{"id":246947,"date":"2026-10-16T20:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T20:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/?p=246947"},"modified":"2026-10-16T20:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T20:44:20","slug":"the-rise-and-further-rise-of-the-colour-revolutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/the-rise-and-further-rise-of-the-colour-revolutions\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise and further rise of the \u201ccolour revolutions\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is largely forgotten today that Washington’s imperial adventurism after 9\/11 was not limited to military interventions. A core element of the Bush administration’s \u201cfreedom agenda<\/em>\u201d \u2013 under whose auspices devastating wars were waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere \u2013 was the open support of civil society-led coups throughout the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact<\/em>, and Yugoslavia. The citizens of these regions and the world continue to live with the destructive consequences of this interference. The seemingly endless \u2013 and ever-escalating \u2013 proxy war in Ukraine is a particularly poignant legacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Maidan, 2014, Ukraine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 1983 establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) \u2013 a US government agency explicitly tasked with openly carrying out what the CIA once did covertly \u2013 ushered in a new era of \u201cnon-spy coups.\u201d Working closely with USAID and George Soros\u2019 Open Society Institute, the NED subsequently provided funding, training, and material support to NGOs, \u201cindependent\u201d media outlets, opposition groups, and other regime-change initiatives around the world.<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, the NED and its allies had developed an extremely clever and cost-effective blueprint for overthrowing inconvenient governments \u2013 whether left-wing, nationalist, or even former US puppets who had stepped out of line. The previous October, longtime Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 had been brought down, a move the Washington Post<\/em> grandly described as \u201can extraordinary US effort to dethrone a foreign leader, not through covert operations of the kind the CIA once carried out in countries like Iran and Guatemala, but through modern campaign techniques<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the forefront of the anti-Milo\u0161evi\u0107 movement was Otpor! (Serbian: Resistance!), a rebellious, NED-funded youth activist group. Through a mix of civil disobedience, nonviolent resistance, rock concerts, street theatre, and graffiti, they stirred up massive public opposition to the Yugoslav president. When the official results indicated a Milo\u0161evi\u0107 victory on election day, an NED-funded \u201cparallel vote count\u201d claimed to prove massive fraud and drove millions into the streets of Belgrade to peacefully demand the president’s resignation. Milo\u0161evi\u0107 then capitulated in the face of seemingly overwhelming popular power.<\/p>\n

The supposedly heroic struggle of Otpor! and other US-backed anti-Milo\u0161evi\u0107 groups was immortalized in an elaborate \u201cdocumentary\u201d: Bringing Down a Dictator<\/em>. Milo\u0161evi\u0107\u2019s overthrow provided a precise blueprint for future \u201ccolour revolutions\u201d \u2013 so named because the empire-backed activists who led these mob coups frequently adopted specific colours for their banners, branding, and logos. Initially, US officials readily and publicly associated themselves with these upheavals. At the same time, the mainstream media regularly published remarkably revealing follow-up reports on the revolts, which extensively examined Washington\u2019s guiding hand and often enormous financial expenditures.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, politicians, commentators, and journalists invariably framed colour revolutions as ultimately spontaneous uprisings of liberal, progressive forces with legitimate grievances yearning for democracy and freedom. In reality, they almost without exception produced corrupt, repressive governments that ruled through intimidation and brutality, including political assassinations. Post-revolutionary regimes also typically implemented sweeping privatizations and other devastating \u201creforms\u201d that destroyed the living standards of average citizens by subjecting their countries to the EU, IMF, NATO, World Trade Organization, and other mechanisms of Western economic, military, and political subjugation.<\/p>\n

Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107’s NED-orchestrated overthrow is nicknamed the \u201cBulldozer Revolution<\/em>\u201d because of iconic scenes in which a front-end loader helped anti-government agitators occupy government buildings. But its driver quickly turned against the \u201crevolution.\u201d The ensuing \u201cshock therapy\u201d decimated Yugoslavia’s mixed market economy, caused his successful independent business to fail, and drove him into bankruptcy. He eked out a living on meagre state welfare payments for the rest of his life. For most participants, the subsequent colour revolutions were similarly a lesson in being cautious about what one wishes for.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Bulldozer Revolution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cExternal impetus\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

In February 2005, President George W. Bush delivered a grandiose speech in Bratislava, Slovakia. He praised how \u201crecent milestones in the history of freedom<\/em>\u201d had been witnessed. These included Georgia\u2019s Rose Revolution of November 2003, Ukraine\u2019s Orange Revolution the following year, and Iraq\u2019s Purple Revolution a month earlier. \u201cThe advance of freedom is the concentrated work of generations<\/em>,\u201d Bush declared. He looked ahead to Moldova and \u201cinevitably<\/em>\u201d Belarus, which would \u201cone day proudly join the community of democracies<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, the call of freedom reaches every consciousness and soul. And one day, the promise of freedom will reach every person and every nation.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Moldova’s forced change into a breathtakingly corrupt, de facto<\/em> EU-US colony took many years. Belarus, on the other hand, remains stubbornly resistant to the \u201cpromise of freedom<\/em>\u201d as defined by Brussels, London, Washington, and other centres of imperial power. Nevertheless, President Bush’s confidence was justified. Waves of insurrectionary unrest, unleashed by his administration’s \u201cfreedom agenda<\/em>,\u201d had systematically swept away certain enemy governments one after another each year since his inauguration. Indeed, within weeks of Bush’s speech, Kyrgyzstan’s insufficiently pro-Western leader fell victim to yet another colour revolution.<\/p>\n

He would not be the last. Previous colour revolutions had enthusiastically emphasized the importance of nonviolent resistance techniques \u2013 many of them developed by Gene Sharp, who was closely intertwined with the US military and intelligence apparatus throughout his life. However, Kyrgyzstan’s NED-created regime-change army, KelKel \u2013 modelled directly on Otpor! \u2013 attacked police officers, set fire to government buildings, and even carried out bombings. Their ferocity was actively encouraged and promoted by US-funded local television stations. Such aggression subsequently became the hallmark of colour revolutions.<\/p>\n

That colour revolutions constituted a formal weapon of war in the post-9\/11 arsenal of the empire was enthusiastically demonstrated by the arch-neo-conservative Max Boot at the end of December 2004. He raved about how Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which had brought a pro-Western government to power just days earlier, had been one of the \u201cmost inspiring events<\/em>\u201d of that year. Boot declared the \u201ctriumph<\/em>\u201d and \u201cmiracle<\/em>\u201d of the revolution to dispel \u201cthe curious notion, still prevalent in many Western universities and foreign ministries, that democracy is a luxury good suitable only for rich countries<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese revolutions expose the hollowness of the clich\u00e9 that ‘democracy cannot be imposed by outsiders’\u2026\u2026. sometimes, in dealing with an entrenched dictatorship, this requires military interventions of the kind that took place in Iraq and Afghanistan. More fragile regimes can be overthrown by their own people, but even they often need a little external push\u2026…. There was nothing shameful about the US intervention in Ukraine.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Boot boasted that Washington had spent $58 million in democracy promotion in Ukraine over the previous two years. He proposed granting Kyiv accelerated NATO and EU membership to complete the Orange Revolution. \u201cIn the meantime, we need to apply the lessons of Ukraine elsewhere<\/em>,\u201d Boot urged, suggesting that \u201can obvious candidate for a similar regime change is Iran<\/em>.\u201d He elaborated, \u201cIt is difficult to imagine a higher priority than overthrowing the mullahs<\/em>,\u201d and encouraged the Bush administration to prioritize the \u201cliberation of Iran<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUSAID aid\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Such revolutionary zeal prevailed at that time that in January 2006 USAID even published a glossy magazine, Democracy Rising<\/em>, which detailed Washington’s central role in fomenting grassroots revolts as far afield as Afghanistan, Gaza, and Lebanon. Dedicated sections on previous colour revolutions were brimming with astonishingly frank passages. One section on Georgia’s Rose Revolution of November 2003 described how the NED had financed the training of local \u201clawyers, judges, journalists, members of parliament, NGOs, political party leaders, and others<\/em>\u201d for regime change.<\/p>\n

The stated purpose of this investment was to \u201cmake Georgians feel they should control the government<\/em>.\u201d The Rose Revolution \u201cwas the culmination of these efforts<\/em>.\u201d One recipient of US financial support remarked, \u201cWithout foreign support, I\u2019m not sure we could have achieved this without bloodshed<\/em>.\u201d Several pages were devoted to the Orange Revolution. It noted how thousands of Ukrainian journalists were trained in \u201cinvestigative journalism<\/em>,\u201d funded by the NED and USAID.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Orange Revolution, 2004, Ukraine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An alumnus told Democracy Rising<\/em> that this funding \u201ccreated the feeling that others were ‘in the trenches’ with them<\/em>.\u201d At the same time, the NED-affiliated Freedom House flooded the coffers of NGOs \u201cpromoting voter education, mobilizing voters to the polls, and monitoring elections<\/em>.\u201d These organizations \u201calso held meetings, youth dances, rock concerts, and karaoke to attract young voters<\/em>\u201d and \u201cplaced public service advertisements on TV channels to educate people about their right to vote<\/em>.\u201d Simultaneously, \u201cdemocracy trainers from Serbia, Slovakia, Russia, and Croatia<\/em>\u201d were flown into the country.<\/p>\n

In the second round of the Ukrainian presidential election, NED-funded NGOs claimed to have been inundated with tens of thousands of fraud reports from polling stations across the country, while their exit polls pointed to widespread manipulation that denied pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko a landslide victory. Massive protests, coupled with opposition-organized general strikes, widespread civil disobedience, and occupations of government buildings, forced a rerun of the election. A US-funded think tank official noted:<\/p>\n

\u201cUSAID’s assistance with the survey was absolutely vital \u2013 the survey results after the second round brought people to the streets<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the hype and self-assurance of Democracy Rising<\/em>, the magazine was published at a time when colour revolutions at the state and public levels were increasingly viewed with hostility and mistrust throughout the Global South. In any case, the radical results promised by the leaders and proponents of the colour revolution failed, while the US rhetoric about the resulting pro-Western regimes’ commitment to democracy and freedom was a perverse deception.<\/p>\n

In Ukraine, the US-installed Yushchenko imposed economic austerity, cut regulations and social spending, bailed out criminal banks, opened state-owned industries and natural resources to foreign plunder, attacked the rights of Russian speakers, and began preparing the country for NATO membership, which was feared by the population. Just nine months after taking office, his coalition government \u2013 comprised of Orange Revolution activists \u2013 collapsed due to corrupt power struggles with feuding Ukrainian oligarchs for control of key media outlets and industrial assets.<\/p>\n

Yushchenko was voted out of office in the January 2010 presidential election, coming in fifth in the first round with just 5.5 percent of the vote. As the empire-based newspaper Foreign Policy<\/em> lamented years later, all of the Bush administration’s much-vaunted colour revolutions proved \u201cterribly disappointing<\/em>.\u201d Each time, \u201celite corruption continued unabated<\/em>,\u201d and \u201cpromises of sweeping changes never truly materialized<\/em>.\u201d \u201cThe problems that characterized the previous regimes soon began to describe the governments created by colour revolutions as well<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRevolutionary business\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s quite an understatement. In Georgia, longtime Soros prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Mikheil Saakashvili amassed unilateral power in key policy areas before shamelessly using his position to harass and imprison business and political rivals. Saakashvili’s victims were raped and\/or tortured in prison; their suffering filmed for prime-time broadcast on local television networks. Serious questions remain about his personal involvement in several suspicious deaths, including those of government ministers. He was voted out of office in October 2012, despite the best efforts of the NED.<\/p>\n

Kyrgyzstan’s 2005 Tulip Revolution installed Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who ruled the country as his personal fiefdom for five years. Bakiyev’s relatives profited exorbitantly from legally dubious privatizations of state-owned industries. For example, his family concluded a highly controversial $1.8 billion agreement to supply fuel to a local US military base \u2013 a sum close to Kyrgyzstan’s entire 2003 GDP. Bakiyev’s brother, in turn, oversaw Bishkek’s security apparatus \u2013 arbitrary arrests, wrongful convictions, torture, and murders of opposition activists, journalists, and politicians became commonplace.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Tulip Revolution, 2005, Kyrgyzstan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bakiyev himself was driven not only from the presidential palace but also from Bishkek in April 2010, following a massacre of anti-corruption protesters in which up to 100 were killed and at least 450 wounded. Kyrgyzstan then descended into a decade of economic and political chaos, with numerous governments collapsing along the way. The freest and most stable Central Asian state before the Tulip Revolution only regained a semblance of stability in 2020 \u2013 following another Anglo-American coup.<\/p>\n

A key figure in those riots was the British ambassador, Charles Garrett. He came to Bishkek from Macedonia, where, as journalist Kit Klarenberg has revealed since April 2016, he orchestrated the so-called \u201ccolour revolution.\u201d Illegally obtained, deceptively edited wiretap transcripts, which appeared to implicate government officials in shocking crimes, provoked massive protests with widespread arson and brutal clashes between demonstrators and police. Garrett distributed cash from his diplomatic pocket to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest, encouraging them to create mass chaos.<\/p>\n

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, NED, and USAID were also participants in the \u201ccolour revolution.\u201d Some demonstrators even proudly wore \u201cSoros Army<\/em>\u201d shirts. Despite a massive public counter-revolutionary backlash, the turmoil crippled the Macedonian economy and state, leading to the installation of a stubbornly pro-Western, dangerously dysfunctional government that engaged in industrial-scale corruption, imprisoned political opponents on baseless charges, and changed the country’s name despite widespread opposition. At the same time, existing economic problems, including crippling brain drain, were significantly exacerbated.<\/p>\n

The invariably disastrous results of colour revolutions certainly contributed to White House officials abruptly and decisively distancing themselves from the entire undertaking, even before the Bush administration’s second term had ended. The \u201cfreedom agenda<\/em>\u201d was quietly forgotten. The president \u2013 who in October 2004 had openly authorized financial support for Belarusian opposition activists and had once publicly praised the Rose Revolution as a model for the entire Caucasus and Central Asia \u2013 went so far as to deny that the US was even involved in the \u201crevolutionary business<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlternative reality\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Colour revolutions have continued unabated ever since, with the same strategies being employed worldwide \u2013 with varying degrees of success. Throughout this time, non-Western governments \u2013 particularly China, Iran, and Russia \u2013 have become increasingly vocal in their condemnation of and resistance to colour revolutions, and in some cases have enacted laws seeking to restrict the activities of foreign-funded NGOs on their soil. Yet the mainstream media have long since adopted a rigid silence regarding Washington’s complicity in civil society-driven destabilization abroad.<\/p>\n

In a striking example of this paradigm shift, the Guardian<\/em> published a revealing report in November 2004, even before the Orange Revolution had ended, exposing the \u201cUS campaign behind the unrest in Kyiv<\/em>.\u201d The paper stated unequivocally that the uprising was \u201can American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing, used in four countries over four years to save rigged elections and topple undesirable regimes<\/em>.\u201d The NED, the State Department, and USAID were all named as culprits.<\/p>\n

But let’s jump to July 2015: A Guardian<\/em> article about Russia’s designation of the NED as a foreign agent surprisingly relied on a brief quote from the organization’s official website to describe its activities. Meanwhile, the Maidan Revolution had toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 and put Kyiv on a war footing with Moscow. Washington’s undeniable involvement was vigorously denied by the mainstream media at the time \u2013 and has been ever since.<\/p>\n

Following the outbreak of the proxy war in Ukraine in February 2022, The New York Times<\/em> fiercely targeted independent journalists, denouncing the \u201cconspiracy theory<\/em>\u201d that Maidan was orchestrated by the US as an \u201calternate reality<\/em>\u201d and \u201cRussian disinformation<\/em>.\u201d This occurred despite the fact that every prominent Maidan figure \u2013 including those who initiated the demonstrations \u2013 received NED or USAID funding, leaders of US-funded organizations in the country had publicly announced their intention to overthrow Yanukovych years earlier, and the NED alone spent $20 million in the country in 2013.<\/p>\n

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the NED deleted its funding records for Ukraine \u2013 a list of its investments in a wide range of initiatives in the country over many years, many of which ultimately targeted Russia. In mid-2024, the organization took the unprecedented step of removing its funding records for the entire world. Today, brief entries for various geographical regions describe, in vague terms, the organization’s specific local objectives and the total sums spent. The crucial questions of where and for what purpose remain unanswered.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Gen Z Protests, 2025, Nepal<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The NED’s move underground makes it more difficult to track and expose contemporary colour revolutions \u2013 but it doesn’t make it impossible. In September 2025, mass riots broke out in Nepal. Major news outlets, without exception, reported on the inflammatory agitation as an organic eruption of protest by the country’s disaffected \u201cGeneration Z,\u201d motivated by corruption, unemployment, and state censorship of virtual communication networks. Hardly any mention was made of the demonstrators’ serious crimes, including the arson attacks on the Nepalese parliament and the prime minister’s official residence, which forced residents to flee by helicopter.<\/p>\n

Based on publicly available information, clear signs of a colour revolution were evident. An NGO that organized the protests \u2013 Hami Nepal \u2013 had clear links to organizations known to receive NED funding. Later revelations extensively documented that, in the years leading up to the coup, the NED and USAID spent considerable sums training young Nepalese citizens in protest techniques, establishing NGOs and political parties, and articulating concerns on issues such as corruption.<\/p>\n

Clearly, the post-9\/11 \u201cfreedom agenda<\/em>\u201d never truly ended.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

yogaesoteric
\nOctober 16, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politicians and journalists presented the colour revolutions as spontaneous uprisings by liberal and progressive forces. In reality, they gave rise to corrupt and repressive governments that ruled through brutality, including political assassinations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980],"tags":[1516],"class_list":["post-246947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-perverse-masonic-manipulations-3480-en","tag-article_of_the_week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246948,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246947\/revisions\/246948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yogaesoteric.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}