Redwash (communist red + whitewash)
“Redwash” (communist red + whitewash) is similar to such terms as “greenwash” (about the “green” environmental movement) and “pinkwash” (about the “pink” LGBT movement). Something or someone can be “redwashed” in (made to seem communist) or “redwashed” out (made to hide all ties to communism).
“US Liberal Media Elite Redwash Away American and European Distinctions to Justify Obama’s & Congress’ European Socialist Act of 2009” was a blog post in February 2009. The Urban Dictionary defined “redwash” in 2012 as “to give the impression that one is a communist, while one is not at all.”
A different type of “redwash” involves Native Americans (or “redskins”).
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
whitewash
verb white·wash \ˈhwīt-ˌwȯsh, ˈwīt-, -ˌwäsh\
: to make (something) whiter by painting it with whitewash
: to prevent people from learning the truth about (something bad, such as a dishonest, immoral, or illegal act or situation)
: to defeat (an opponent) easily by winning every game, point, etc.
Wiktionary: greenwash
Noun
greenwash (plural greenwashes)
1. A false or misleading picture of environmental friendliness used to conceal or obscure damaging activities.
Wiktionary: pinkwash
Verb
pinkwash (third-person singular simple present pinkwashes, present participle pinkwashing, simple past and past participle pinkwashed)
1. To cover in a coat of pink paint.
2. To promote consumer goods and services using support of breast cancer-related charities.
3. (LGBT) To tout the gay-friendliness of something in an attempt to downplay or soften aspects of it considered negative.
ITSSD Journal of Pathological Communalism
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2009
US Liberal Media Elite Redwash Away American and European Distinctions to Justify Obama’s & Congress’ European Socialist Act of 2009: Bon Chance!
We Are All Socialists [NO, WE’RE NOT!!]
NationStates
how much greenwash are you buying this days
by Thevenin » Tue Oct 26, 2010 11:06 pm
I buy redwash. It’s drenched in communist/socialist rhetoric and usually has a photo of Che Guevara somewhere on it with some clever one word slogan like “Resist” or the occasional foreign language quip like “Viva La Revolution” in fancy stencil lettering. All with that weathered, worn in look.
Google Books
Radical Left Parties in Europe
By Luke March
New York, NY: Routledge
2012
Pg. 1899:
Alongside dominant social democratic parties who occasionally adopt redical rhetoric, this results in ‘redwashing’ (disingenuously spinning policies as leftwing), with potentially similar effectst o the ‘greenwashing’ by which Western European mainstream parties have often co-opted the environmental agenda from the Greens.
Urban Dictionary
redwash
to give the impression that one is a communist, while one is not at all.
The capitalists are redwashing us. However, we are up to what they actually are. They are hardcore commies.
by uttam maharjan February 22, 2012
Me, all over the place
Ursula K. Le Guin kills another revolutionary – literally
April 4, 2011
(...)
COMMENTS
d September 8, 2013 at 9:12 am
the “communist feel” you get there depends on the fact that anarchism itself is a communist tendency. 😉 The problem here is, that most people’s understanding of the word “communism” has been redwashed by half a century of cold war propaganda and the success of Marxism-Leninism which is “real socialism” which is Stalinism/Maoism. Reading Marx you find the motive of a stateless, anti authoritan vision too.
MeAllOverThePlace June 6, 2014 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the comment. Certainly agree on the redwashing – and the need for me to dig a little deeper in the theories and conceptions of anarchism.
Twitter
Sean Kennedy
@seankennedyDC Sean Kennedy Retweeted William J. Upton
.@PeterRoff nails it #Redwashing Has anyone heard of the #Venona papers? #TheySpiedTheyDied Sean Kennedy added,
William J. Upton @wupton
Whitewashing the Rosenbergs: The left’s rewriting of history now extends to claiming Ethel Rosenberg was innocent. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2015/09/30/new-york-city-whitewashes-rosenberg-soviet-spying-guilt?int=a39d09&int=a55a09 …
1:37 PM - 30 Sep 2015
Twitter
Alex S.
@Alex_94706 Alex S. Retweeted Dread Pirate Cates
I’m going to call it “redwashing history.” @drawandstrike @KevinNR Alex S. added,
Dread Pirate Cates @drawandstrike
@KevinNR The Left is determined that the role the Communist spies played in shaping the late 1940’s-60’s during the Cold War be forgotten.
6:17 PM - 1 Oct 2015
counterpunch
DECEMBER 18, 2015
Whitewashing Hillary—By “Redwashing” Progressive Critics
by PATRICK WALKER
If writers ever have an ambitious aspiration, it’s to create influential new language: to create “memes” in the sense neo-Darwinian biologist Richard Dawkins did when he created the term “meme” itself. Such is my own aspiration in this article, which introduces the term “redwashing,” a potentially killer weapon for progressives in their life-or-death struggle against Hillary Clinton’s omnipresent propaganda machine.
What I mean by “redwashing” (modeled, of course, on “whitewashing” and “greenwashing”) is quite simple—but simple with a twist. While whitewashing and greenwashing involve putting a deceptively clean appearance on something dirty, “redwashing” is the opposite: it means flinging a slop bucket of unjustifiable abuse and denigration—a bucket brimming with dung and urine, bacteria and viruses—at real progressives.