Communists are the original "reds"! Boy, those Commies just love their red! In fact, you have to be careful about even using the color red too much, or you might get mistaken for one yourself!!

The Wikipedia article on the subject states that the color red in this context refers to the "blood of the workers", which is a nice thought.

The expression "the Red Scare" refers to a period after the First World War and the Russian Bolshevik revolution when the United States was in a big flap about communism and you could get stuffed in jail practically just for mentioning in passing that you were quite partial to the color red.

If you want to know more, you can quite anonymously check out the Red Encyclopaedia , which has just about everything you might want to know about all the different communist movements. The site is, not surprisingly, a pleasant shade of...