Is the colour red ever going to be the colour for revolutionary movements any more, or has it been usurped forever by the Republican Party?
Red = Republican is only in the context of the Republican and Democratic parties. Outside of that specific context, the color red definitely does not refer exclusively to the Republican Party.
Worldwide, the color red more commonly refers to Socialists and Communists.
Wikipedia’s take on political colors, for what it’s worth:
I know some Republicans who were pissed off years ago that the color they associated with aggression and Communism was being used “unfairly”, in their perception, to apply to the GOP. Although now, given the pro-Putin leanings, maybe it was an appropriate choice all along.
In Canada, red is the color of the Liberal party, Blue is the conservatives, and orange is the NDP.
Since the Republicans ARE a revolutionary party hell-bent on overthrowing the US constitution, I think in fact red is being renewed as a revolutionary color, not being usurped or retired.
Since about the year 2000, maybe 2004 they are the polar opposite of “conservative”. Reactionary revolutionary is where they are now.
I seem to remember reading here somewhere that the US usage of red and blue was a fairly recent invention for a TV channel’s coverage of election results…?
In Europe it tends conventionally to be red=left, yellow/orange=centre/liberals, blue=conservatives (black=conservative/religious), but there are variations.
In both Germany and the Netherlands it’s a journalistic short cut to refer to coalition governments by the colour combination - so, “Jamaica” (black/yellow/green) = Christian Democrats + Free Democrats + Greens, and the current “Traffic Light” coalition = Social Democrats + Free Democrats + Greens.
Yep. Sayeth wiki:
Although both major political parties (and many minor ones) use the traditional American colors of red, white, and blue in their marketing and representations, since election night 2000 blue has become the identifying color for the Democratic Party while red has become the identifying color for the Republican Party. That night, for the first time all major broadcast television networks used the same color scheme for the electoral map: blue states for Al Gore and red states for George W. Bush. Since then, the color blue has been widely used by the media to represent the party. This is contrary to common practice outside of the United States where blue is the traditional color of the right and red the color of the left.
From:
More here if you’re really interested in the backstory:
And only because of the 2000 election coverage when all the channels picked blue=D; red=R. So it is arbitrary as opposed to unions picking red because of communism or an Islamic movement choosing green.
I view red = Republican for electoral maps and tie colors for your debate suit. If I saw someone waving a red banner, I wouldn’t assume they were celebrating Republicanism. That’s all American flags and Don’t Tread on Me nonsense
Interestingly, here in Austin Texas there are a lot of Democrats who use red and Republicans who use blue in their campaign posters. I suspect it’s a deliberate attempt to mess around with the voters.
By comparison, in the UK, Boris Johnson’s success in 2019 in winning many traditional Labour-held seats across a swathe of the Midlands inspired someone to describe those seats as the “red wall”. Not to be outdone, as the opinion polls have swung against the Tories, opening up prospects for the LibDems (colour orange) to pick up safe Tory seats across the south, they’ve been talking up the prospect of breaking through a similar “blue wall”.
Well, yes and no: obviously, political parties pick their own logos, colors, and slogans. On the other hand, you do see, e.g., blue “D” logos and organizations like ActBlue, so they are paying it some credit, for whatever reasons, although
so plenty of American flags all around.
FTR, the quote you attributed to me is actually an excerpt from wiki as I said in my post. No biggie, but I don’t want to seemingly take credit for their writing.
Discourse has a shortcoming when you (anyone) quotes a part of a post that’s itself wholly inside a quote, the outer context is lost. Which makes it look like the wrong person said whatever.
The solution if you’re going to quote a snip of somebody else’s quote, is to include a little bit of their own writing from their post before or after the quote you want a snip of. Which may then entail cutting down their quote to just the snip you care about, and using ellipses to indicate those snips.
It’s more work, but it keeps the record straight.
Like this:
But communism being associated with red or Islamicism being associated with green are just as arbitrary.
From wikipedia
On March 14, 2014, the California Republican Party officially rejected red and adopted blue as its color. Archie Tse, The New York Times graphics editor who made the choice when the Times published its first color presidential election map in 2000, provided a nonpolitical rationale for retaining the red–Republican link, explaining that "Both ‘Republican’ and ‘red’ start with the letter ‘R.’
From The Verge
The color coding we’re familiar with today didn’t stick until the iconic (and extremely lengthy) election of 2000, when The New York Times and USA Today published their first full-color election maps. The Times spread used red for Republicans because “red begins with r, Republican begins with r,” said the senior graphics editor Archie Tse, “it was a more natural association.”
And USA Today
Prior to 2000, red and blue did not always respectively denote Republicans and Democrats. That changed with the election of the new millennium and its drawn-out conclusion – which ended in mid-December that year with Republican George W. Bush being declared the official winner over Democrat Al Gore.
That was the first year USA TODAY published its full-color election map, and the same is true with The New York Times.
I think it is pretty well established blue for Dems and red for Pubs was chosen for them in the 2000 election by the media.
Not quite. Those movements chose their own colors. Communism: the red of blood and war and bloody uprising. Islam: the origin of green is more obscure, but for whatever reason it was quickly adopted by Muslims as the color representing their religion. So no, not arbitrary.
Red, the blood of angry men!
Black the dark of ages past!
Red, a world about to dawn!
Black, the night that ends at last!
Apologies; mea culpa!
All right, but your first quote seems to confirm that the California Republican Party “officially rejected red and adopted blue as its color’”. They picked their own color— it was not chosen for them by the media— and, notably, it was not red in this instance. The color scheme on their web page appears to be more or less blue and green, naturally with some red-white-and-blue merch you can buy.
And the result of that is that in 2024 their color is red as chosen by the media.
Is that a result, or simply the media picking and sticking with their own color scheme for maps and so on?
Pre-2000, as I recall, blue was used by TV news on election days for whichever party was in power, and red for the other.