What, I wonder, aside from self-revealing unconscious symbolism, could possibly explain Umnos strange and apparently growing obsession with the colour red?

Yes, Im aware that the Umno symbol, the design with what looks like two face-to-face snake-heads on top and crossed kerises down below, usually if not always appears in the colour red.

But lately there seems to be such a growing rash of redness red T-shirts, red headbands and such that Im starting to get my hopes up that the Umno may be unwittingly making itself look increasingly off-colour.

In all kinds of ways, starting in no particular order with the fact that, as everybody in the world well knows, the political ideology most strongly associated with the colour red is communism.

Witness the US anti-communist cold-war slogan Better dead than red, and appellations like Red China, Moscows Red Square and the name of the capital of formerly communist Mongolia, Ulan Bator, which I understand translates to Red Star.

Adopting the same colour as communism seems a decidedly perverse move on Umnos part, given the Umno/BN regimes penchant for raising the spectre of communism as one of the sinister foreign forces secretly backing Malaysias opposition parties.

And Umnos obsession with red makes as little sense racially as it does politically, in light of the powerful part that red plays in traditional Chinese culture, as in red envelopes for festive gifts and the colour of temples.

Speaking of which, red is all wrong for Umno in the religious context too, as green is the colour of Islam, the faith that Umno so falsely claims to respect, represent and defend.

In fact, aside from its significance of welcoming important personages, as in the red carpet concept, or its sheer brightness to all save sufferers of red-green colour-blindness, I can see no benefit whatever for Umno in its redness addiction.

Danger and bloodshed

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