even if you included the casualties of the pre invasion Donbas war (~12-14,000).
No the war as a whole is not good, but to throw that blame at Russia is not right. the invasion was justified because had Russia not done anything Ukraine would have at least invaded the Donbas region with NATOs approval and assistance. Because of the invasion Russia has defeated NATOs easternmost army, drained a huge chunk of NATOs stockpile that will take years to build up again, secured and is in the process of rebuilding the Donbas, and has given many nations across the globe a sign that nato is not as powerful as it appears. The only thing bad about this is it did it as the Russian federation and not the Soviet Union which is EXTREMELY disappointing. It’s easy to simply be against war, if that’s your position then I understand, but when looking at the situation at hand Russia really did make the best play it could from a shit hand that it was dealt.
Thanks for the writeup, this prospective is actually pretty agreeable, but I still feel like a direct land invasion of Russia doesnt fit NATO's modus operandi. Do you think a color revoltion in Russia might have been their primary goal instead? If NATO baited Russia into war and then used it as propagana against them to sow dissent in the Russian population, that might serve as a decent basis for an insurrection. Seems like it might be a "damned if you do damned if you don't" type situation for the Kremlin.
Actually from what we now know, NATO’s intention was to use the unprecedented sanctions to crush Russia’s economy, which they apparently expected would collapse within weeks. Ukraine’s job was to hold out the Russian advances for a few weeks until the collapsing economy forces Russia to retreat, and for the Russians come back to beg the US/EU to let them sell oil and gas again.
At the same time, we also know that Ukraine had been building up its military since 2014, with the explicit goal of recapturing Donbass and Crimea. If Ukrainian army had reached Donetsk city, it would have been a nightmare for the Russians to retake it again. The civilian casualties could easily go magnitudes of order higher. In this sense, Russia’s pre-emptive strike was almost inevitable if the goal was to prevent the Ukrainians from reaching Donetsk at all cost.
You’re welcome, thank you for not taking it negatively, I didn’t want to come off as argumentative as I said before. As far as direct land invasion I’m pretty sure that if that plan was in the works it would have been at least 30-50 years out. I believe the plan was to win the war against the Donbas with the Ukrainian army, take the resources in the Donbas, make the Donbas the new military supply hub for nato, take Crimea, then eventually start war with Russia. In the meantime color revolution is always on the table. That color revolution would partially look like the sanctions that ended up failing anyways and also maybe terrorism from the ukronazis who would theoretically be occupying the Donbas in this scenario. You could kinda see that taking place with the few units that have crossed into Russian territory proper.
Potential for co-option always blurs the line, too, especially in cases like decentralized Occupy sort of stuff. That sort of leaderless, ad-hoc angle can have perks, but leaves a fundamental opening for bad actors.
Litmus test: Are they suddenly getting widespread positive coverage in western news?
Came here to post this same thing. More to it than that, and there's a lot of great answers here, but that is a shortcut to at least determine if its sus.
Color revolutions:
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English signs in a country where nobody speaks English.
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Anglo media platforms those protests.
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Anglo social media does nothing but talk about them.
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Democracy^TM^
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Leaders are all cutouts of some Western NGO.
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Leaders speak perfect English.
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Memes and symbols that come from the protests can always be perfectly translated into English with no cultural context lost.
There's also some dipshit French public intellectual^TM^ who always shows up right when a color revolution is about to commence, but I forgot the dude's name.
- Flying the flags of western nations and explicit calling for them to do a military intervention against the country
::: spoiler colour revolution pics with flags in them
but 100% unironic lolThere’s also some dipshit French public intellectualTM who always shows up right when a color revolution is about to commence, but I forgot the dude’s name.
Hmmm might be Raphael Glucksmann ?
I mean, one big red flag in a color revolution is... uh.. everyone coordinating around a big colored flag.
Can't help but notice a huge fixation on liberal talking points - fixations on "free press" and "free trade" and "no more corruption", particularly absent any tolerance for criticism of western venues. Any time people start waving American / British / French flags, that's a huge warning sign. Insinuations that the current head of state is either a closeted homosexual or secretly about to die are also great signifiers. The hornier the press is for a potential replacement dictator senior executive, the more likely its an Op.
1: lots of signs in English (assuming it's a non-English speaking country)
2: really vague, buzzword based political goals ("democracy" "freedom" "power to the people")
The amount of English used. English communications are usually for a foreign, likely American or general Western audience.
Obviously this only applies to non English speaking countries, or countries where English is not the lingua franca.
Or when Israel has propaganda videos telling Gazans what to do, in English while the internet is cut off in Gaza.
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Are there a bunch of British and American flags being waved by the protestors? Do they have a bunch of signs in english for no reason? Are they asking for foreign intervention from NATO or the US? Is CNN and other bourgeois media reporting on it nonstop, and are they described as freedom fighters by such media? It's always kind of obvious when it's a color revolution.
The protest's endgoal seems to be about opening up the country to increased Western capital.
Support from OSINT
As in the people on Twitter whose thing is that they do OSINT? Or do you mean something else?
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Well most protest movements will be attempted to get co-opted by the us, if they aid the us empires wants, but that's not really answering your question.
If all the signs are in English you might be in a color revolution. If you're demonstrating for vague amaricanized ideals like a general sense of "freedom" you might be in a colour revolution. If you get a lot of attention from us media, despite having a small size, you might be in a color revolution. If your "leaders" seemingly come out of nowhere and all have 
vibes, you just might be in a colour revolution
The thing about spycraft is you you will never really know for sure. However, if it serves western interests it doesn't matter. You have to treat them like it is
Spoiler: it always is. Colour coups are very cheap money and manpower wise compared to results, so there's always some dirty CIA money under them.
In non-English speaking countries: more signs in English than the local language(s). Memes relating to Western popular culture, extensively shared on western media platforms (Instagram, Facebook)
Hlaf agree on this because of the english in signs BUT the simpsons are latin american heritage and you will see memes with them
Yeah definitely, I guess it's an indicator not a smoking gun. Personally I was thinking the Hunger Games/Milktea Alliance stuff in SE Asia, I'm not familiar with latin American memes.
I was going to say, the protest signs are a good additional piece of data, along with other things. If they’re in the local language, it’s pretty obvious who the target audience is. If it’s in English… a little suspect (in my book)
Vincent Bevins wrote a book on protests movements. I recommend reading it: "If we burn". Weirdly pro-HK protests perspective, but salvageable. The internet gave the US a lot of tools to brainfry people by amplyfing the right protests and messages within large protests, along with the western media empires in general, and especially horizontalist movements suffer from it pretty badly, being not able to out-maneuver ngos or having no idea how to wield power, so that the systemic inertia of western imperialism made a lot of things skew towards western interests without any active subjective input.
Yeah, US State/CIA don't create these kind of protests out of thin air. They usually insert themselves into legitimate protests movements of people with real issues with their government, but who don't want to overthrow it and become US puppets.
That's what happened at the Tianemen Square protests. The mass of people were socialists students with issues they cared about, but US State backed elements worked their way into coopting it. The Belarus protests from a few years ago is a more recent example.
Another good example of the US co-opting an existing movement (albiet on a larger scale) is how the CIA trained and equipped the Mujahideen to kill the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Exactly. They look for existing movements and conflicts that they can use as a vehicle for their own aims. And then use propaganda to make Westoids believe its good for them too
This post is dedicated to the brave Mujahideen fighters of Afghanistan
Are all the major media channels covering it non stop in the exact same way?
Are US politicians constantly talking about it?
Most likely orders were handed down to show and say exactly what to manufacture consent.
Are they waving the flags of the great Satan and one of the most violent imperialist countries in modern history?
it's an imaginary distinction. every "color revolution" represents some real current of popular sentiment within a society. the question is not "are all these people that i'm seeing in the streets actually all paid protestors?" but rather "what segment of the society as a whole are these people speaking for, and what are their interests?"
recall the trucker protests in canada. these were real pissed off truckers using a small number of large machines to cause a lot of economic disruption. but by and large they were middle class small holders who owned their own vehicles and could afford to miss work for weeks at a time, not to articulate any specific demands, but to throw a tantrum brought on by their ambient sense that they were not the god kings of their own legacy that settler mythology taught them they could be.
Having multiple sources of information helps. Hanging out in leftist spaces one can (sometimes) hear rumblings before an explosive incident. It's when it happens in a vacuum that I get suspicious.