Faction

Faction (pronounced fak-shun)

(1) A group or clique forming a minority within a larger body, especially a dissentious group within a political party, government or organization.  The terms “splinter group”, “breakaway”, “reform group”, “ginger group” et al are sometimes used as factional descriptors depending on the circumstances but the more familiar (and sometimes formally institutionalized) are forms like “right”, “left”, “wet”, “dry” “moderate”, “conservative” et al.

(2) Internal organizational strife and intrigue; discord or dissension (applied mostly to political parties but used also to describe the internal workings of many institutions).

(3) As a portmanteau word, the construct being fact + (fict)on), in literature, film etc, a form of writing which blends fact and fiction (though distinct from the literary form “magic realism); in journalism, elements of faction are seen in variations of the technique sometimes called “new” or “gonzo” journalism.  In reportage, it should not be confused with “making stuff up” and it’s distinct from the “alternative facts” model associated with some staff employed in the Trump White House.

1500-1510: From the fourteenth century Middle French faction, from the Latin factionem (nominative factiō) (a group of people acting together, a political grouping (literally “a making or doing”)), a noun of process from the perfect passive participle factus, from faciō (do, make), from facere (to make, to do), from the primitive Indo-European root dhe- (to set; put; to place or adjust).  The adjective factious (given to faction, turbulently partisan, dissentious) dates from the 1530s and was from either the French factieux or the Latin factiosus (partisan, seditious, inclined to form parties) again from factionem; the related forms were the noun factiousness and the adverb factiously.  In ancient Rome, the factions were the four teams which contested the chariot racing events in the circus, the members distinguished by the colors used for their clothing and to adorn their horses and equipment.  Because politics and the sport soon intertwined the meaning of faction shifted to include “an oligarchy, usurping faction, party seeking by irregular means to bring about a change in government”.  Even after the fall of Rome, the traditional Roman factions remained prominent in the Byzantine Empire and chariot racing went into decline only after the factions fought during the Nika riots in 532 which saw some thirty-thousand dead and half of Constantinople razed.  Faction, factioneer, factionist & factionalism are nouns, factionalize is a verb, factional & factionless are adjectives, factionally is an adverb, factionary is a noun & adjective, factionate is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is factions.

The use of the word to describe the literary device which blends facts with fiction faction is said to date from the late 1960s although some sources suggest it had earlier been used in discussions held in conferences and meetings but the most usual descriptor of such works was the earlier “non-fiction novel” which by the mid century (especially in the US) had become a popular (and in literary circles a fashionable) form although, as such, it was not originally directly related to post-modernism.  Critics trace the origins of the form to the years immediately after World War I (1914-1918) and distinguish the works produced then from earlier texts where there was some use of dubious material presented as “fact” in that in the twentieth century the author’s made their intent deliberate.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was well acquainted with the earthly lusts and frailties of men and in Coriolanus (1605-1608) act 5, scene 2, at the Volscian camp when Menenius is halted by sentries who refuse to allow him to see their generals he knew what to say though it did him little good.

First sentry: Faith, sir, if you had told as many lies in his behalf as you have uttered words in your own, you should not pass here; no, though it were as virtuous to lie as to live chastely. Therefore, go back.

Menenius: Prithee, fellow, remember my name is Menenius, always factionary on the party of your general.

Second sentry: Howsoever you have been his liar, as you say you have, I am one that, telling true under him, must say, you cannot pass.  Therefore, go back.

Menenius: Hath he dined, canst thou tell? for I would not speak with him till after dinner.

The Baader-Meinhof faction

Founded in 1970, the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction (RAF)) was a left-wing, armed militant revolutionary group based in the Federal Republic of Germany (The FRG or West Germany (1949-1990)) which, for almost thirty years, undertook assassinations, kidnappings, robberies and bombings and although actually less active than some other terrorist cells, the RAF was better known and most influential in the early-mid 1970s.  The RAF was dissolved in 1998 although, in the nature of such things, some members continued to use their skills in criminal ventures including drug-trafficing as a form of revenue generation.  The RAF always used the word Fraktion, translated into English as faction.  The linguistic implications never pleased RAF members who thought themselves the embedded, military wing of the wider communist workers' movement, not a faction or splinter-group.  In this context the German doesn’t lend well to translation but closest single-word reflecting the RAF’s view is probably “section” or “squad”.  German journalist Stefan Aust (b 1946) also avoided the word, choosing Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (the  Baader-Meinhof Complex) as the title of his 2008 book because it better described how the organization operated.

Andreas Baader & Ulrike Meinhof

In the era they were active, a common descriptor in the English-speaking word was the Baader-Meinhof Group or Gang, named after two of its members Andreas Baader (1943–1977) and Ulrike Meinhof (1934-1976) and the media’s choice of “gang” or “group” may have reflected the desire of governments for the RAF to be depicted more as violent criminals and less as revolutionaries.  The popular press however certainly preferred Baader-Meinhof to RAF because of the drama of the story, Meinhof having been part of the gang which freed Baader from prison.  Both later killed themselves and, although they were never the star-cross'd lovers some journalists liked to suggest, it added to the romance and the Baader-Meinhof name survived their deaths and although the media, politicians and security agencies adopted the eponymous title, it was never used by the RAF.  In the tradition of Marxist collectives, the members regarded the RAF as a co-founded group of many members and not one either defined by or identified with two figureheads, apart from which, the dominant female of the group was actually Gudrun Ensslin (1940-1977).

Factionalism

Factionalism is probably inherent to the nature of organizations and it really needs only for a structure to have two members for a faction to form.  Factions can be based on ideology, geography, theology, personalities (and factions have been formed purely as vehicles of hatred for another) or just about basis and the names they adopt can be designed to denigrate (redneck faction), operate euphemistically (centre-left (just right wingers who didn’t want to admit it)) or indicate a place on the spectrum (left vs right, liberal vs conservative et al).  They can also be modified by those wishing to demonize (lunar-right, hard-right, religious right etc).  The labelling can also be linguistically productive  In the UK during the 1980s, “the wets” was an epithet applied within the Conservative Party to those who opposed the government’s hard line policies, on the model of the slang “a bit wet” to describe those though effete or lacking resolve.  The wets responded by labelling their detractors “the dries” to which they responded with “warm and dry”, words with positive associations in a cold and damp country.  The names constantly evolve because fissiparousness is in the nature of organizations.

Of human nature

Cady's Map by Janis Ian.

The human race does seem inherently fissiparousness and wherever cultures have formed, history suggests divisions will form and folk will tend to coalesce (or be allocated or otherwise forced) into factions.  Usually, this is attributed to some defined or discernible difference (ethnicity, skin color, language, tribal affiliation, religion et al) but even among homogeneous groups, it's rare to identify one without sub-groups.  It does seem human nature and has long since become institutionalized and labelling theory practitioners can probably now build minor academic careers just by tracking the segregation as it evolves (boomers, gen-X, millennials etc).  The faction names of the cliques at North Shore High School (Mean Girls, Paramount Pictures 2004)) were Actual Human Beings, Anti-Plastics, The Art Freaks, Asexual Band Geeks, Asian Nerds, Burnouts, Cheerleaders, Cool Asians, Desperate Wannabes, Freshmen, Girls Who Eat Their Feelings, J.V. Cheerleaders, J.V. Jocks, Junior Plastics, Preps, ROTC Guys, Sexually Active Band Geeks, The Plastics, Unfriendly Black Hotties, Unnamed Girls Who Don't Eat Anything, and Varsity Jocks.  Given the way sensitivities have evolved, it’s predictable some of those names wouldn’t today be used; the factions' membership rosters would be much the same but some terms are now proscribed in this context, the threshold test for racism now its mere mention, racialism banished to places like epidemiological research papers tracking the distribution of morbidity. 

The factions of the Anglican Church

Fissiparousness is much associated with the modern Church of England, factions of which some time ago mostly abandoned any interest in God or the message of Christ for the more important matters of championing or decrying gay clergy, getting women into or keeping them out of the priesthood, and talking to or ignoring Rome.  Among those resistant to anything beyond the medieval, there's even an institutional forum, the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) which holds meetings at which there is much intrigue and plotting; it's sort of an anti-Lambeth Conference though the cucumber sandwiches are said to be much the same.  Under the stresses inherent in the late twentieth-century, fissiparousness saw the Anglicans coalesce into three factions, the low & lazy, the broad & hazy and the high & crazy.

Overlaps in the Anglican Church factions

The Low & Lazy

Like the high churchers, the low lot still believe in God but, their time not absorbed plotting and scheming or running campaigns to stamp out gay clergy and opposing the ordination of women, they actually have time to pray, which they do, often.  The evangelical types come from among the low and don’t approve of fancy rituals, Romish ways or anything smelling of popery.  Instead, they like services where there’s clapping, dancing and what sounds like country & western music with sermons telling them it’s Godly to buy things like big TVs and surf-skis.

The Broad & Hazy

The broad church is more a club than a church, something like the Tory Party at prayer.  The parishioners will choose the church they (occasionally) attend on the same basis as their golf club, driving miles if need be to find a congregation acceptably free of racial and cultural diversity.  They’re interested not at all in theology or anything too abstract so sermons need to be brief and sufficiently vague to please the bourgeoisie.  The broad church stands for most things in general and nothing in particular; finding most disputes in Anglicanism baffling, they just can't see what all the fuss is about.

The High & Crazy

The high church has clergy who love dressing up like the Spice Girls, burning incense and chanting the medieval liturgy in Latin.  They disapprove of about everything that’s happened since the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer and believe there’d be less sin were there still burnings at the stake.  Most high church clergy wish Pius IX (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) still sat on the throne of Saint Peter and some act as though he does.

Whig

Whig (pronounced wig)

(1) To move along briskly (obsolete except in Scotland).

(2) A political party in Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1679-circa 1860 and in the and US circa 1834-1855 (initial capital).

(3) Slang for a conservative member of the Liberal Party in Great Britain (used both with and without initial capital).

(4) Slang for certain factions in the US Republican Party (used both with and without initial capital).

(5) A (rarely used) historical term for a seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterian, especially one in rebellion against the Crown (used both with and without initial capital).

(6) In Northern English dialectal use, acidulated whey, sometimes mixed with buttermilk and sweet herbs, used as a cooling beverage (obsolete).

(7) Buttermilk (now rare)

Circa 1657: The British political movement later called Whig began to emerge in the mid-1650s, (“emerged” is a better expression than “was formed”), in part perhaps a disparaging use of the 1640s whigg (a country bumpkin) but the greater influence was the 1649 Whiggamaire (later Whiggamore) (the Covenanters, adherents of the Presbyterian cause in western Scotland who marched on Edinburgh in 1648 to oppose Charles I)  The sense, from circa 1635, of a country bumpkin may have been linked to "a horse drover," from the dialectal verb whig "to urge forward" + mare (in the sense of a horse).  In 1689 the name was first used in reference to members of the British political party opposed to the Tories.  The American Revolution era sense of "colonist who opposes Crown policies" is from 1768 and, as early as 1825, was applied to opponents of Andrew Jackson and taken as the name of a political party (1834), most of the factions of which were absorbed by the Republican Party between 1854-1856.  The adjective whiggish (used usually as a disparaging way of describing the tendencies of some towards the philosophies of the Whigs while claiming alignment with another political faction) is from the 1670s, the noun whiggery (principles or practices of the Whigs) noted during the next decade.  Whig, Whiggishness & Wiggery are nouns, Wiggish is an adjective; the noun plural is Whigs.

Portrait of Lord Shelburne (1776), oil on canvas, by Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792).

The Whigs were a faction of the Tory party which later became a party in its own right.  In its varied forms, the Whigs operated between 1679 and the late nineteenth-century, their philosophy based on a defense of constitutional monarchism and an opposition to absolutism, the part the Whigs played in British politics later absorbed by Tory factions and the Liberal Party although strains of its philosophy can sometimes be seen still in the Labour Party (depending on which faction is in the ascendant).  Structurally, the morphing of a Tory faction into a formalized party had far-reaching consequences which continue to this day; no prime-minister since Lord Shelburne (1737-1805; UK prime-minister 1782–1783) has attempted to govern without the support of a party.

In the US, a Whig Party was active in the mid-nineteenth-century and four US presidents belonged to the party while in office.  Formed originally in opposition to the policies of Democratic President Andrew Jackson, the Whigs supported the supremacy of the congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization, banking, and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing.  Not directly related to the British Whigs, party founders chose the name to echo those of the eighteenth-century who fought for independence, nodding also in the direction of the earlier Federalist Party but would later dissolve because of internal tensions over the expansion of slavery to the territories.  Charmingly, many joined the short-lived Know Nothing Party; most eventually drifted back to the Democrats or Republicans although the name is revived from time-to-time but without much electoral success.  Of late, some belonging to the more conservative factions in the Republican Party are labeled Whigs and this can be either in disparagement or self-referentially.

The term “Whig historian” was first recorded in 1924.  Despite the temptation, it really can’t be used in any neutral sense because of the legacy of the words of Sir Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979; Regius Professor of Modern History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge) who, early in life, published the book for which he is still remembered: The Whig Interpretation of History (1931).  In that slim volume, he defined Whig history as "the tendency in many historians... to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present."  Both "Whig historian" and the "Whig interpretation of history" are thus loaded terms.  Sir Herbert, it was clear, was thinking of the English tradition of historiography but his critique has been widely adopted, the idea of the retrospective creation of a line of progress toward the glorious present a theme now explored not only by the odd Whig but also the post-modernists.

Lindsay Lohan in blonde wig (asymmetric bob) on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon show, New York, November 2012.

The word wig (a head of real or synthetic hair worn on the head for various reasons) is unrelated to Whig.  Dating from the 1660s, it was a clipping of the French periwig (a wig, especially the large, stylised constructions worn by both men & women) which was an alteration of the Middle French perruque (wig).  The word “wig” in 1730s England was adapted to created the informal “bigwig” (an important person), based on the fashion at the time for those in authority to wear large, elaborate wig, the idea (presumably not without foundation) that the more important the person, the bigger the wig.  The same linkage explains the military slang “brass hat” (a high-ranking officer), based on the brass embellishments or insignia applied to the hats of the upper ranks.  The term persists (even outside the military) even though the metal is now rare even on the hats of dress uniforms but there's still often gold braid to justify the connection.

Convocation

Convocation (pronounced kon-vuh-key-shuhn)

(1) The act of convoking.

(2) The state of being convoked.

(3) A group of people gathered in answer to a summons; an assembly.

(4) In the Church of England, either of the synods of the provinces of Canterbury or York.

(5) In the Protestant Episcopal Church, an assembly of the clergy and part of the laity of a diocese.

(6) The area represented at such an assembly.

(7) A formal assembly at a college or university, especially for a graduation ceremony.

(8) In universities, a term used generally to describe the group (of the institution’s graduates and others) entitled to elect governing bodies such as their senate.

(9) In Indian institutions of learning, a degree-awarding ceremony.

(10) The collective noun for eagles.

(11) In historic Freemasonry, a meeting of companions of a Holy Royal Arch chapter of the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch.

1350–1400: From the Middle English convocacio(u)n (assembly of persons) from the Middle French convocation from the Latin convocātiōn (stem of convocātiō).  Old French picked up convocation directly from the Latin convocationem (nominative convocatio), noun of action from past participle stem of convocare (to call together), the construct being com (together) + vocare (to call).  Vocare was derived from vox (voice).  The form exists in many modern European languages; as well as the English and French convocation, there’s convocació in Catalan, convocazione in Italian, convocação in Portuguese and convocación in Spanish.  Convocation and convoker are nouns and convoked & convoking are verbs; the common noun plural is convocations.

The Holy Royal Arch

A Masonic faction, within Freemasonry the Holy Royal Arch is described as a degree.  The origins of Royal Arch Masonry and the Holy Royal Arch are murky and it’s known only that it dates back to the mid eighteenth century although fragments of Royal Arch rituals exist in Masonic literature from the 1720s.  The first historically verified appearance of was in 1743 when a “Royal Arch” was carried in a Dublin by “two excellent Masons”.  The appearance of the arch provoked controversy and attracted the disapprobation of Dr Dassigny in his critique “A serious and impartial enquiry into the cause of the present decay of Free-masonry in the Kingdom of Ireland” (1744).

Royal Arch Masonry was the subject of a long factional battle within Freemasonry and by 1751 the factions had coalesced into two, the older body paradoxically known as the Moderns, the newer the Antients (an even then archaic spelling of ancient).  Their disputes became increasingly circular and by 1813, Antients and Moderns agreed on an act of union and formed the United Grand Lodge of England.  The compromise became possible by the creation of a protocol under which the union would recognise the Royal Arch (to placate the Antients) but create it as a separate order (to appease the Moderns).

The recognition can be seen as a pyrrhic victory for the Antients.  By 1817, the faction had faded away and, although never formerly dissolved, the membership was soon absorbed into what had previously been the grand chapter of the Moderns with all forming as a group when members attend a grand chapter convocation.  The Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or has never denied being a faction of the Freemasons.

Teal

Teal (pronounced teel)

(1) Any of several species of small dabbling, short-necked freshwater ducks (such as the Eurasian Anas crecca (common teal)), of worldwide distribution and related to the mallard, travelling usually in tight flocks and frequenting ponds, lakes and marshes.

(2) A color, a medium to dark greenish blue, often mixed with traces of azure, beryl, cerulean, cobalt, indigo, navy, royal, sapphire, turquoise & ultramarine, also called teal blue and (rarely) tealturquoise, peacockblue or blueteal.

(3) As TEAl, the abbreviation of triethylaluminium (in organic chemistry, a volatile organometallic compound (Al₂(C₂H₅)₆ or Al₂Et₆) used in various chemical processes and as an ignitor in rockets and jet engines.)

(4) As TEAL, the (historical) initialism of Tasman Empire Airways Limited, the forerunner to Air New Zealand.

(5) A collective descriptor informally adopted to refer to certain nominally independent candidates contesting certain electorates in the 2022 Australian general election.

1275-1375: From Middle English tele (small freshwater duck), probably from the (unrecorded) Old English tǣle and cognate with the Middle Low German tēlink, from the from West Germanic taili, from the West Frisian tjilling (teal) and the Middle Dutch tēling (teal (source of the Modern Dutch taling)).  The Middle Low German tēlink, was from the Proto-Germanic tailijaz, of unknown ultimate origin, with no cognates outside of Germanic.  As the name of a shade of dark greenish-blue resembling the color patterns on the fowl's head and wings, it is attested from 1923 in clothing advertisements, thereby joining the long list of variations of descriptions of the variations in the shades of blue including: blue; Alice blue, aqua, aquamarine, azure, baby blue, beryl, bice, bice blue, blue green, blue violet, blueberry, cadet blue, Cambridge blue, cerulean, cobalt blue, Copenhagen blue, cornflower, cornflower blue, cyan, dark blue, Dodger blue, duck-egg blue, eggshell blue, electric-blue, gentian blue, ice blue, lapis lazuli, light blue, lovat, mazarine, midnight blue, navy, Nile blue, Oxford blue, peacock blue, petrol blue, powder blue, Prussian blue, robin's-egg blue, royal blue, sapphire, saxe blue, slate blue, sky blue, teal, turquoise, ultramarine, Wedgwood blue & zaffre.  The noun plural is teal or (especially collectively), teals; the spelling teale is obsolete.

TEAL Lockheed L-188 Electra ZK-TEB 1963 (left) & 1965 (right).  The TEAL livery was retained when the corporate name was changed in 1965, the aircraft not immediately re-painted, “Air New Zealand” replacing “TEAL JET PROP” on the fuselage as required by the rules of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (1944).

The airline TEAL (Tasman Empire Airways Limited) emerged from the Tasman Sea Agreement, an intergovernmental treaty between the Australia, New Zealand and the UK, concluded in London early in 1940.  The purpose of the operation was to provide for the trans-Tasman traffic of passengers, cargo and mail, something which had been disrupted by the outbreak of hostilities in 1939.  In the manner of a number of wartime agreements, the treaty contained a sunset clause which stipulated a termination within three months of the end of the war with Germany but such was the state of post-war civil aviation that arrangements were carried over and pre-war practices did not return to the trans-Tasman route until 1954.  As part of that re-organization, the shareholdings, which previously had been spread between the New Zealand Government (20%), Union Airways (19%), BOAC (38%) and Qantas (23%), were dissolved and the two governments assumed co-ownership until 1961 when both decided to maintain separate national carriers, TEAL and Qantas, the relationship having been strained since the Australians had insisted TEAL order the turboprop Lockheed Electra to maintain fleet standardization with Qantas while the New Zealanders wanted to upgrade to jets.  In 1965, TEAL was re-named Air New Zealand.

Lindsay Lohan in teal, Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards (2004, left), publicity shot in Greece (2019, centre) & premiere of Mean Girls (2004).

Trooping the color: The teal mafia out campaigning in the Wentworth electorate, Australian general election 2022.

The so-called “teal independents” are a number of nominally independent candidates contesting certain electorates in the 2022 Australian general election.  The teal candidates on which there has been much focus are almost all professional women drawn from outside professional politics, contesting nominally “safe” Liberal Party seats in which there’s a higher than average interest in progressive issues, especially climate change.  The use of the color teal is thought an allusion to the mixing of blue and green, blue a reference either to the “blue-blood” demographic profile of the electorates or it being the traditional color associated with conservative politics and green the environmental consciousness which the teals are making a focus of their campaigns.  Former Liberal Party prime-minister John Howard (b 1939; prime-minister 1996-2007) was not impressed by the practice of styling the teals as “independents”, claiming it was misleading given the source of some of their funding and logistical support from entities which would in the US be understood as PACs (political action committees), entities which combined lobbying with activism on specific issues.  Mr Howard suggested the teals were merely “…posing as independents” and were really “…anti-Liberal groupies”, their aim being “…to hurt the Liberal party, not to represent the middle ground of their electorates” adding “They don’t represent disgruntled Liberals.  They represent a group in the community that wants to destroy the Liberal government. It’s as simple as that.”

Flags of the Australian Liberal Party & Australian Labor Party.

Mr Howard is right in that the consequences really are simple as that, if a sufficient number of teals are successful, they will hurt the Liberal party and destroy the Liberal(-National coalition) government but where the teals would differ from the former prime-minister is in not conflating cause with effect.  The teal candidates have well expressed (if not especially detailed) policy objectives and are seeking to destroy the government because they wish to see alternative policies pursued and about that, voters will agree, disagree or remain indifferent.  What attracted most attention however was Mr Howard’s choice of the word “groupies” to refer to the (mostly female) teals, one critic noting an analysis of the composition of the four ministries he formed while prime-minister did suggest he was inclined to appoint women to the “touchy-feely” portfolios dealing with people while the men got the meatier appointments.  That aside, he does have a point about the word “independent” being misleading.  Historically, in Australia, it’s been understood as meaning a candidate for or member of a parliament who is not a member of a political party (within the legally-defined meaning).  That the teals are not but, though not a conventional party, the teal thing is clearly a concept, a movement or something else beyond a mere state of mind and parts of it are a framework providing the candidates with financial and administrative assistance in a more structured way that that of local volunteers.  The teals (not all of whom use the color in their advertising, one in particular running a “pink” campaign) have also been the victims of some ambush marketing, complaining that others were now muddying the waters by sending out teal-colored flyers.  They might have some difficulty in enforcing an exclusivity of right on a color, about the only restriction enforced is on purple which can’t be used in circumstances where it might be confused with something from the Australian Electoral commission which most jealously guards its purple.  Nor is some fluidity of meaning unknown in Australian politics.  During the 1970s and 1980s, in the Victorian Labor Party, although an apparent contradiction in terms, a faction was formed called the “Independents”, a faction self-described by its members as being a faction for those “who disliked factional politics”.  It was novel then and unthinkable now but happened at a time when the Left had been neutralized by federal intervention and the Right was still obsessed with the DLP (the even more right-wing Roman-Catholic breakaway) and the Cold War.  There was a gap in the market.

Flags of the Australian National Party & the Australian Greens.

Teal as blend of blue and green imparting political meaning works in Australia because the use of the colors red (of the left), blue (of the right) & green (of the greenies) is well understood.  Even the historic association of the National Party with green doesn’t cause confusion.  The National Party (originally the Country Party and briefly in some places the National-Country Party), had always used green to reflect their agrarian origins but adapted well in the 1980s to the emergence of formalized Green parties (which of course chose green for semiotic purposes).  Pragmatists, the Nationals, operating as usual like horse-traders and soft-drink salesmen, settled on a slightly darker shade with gold lettering, the traditional Australian sporting livery.  Briefly, the Nationals had flirted with shades of brown, the idea being to convey “the people of the soil” but the idea was quickly abandoned, not because brown was so associated with the Nazis (the Braunes Haus (Brown House) was their early Munich headquarters and the Surmabteilung (the SA and literally "Storm Detachment" but usually called storm-troopers) were street thugs known as the “brownshirts” because of their uniform) but because brown is such an unappealing colour and difficult for graphic artists to handle.         

Crooked Hillary Clinton liked teal pantsuits and retained a fondness for the shade, even as the cut of her clothes became more accommodating.

The origin of red being associated with the politics of radicalism and revolution is generally assumed to date from the use in the French revolution where the idea was to represent the blood spilled in the overthrow of the ancien régime although the shade used should perhaps have been darkened a little in the years that followed as the revolution began “to consume its children”.  Around the planet, colors are widely used as political identifiers and, with different traditions of use and history of origin, there’s a wide divergence of meaning; what a color in one country conveys can mean the opposite in another.  There’s also the point that at one, important level, a color is just a color and the choice, even for political purposes, may be purely on aesthetic grounds:  Hitler made no secret that he choose red, white and black as for the early depictions of the swastika and other Nazi imagery because his ideological opponents, the communists, had used it with such success.  Among the best known color adoptions are orange and green in Ireland, yellow and red in Thailand and black by the so-called Islamic State (داعش, Dāʿish) and a number of Islamist and Islamic fundamentalist movements (as a symbol of jihad), saffron in India because of the traditional association with Hinduism and the Hindu nationalist movement.  The association of certain blue & red with political parties or ideologies is fairly consistent in the English-speaking world except for the curious pattern of use in the United States.

Flags of the US Republican Party (Elephants) & US Democrat Party (Donkeys).

In the US, although the idea of blue states (Democrats) and red states (Republicans) is now entrenched as part of the political lexicon, it's been that way only for two decades odd.  Red and blue had long been used to illustrate the US electoral map but there was never any consistency in how they were allotted to the parties and in some elections, different television networks might use them differently or even use different colors entirely, one of the considerations being what worked best on the then novel medium of color television.  The other influence was possibly political culture, there being in the US little tradition of a mainstream, radical party of the left so the red-blue contrast as it was understood elsewhere in the English-speaking world didn't register in the same way.  It was in the 2000 presidential election that the television networks agreed to standardize the red and blue designations for Republicans and Democrats, the incentive simply one of convenience in the reporting of the drawn-out Electoral College numbers that year.  As the red and blue imagery flowed across screens for weeks before the numbers were settled, the color associations became set in stone.

Shades of purple, the US 2004 presidential election: outcomes from Electoral College represented by state (left) and county (right). 

The idea of the US as a divided society of red states (emblematically the fly-overs) and blue states (with populations on the corrupting coastlines) is graphically illustrated when the states are colored according to the winner-takes-all system electoral college system but if the red-blue map is instead constructed county by county, a more nuanced spectrum emerges as one that is in shades of purple (purple a mix of red & blue as teal is of green & blue).  The US is a country of divisions and many of the cleavages are cross-cutting but the state by state maps do exaggerate the extent of the political polarization.

2021 McLaren GT Coupé in teal (Serpentine in the McLaren color chart).

Dixiecrat

Dixiecrat (pronounced dik-see-krat)

In US political history, a member of a faction of southern Democrats stressing states' rights and opposed to the civil-rights programs of the Democratic Party, especially a southern Democrat who left the party in 1948 to support candidates of the States' Rights Democratic Party.

1948: An American portmanteau word, the construct being Dixie + (Demo)crat.  Wholly unrelated to other meanings, Dixie (also as Dixieland) in this context is a reference to the southern states of the United States, especially those formerly part of the Confederacy.  The origin is contested, the most supported theory being it’s derived from the Mason-Dixon Line, a historic (if not entirely accurate) delineation between the North and South.  Another idea is it was picked up from any of several songs with this name, especially the minstrel song Dixie (1859) by (northerner) Daniel Decatur Emmett (1815-1904), popular as a Confederate war song although most etymologists hold this confuses cause and effect, the word long pre-dating the compositions.  There’s also a suggested link to the nineteenth-century nickname of New Orleans, from the dixie, a Confederate-era ten-dollar bill on which was printed the French dix (ten) but again, it came later.  The –crat suffix is from the Ancient Greek κράτος (krátos) (power, might), as used in words of Ancient Greek origin such as democrat and aristocrat.  Ultimate root is the primitive Indo-European kret (hard).

Universally called Dixiecrats, the States' Rights Democratic Party was formed in 1948 as a dissident breakaway from the Democratic Party.  Its core platform was permanently to secure the rights of states to legislate and enforce racial segregation and exclude the federal government from intervening in these matters.  Politically and culturally, it was a continuation of the disputes and compromises which emerged in the aftermath of the US Civil War almost a century earlier.  The Dixiecrats took control of the party machine in several southern states and contested the elections of 1948 with South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond as their presidential nominee but enjoyed little support outside the deep South and by 1952 most had returned to the Democratic Party.  However, in the following decades, they achieved a much greater influence as a southern faction than ever was achieved as a separatist party.  The shift in the south towards support for the Republican Party dates from this time and by the 1980s, the Democratic Party's control of presidential elections in the South had faded and many of the Dixiecrats had joined the Republicans.

The night old Dixie died.  Former Dixiecrat, Senator Strom Thurmond (1902-2003) lies in state, Columbia, South Carolina, June 2003.

Handshake

Handshake (pronounced hand-sheyk)

(1) A gripping and shaking of (traditionally the right) hands by two individuals, as to symbolize greeting, congratulation, agreement or farewell.

(2) In digital communication, as handshaking, an exchange of predetermined signals between a computer and a peripheral device or another computer, made when a connection is initially established or at intervals during data transmission, in order to assure proper synchronization.

1801: The construct was hand + shake.  Hand was from the Middle English hond & hand, from the Old English hand, from the Proto-West Germanic handu, from the Proto-Germanic handuz (and related to the Dutch, Norwegian Nynorsk & Swedish hand, the Danish hånd, the German Hand and the West Frisian hân) of uncertain origin although there may be a link to the Old Swedish hinna (to gain), the Gothic fra-hinþan (to take captive, capture), the Latvian sīts (hunting spear), the Ancient Greek κεντέω (kentéō) (prick) and the Albanian çandër (pitchfork; prop).  Shake was from the Middle English schaken, from the Old English sċeacan & sċacan (to shake), from the Proto-West Germanic skakan, from the Proto-Germanic skakaną (to shake, swing, escape), from the primitive Indo-European skeg-, keg-, skek- & kek- (to jump, move).  It was cognate with the Scots schake & schack (to shake), the West Frisian schaekje (to shake), the Dutch schaken (to elope, make clean, shake), the Low German schaken (to move, shift, push, shake) & schacken (to shake, shock), the Old Norse skaka (to shake), the Norwegian Nynorsk skaka (to shake), the Swedish skaka (to shake), the Danish skage (to shake), the Dutch schokken (to shake, shock) and the Russian скака́ть (skakátʹ) (to jump”).  The present participle is handshaking and the familiar past participle handshaked but some dictionaries still list the rare handshook as an alternative; the noun plural is handshakes.

The handshake not a universal cultural practice (the Japanese famously favor the bow although in recent decades it’s executed often as more of a nod) but, in one form or another, it is global and involves usually two people grasping hands and moving them in a brief, up-and-down movement.  The right hand tends to be favored (left-handers sinister obviously) and this has been linked to the symbolism of that being the usual choice when wielding a weapon but that is speculative and the global preponderance of right-handedness may be of greater significance.  Quite when the handshake became a cultural practice isn’t known but it is certainly ancient, at least among those important enough to be depicted in forms of art because the oldest representations date back more than the-thousand years.

Some handshakes promised much; results were varied.  Clockwise from top left:  Mao Tse-tung & Richard Nixon (1972), Yitzhak Rabin & Yasser Arafat (1993), Mikhail Gorbachev & Ronald Reagan (1985), Donald Trump & crooked Hillary Clinton (2016), Martin McGuinness & Queen Elizabeth II (2012) and Nelson Mandela & FW de Klerk (1994). 

Handshake (hand-shake) is a surprisingly modern construction, dating only from 1801 and "hand-shaking" is attested from 1805; the phrases “to shake hands” & “shaking hands” have been in use since the sixteenth century and the use of the noun “grip” to mean "a handshake" (especially one of a secret society) dates from 1785.  Secret handshakes are created so members of clubs and societies may make their affiliation known to another person without needing to use words.  For a secret handshake to be effective it must be specific enough to be recognized by another member yet subtle enough that a non-member would not find the nature of the grip strange or unusual.  Because of the limited possibilities offered by fingers and thumbs, some secret handshakes involve also actions such as using the other hand to touch an earlobe in a certain way or a tapping a foot.  The concept has been documented since Antiquity and is most famously associated with the Freemasons but to speak of the “secret Masonic handshake” is misleading, some researchers claiming there are at least sixteen distinctly identifiable Masonic handshakes and most have speculated there will be dozens more.  Indeed, except in the early years, Freemasonry has never been monolithic and there are known cases of one faction (even within a lodge) developing their own so that they might discuss matter freely without the risk they may be spilling secrets to the other faction.  The mechanics of the secret handshakes used by members of the Secret Society of the Les Clefs d’Or are not known.

Lindsay Lohan meets Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954; prime-minister or president of the Republic of Türkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanı) since 2003), Ankara, 2017.

The golden handshake is a clause in executive employment contracts that provides for a generous severance package in certain circumstances.  Created originally as a relatively modest inducement to attract staff to companies in a perilous financial position, they evolved to the point where multi-million dollar pay-outs were common and they became controversial because they appeared to reward failure and there were suggestions (not only by conspiracy theorists) they were used even as Trojan horses to entice a CEO to drive down a company’s share price (thus becoming eligible for a golden handshake) in the interest of asset strippers and others.  The best operators were able to engineer things so they enjoyed both a golden handshake and a golden parachute (the generous package payable upon retirement in the normal course of things).

In computer communications, a handshake is a signal exchanged between two or more devices or programs to confirm authentication and connection.  In the same way that the human handshake is a process: (1) an offer of a hand, (2) the taking of that hand and (3) the shaking of the hands, in computing, the sequence is (1) seeking a connection, (2) verifying the connection and (3) effecting the connection.  The breaking of the handshake and the termination of the connection in each case constitutes the final, fourth setup.  The purpose of handshaking is to establish the parameters for the duration of the session which involves the devices agreeing on vital stuff like (1) both being switched on, (2) both ready to transmit & receive and (3) that certain technical protocols will be used (familiar to many as famous strings like “9600,N,8,1”).  Handshaking historically was a process separate from the security layers which had to be satisfied once communication was established and again, this is analogous with the handshake in the process of human interaction.

The Duce emulates an illustrious Roman forebear.

As a cultural practice with a history known to date back at least ten thousand years, the handshake has proven a resilient tradition which has survived the vicissitudes of many millennia and even the preference of elbow-bumping and such during the COVID-19 pandemic seems only to have been a minor interruption.  Not all however approved.  The Duce (Benito Mussolini, 1883–1945; prime minister and Duce (leader) of Italy 1922-1943) thought handshaking effete and unhygienic (he was ready for pandemics) and preferred the fascist salute he thought (apparently on the basis of statues from Ancient Rome) more martial.  Still, when meeting friends (even those forced on him by the brutishness of political necessity) he shook hands and a handshake was both his first and last interaction with the Führer (Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 and of state 1934-1945).  Their smiles when shaking hands always seemed genuine and were noticeably warm when they parted after the attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944.

One historian entitled his work on the relationship between Hitler and Mussolini The Brutal Friendship and that it was but it was certainly enduring.  They shook hands on many occasions, the last of which would happen on the railway station platform close to where the attempt on the Führer's life failed.  At this time, Hitler was using his left hand to shake, the right arm injured in the blast.  After this, they would never meet again.  

For politicians, handshakes are a wonderful photo opportunity and some have been famously emblematic of the resolution of problems which have been intractable for decades or more.  However, such photographs can be unpleasant and sometimes embarrassing reminders of a past they’d prefer was forgotten.  When Donald Rumsfeld (1932–2021; US secretary of defense 1975-1977 & 2001-2006) shook hands with Saddam Hussein (1937–2006; president of Iraq 1979-2003) in Baghdad in December 1983, it was as a presidential envoy of Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; president of the US 1981-1989) and he was there to do business with the dictator.  Iraq at the time had started a war with Iran and was using chemical weapons while practicing abuses of human rights on parts of the Iraqi population and Saddam Hussein had even made known to the US administration Baghdad’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons.  Thus was special envoy Rumsfeld dispatched to offer Washington’s hand of friendship, anybody opposed to the Ayatollahs held in high regards in Washington DC. 

Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, Baghdad, 1983.

Despite what Mr Rumsfeld would claim twenty years on, he made no mention of chemical weapons or human rights abuses, his discussions instead focusing on the projection of US military force in the Gulf and the need to guarantee and protect the supply of oil.  Later, as international pressure increased on the US to condemn the use of chemical weapons by Iraq it responded with a low-key statement which made no mention of Iraq and actually stressed the need to protect Iraq from Iran’s “ruthless and inhumane tactics”.  When Mr Rumsfeld returned to Baghdad in 1984, during the visit the United Nations (UN) issued a report which stated chemical weapons had been used against Iran, something already known to both the Pentagon and state department.  In Baghdad, the matter wasn’t mentioned and when Mr Rumsfeld departed, it was with another warm handshake.

Nancy Pelosi and Bashar al-Assad, April 2007.

By virtue of her education in a Roman Catholic school, Nancy Pelosi (b 1940; speaker of the US House of Representatives 2007-2011 and since 2019, member of the house since 1987) was well acquainted with the Bible so after shaking hands with Bashar al-Assad (b 1965, President of Syria since 2000) in April 2007, to use the phrase “The road to Damascus is a road to peace” must have been a deliberate choice.  It might also be thought a curious choice given that at the time the president was providing shelter and protection to a range of terrorist groups involved in attacking US forces in Iraq.  As speaker of the house, Ms Pelosi would have received high-level intelligence briefings so presumably was acquainted with the facts and had she been uncertain, could have had aides prepare a summary from publicly available sources.  As recent events in the Far East have illustrated, the speaker’s forays into foreign affairs are not helpful to the State Department.