Secular Café: Why do Communists love Red?

Secular Café For serious discussion of politics, political news, policy, political theory and economics and events happening round the world

Why do Communists love Red? Mar 21st 2012, 13:26 Quote: Why Do Communists Love Red? Was it Marx's favorite color? By Forrest Wickman|Posted Tuesday, March 20, 2012, at 7:06 PM ET The popular Chinese official Bo Xilai has been ousted by China's Communist Party. Bo became famous in part through his "red" campaign, in which he promoted "a retro-Maoist culture in which citizens sang patriotic songs and dressed in red." Why do communists love red? Because it's the color of revolution. Starting during the rise of the radical Jacobins during the French Revolution, red flags symbolized uprisings against entrenched authority. The revolutions of 1848 furthered the trend, as they began with red flags foisted in France and continued with others in Germany, Denmark, Italy, Austria, and Poland. The Communist Manifesto was published the same year, and its followers fought under the same red flags as the democrats and anarchists. The red flag didn't always represent popular uprising. Earlier, it was a symbol of emergency, and was used to signal the need for martial law. When a crowd petitioned to depose King Louis XVI in 1791, the red flag was flown not by the revolutionaries but by the counterrevolutionaries. The writer and historian Thomas Carlyle described how the crowds let out a great "howl of angry derision" at the sight of it. Similarly, when in A Tale of Two Cities Dickens describes how the crowds were "tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger," he's describing the flag of the authorities. ... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._so_much_.html

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions