Political colours are colours used to represent a political stance, a political ideology, or — in a telling use of terminology — a position on the political spectrum. While previously competing factions wore colours based on coats of arms or even, in Ancient Rome, racing colours, many colours have now become associated with ideology rather than personality.
BlueBlue (from Old High German "blao" shining) is one of the three primary additive colors; blue light has the shortest wavelength (about 470 nm) of the three primary colors. A clear sky on a sunny day is colored blue because of Rayleigh scattering of the lig is often associated with Conservative parties, originating from its use by that party of the UK.
However, for much of the nineteenth century, the 'blues' in both FranceThe French Republic or France ( French: Republique francaise or France is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents. and ItalyThe Italian Republic or Italy ( Italian: Italia is a country in the south of Europe, consisting mainly of a boot-shaped peninsula together with two large islands in the Mediterranean Sea: Sicily and Sardinia. To the north, where it borders France, Switzer were moderate reforming conservatives, while the absolutist monarchists were whiteAlternate meanings: White (disambiguation White is a color (more accurately it contains all the colors of the spectrum and is sometimes described as an achromatic color— black is the absence of color) that has high brightness but zero hue. The impressions.
Another anomaly is that blue is associated with the somewhat left-wing Democratic Party of the United States.
BlackThis article is about the color black; for other uses, see Black (disambiguation). Black is a color with several subtle differences in meaning. Color or light Black can be defined as the visual impression experienced in directions from which no visible li is primarily associated with anarchismAnarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. These philosophies use anarchy to mean a society based on voluntary cooperation of free individual.
In the countries with a history of anti-clericalism in Europe and elsewhere in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the officials of the Catholic Church, because their vestments are often black, were called the Black International.
Recently, some persons associate it with fascism instead, despite the fact that it would be difficult to find any ideology more opposed to anarchism, and vice versa, than these two. An explanation given is that the Italian Fascists dressed in the famous 'black shirts' (as did the Nazi SS) while the Nazi Swastika was a black emblem on a white background. One could postulate 'flat black' as the tincture of Fascism, and 'gloss black' as that of Anarchism (from the Latin "âter" and "niger," respectively).
Brown has been associated with fascism, because Hitler's bully-boys in political street fights were called "brownshirts". In Europe and elsewhere in the twentieth century, fascists were sometimes called the Brown International.
White has been linked to pacifism (as in the surrender flag) and to independent politicians like Martin Bell. **Historically, it was associated with support for absolutist monarchists, first for supporters of the Bourbon dynasty of France, because it was the dynasty's color. Later it was used by the Czarist Whites in the Russian Revolution, because their purpose was similar.
Yellow is also associated with Hinduism, such as Hindu nationalist parties in India.
Yellow is more emphatically associated with Judaism. In the nineteenth century in Europe, anti-semites sometimes referred to Jews collectively as the Yellow International.
Light Blue is used for the field of the flag of the United Nations. It was chosen to represent peace because such a flag cannot be seen against a blue sky.
Political parties vary the shades of their colours depending on the situations. Most U.S. politicians use red, white and blue together. In the UK, the Labour Party has recently used bold red with yellow lettering in areas of majority Labour support but also more purple tones in marginal Conservative areas.
Other notable exceptions and variations to the above colour schemes are:
In Germany, the Social Democrats are traditionally branded red while the conservative Christian Democrats are black. The Liberal party is yellow, and the Greens are unsurprisingly green.
In the Netherlands, conservative Liberals ( VVD) are blue, Liberal Democrats ( D66) use green as well as the Christian Democrats. Green Left uses both green and red to represent its blend of ecologism and leftism.
In Portugal, the liberals (Social-Democrat Party, whose name may cause confusion, since it is not a traditional social-democrat party, but much more right-leaning) are orange and the socialists are pink.
In the UK (excluding Northern Ireland), where electoral rosettes are commonly worn for campaigns, the Conservatives use dark blue; Labour, red; and the Liberal Democrats, yellow. With many other smaller parties choosing their own colour schemes, Independents unsurprisingly use white. Notably the single issue UK Independence Party has chosen to use the non-aligned colour purple with yellow.
In the United States there is no official association between political parties and specific colours. The two major political parties use the national colours — red, white, and blue — to show their patriotism. The only common situation in which it has been necessary to assign a single colour to a party has been in the production of political maps in graphical displays of election results. In such cases, there has historically been no consistent association of particular parties with particular colours. In the weeks following the 2000 election, however, there arose the terminology of blue states and red states, in which the right-wing Republican Party was associated with red and the left-wing Democratic Party with blue. Political observers subsequently latched on to this association, which resulted from the use of red for Republican victories and blue for Democratic victories on the display map of a television network. This association has certainly not been consistently applied in the past: during previous presidential elections, about half of the television networks used the opposite association. It remains to be seen whether the "red state/blue state" terminology will solidify in the 2004 presidential year and beyond.
(There is some historical use of blue for Democrats and red for Republicans — in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Texas county election boards used colour coding to help Spanish speakers and illiterates identify the parties.[1] However, this system was not applied consistently in Texas and was not picked up on a national level.)
Maps for presidential elections produced by the U.S. government use the opposite system, with red for Democrats and blue for Republicans — for example, see U.S. presidential election, 1992.
Nevertheless, since the 2000 election the news media have tended to use red for Republicans and blue for Democrats, especially as it relates to the electoral majority in each state, informally calling them the Red states and Blue states. The colour green is often used for the Green Party, and the colour yellow is often used for the Libertarian Party.
In the first half of the twentieth century, various right wing groups adopted uniforms and were often nicknamed according to the colour of their shirts: