The Fact Society: An Intervention

With the recent launch and baffling popularity of the so-called Fact Society's color theory skepticism website, it has become clear that those of us who have dedicated our life's work to unseating color theory as the dominant paradigm of color thought can no longer ignore what we had previously considered to be merely a fringe group without impact or theoretical value. The sudden possibility that this organization might soon be in a position to dictate the direction of broader anti-color-theorism discourse is an uncomfortable one, to say the least, and a dangerous one, to say a little more. 

The Fact Society first became known to me two years ago. In a letter, my former colleague Dr. Alona Barreguiti mentioned having been introduced to an odd and somewhat secretive group by a student of hers. Then known as the Society for Color Realism, the organization consisted of an unclear (but evidently small) number of decidedly amateur color theorists with obscure goals and views sometimes too reminiscent of those thoroughly improvisational modern conspiracy theories that dominate the internet. Neither of us concerned ourselves too much with this group, as their reach and influence was virtually nonexistent, and their insights contributed very little to the development of our field.

In the past few months, however, I have been hearing more and more about this organization, now calling itself the Fact Society. My immediate reaction upon encountering their new name was one of confusion. "Color Realism" had already been something of a euphemism, its proponents seemingly unwilling to commit to a principled and firm stance, let alone a revolutionary one; with any reference to color now completely gone from the name, though, I was left to wonder more concertedly about this group's purpose. Indeed, as mentioned before, this new name, vague enough to exist in opposition to any and all alleged non-facts, is textbook conspiracy fodder. 

The launch of their site has done little to comfort me. That is not to say that I have clear evidence that this group is compromised or counterrevolutionary; it is to say only that their statements and the information provided on the website, while obviously taken from legitimate work in the field, are here used to reach conclusions which run counter to the thrust of radical color theory. Some of these conclusions are eccentric (for example, their development of theories of "color volume" and "color capacity"), while others are far more worrying (such as the claim that "colors can be defined through frequencies," which seems to discard decades of radical color theory for no discernible reason). 

I was struck also by what the website omitted. There was a near-total absence of any anti-imperialist component to this project. Such an oversight cannot possibly be unintentional, seeing as anti-color-theorism has, and has always had, an anti-imperialist origin and foundation. As a project, it has always sought the overthrow of a Western colonial metaphysics that justifies and reproduces white supremacy, and its replacement with a dialectical color theory of national liberation. 

It was only once I reached the bottom of the site, though, that my stomach truly turned. While I had been willing to entertain the notion that these were merely a kooky branch of revisionists within our movement up until then, reading through the group's policy of non-interventionism has made it difficult for me to believe they are anything but the conductors of a counterrevolutionary plot. A policy of non-interventionism in Palestine, for example, is so absurd and even horrifying a misapprehension and misrepresentation of anti-color-theorism that I simply cannot believe it to be accidental. 

Elsewhere, the stink of boiler-plate conspiracy is obvious too. The claim to uncover "facts beyond facts," when anti-color-theorism is a well-established field of study (with its own regional journal), with resources easily available in libraries, universities, and on the internet, sounds more like the New World Order conspiracies claiming that the existence of a global capitalist class is somehow stigmatized knowledge than it does like a legitimate scientific or theoretical intervention. 

The Fact Society or the Society for Color Realism or whatever they want to call themselves have always been, plainly, a theoretical dead end. Now, however, it has become clear that they are more than that: they are not misguided activists, but likely agents provocateurs and charlatans, intended to divert attention from the fundamentally anti-colonial, anti-imperial, and anti-white-supremacist spirit that colors (forgive the levity) true, revolutionary anti-color-theorism. 

Note: And what in the world is the "International Commission on Illumination" supposed to be?