0:14 (Infiltrate state bureaucracy)
2:23 Induce state agencies to attack society
3:02 Identify, then undermine, prominent individuals (progressors)
7:17 Encourage spy-mania, "fifth columnist" paranoia, conspiracy theories
8:47 Hobble bureaucracies through red tape and paperwork
10:51 Encourage moral decay, undermine trust, encourage anti-patriotic nationalist activism
12:18 Entangle the enemy in a resource-draining proxy war
Fifth Column was the name MI5, the British Security Service, gave to a WW2 operation run from 1942 until at least 1947. It was initially intended to identify people who would be willing to assist Germany in the event of an invasion of the United Kingdom, but as it developed, it also acted to divert its targets away from harmful activities. Although it ended up providing information on more than 500 suspects, it was the source of conflict within MI5, and after the war ended it remained secret, with none of the targets ever aware that they had been its subject. It was revealed in a release of files to the National Archives in 2014.
The operation was run by the counter-sabotage section of MI5, designation B1c. The head of this small section was Victor Rothschild, who had joined MI5 in 1940 to do scientific liaison. He was assisted by Theresa Clay, an entomologist whom he'd recruited. The agent at the heart of the operation was Eric Roberts, a former bank clerk who had been working undercover for MI5 inside the British Union of Fascists since 1934.
Alien infiltration .
Black propaganda .
Copperhead (politics) .
Demographic threat .
"British intelligence officers mounted a covert operation to infiltrate and control hundreds of Nazi sympathisers in the UK during the second world war, according to newly declassified MI5 files. In the most significant indication so far of a “fifth column” of Hitler sympathisers in Britain, an MI5 mole known by his code name “Jack King” posed as a Gestapo agent to penetrate groups of fascists. They passed him information, believing that it was being channelled to Germany, and were rewarded with fake Nazi war medals distributed by their British masters. MI5 has not disclosed King’s real identity."
...........
"The Second World War and the ‘fifth column’ scare of spring 1940 led to the enhancement of MI5's role after internal reorganization, following the near collapse of MI5 during the crisis; the supposed existence of the fifth column became a means by which MI5 came to justify its existence, growth, and importance. However, internment of aliens and fascists, and the proscription of the British Union of Fascists in July 1940 destroyed the non-existent threat of a Nazi-manipulated British fifth column. Political surveillance of other groups who opposed the war, most notably Jehovah's Witnesses and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), provided the new justification for vigilance. Even after the CPGB adopted super-patriotism after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, MI5's simplistic interpretation of its ‘revolutionary defeatism’ remained unaltered. The deterioration in relations between the victorious allies and the coming of the Cold War enabled MI5 to justify its importance and to avoid the severity of the cuts that had threatened its existence after the First World War."
Evolution of the Mythical British Fifth Column, 1939-46* .
Black propaganda .
Copperhead (politics) .
Demographic threat .
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.