The Orange Alternative

For some reason, the NDP have insisted on selecting Orange as their political color:

Orange: It screams gravitas. Also, Orange Crush

I am not a fan. Orange for me conjures up images of Dutch princes or, worse yet, Protestants. It has none of the power of socialist red, or the dignity of conservative blue. Indeed, Orange is such an apolitical - even ridiculous - color that the only political parties that use it are either Protty nationalists or weird outliers, and it's considered so neutral that in New Zealand it's used exclusively by the non-partisan electoral commission.

But now, as will usually happen when I am narrating, the story turns to Poland. Because orange was so politically weird, an absurdist dissident group - the Orange Alternative - mobilized right under the noses of the Communist Party, in the middle of the repressive 80s. Although their slogans were subversive (one pamphlet read "citizen, help the militia and beat yourself up"), the vast majority of their actions and demands made no sense, disquieting the authorities without quite giving them enough for a crackdown. They were most famous,

perhaps, for introducing the character of the little orange dwarf as a mascot, which they spraypainted over the concealing coat that the authorities had spraypainted over dissident graffiti (thus taking the whole thing to the meta-level). This culminated in the 1988 "Revolution of the Dwarfs," when they gathered a crowd of 10,000 to march through Wroclaw in orange dwarf caps. This is their leader:

No, the hat is not photoshopped. Now imagine Jack Layton wearing it. Disturbingly easy, right? And all because they had to go with orange.