Illustrative Image
Written by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Never underestimate the potency, and deceptive malice, of the British political mind. In responding to the threat posed by Imperial Germany during the First World War, the British propaganda campaign made much of the atrocity tale, the nun raping German and the baby bayoneting Hun. The effectiveness of the campaign was so impressive it sowed doubt amongst a generation about the reliability of war crimes accounts.
In its efforts to try to win US support for its cause against Hitler in World War II, the train of British propaganda again operated with a concerted effect, demonising isolationists and denigrating supporters and members of the America First Committee. The great hope there was that Britain would fight the Germans to the last American. It led to one of the largest covert operations in UK history conducted under the auspices of an agency known as “British Security Coordination”. During the course of its operations, BSC subject matter entered the American political bloodstream, aided by the injecting activities of Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, a radio station (WRUL) and the Overseas News Agency (ONA).
During the Cold War, the black propagandists were again in high demand. In 2021, the Observer revealed that the Information Research Department (IRD) had done its bit to egg on the massacres of communists and sympathisers in Indonesia in 1965. Pamphlets supposedly authored by seething Indonesian patriots but cooked up by the dark musings of the IRD, called for the elimination of the Indonesian communist party, the PKI. The deaths that followed numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
The IRD, which had, at its height in the mid-1960s, a staff of 360, had a primary purpose: to counter Soviet propaganda and its effects in Britain. It had its origins in the opening shots of the Cold War, established in 1948 but found itself behind the efforts of various sections of Whitehall already dedicated to the anti-Soviet effort.
Its program was more engaged and more ambitious than previously thought. “It’s very clear now,” Rory Cormac, an authority on subversion and intelligence history, explained to the Guardian, “that the UK engaged in more black propaganda than historians assume and these efforts were more systemic, ambitious and offensive. Despite official denials, [this] went far beyond merely exposing Soviet disinformation.”
The effects of propaganda can be perversely insidious. Allies or friendly nations can be used and abused if the aim is to advance the security of the propagandist. As Howard Becker laconically puts it in describing the consequences of black propaganda, “truth or falsity, as determined by any standard, is not raised. Propaganda which achieves its end may be entirely true, it may be entirely false; expedient rationality alone governs the choice of means.”
The IRD shows that, while it was more modest in scale to its US, Soviet and East European counterparts, it could hold its own in terms of inventiveness. It specialised in creating fake news sources and false statements designed to stir pots of racial tension, create instability, and foster social and political chaos.
A feature of the black propaganda campaign was the forging of statements by official Soviet bodies and entities. The Soviet-run news agency Novosti was something of a favourite, given the release of 11 fake statements supposedly authored by the body between 1965 and 1972.
In the wake of Israel’s lightning victory during the Six-Day War of 1967, the outfit drafted a number of documents claiming to be authored by disgruntled Muslim organisations sore at defeat and seeking answers. One did not have to look far for the culprit of godless Communism. “Why is the Arab nation at this time afflicted by so much sorry and disaster?” asks a statement purportedly issued from the League of Believers, a fictional Islamist organisation. “Why were the brave forces defeated in the jihad by the evil heathen Zionists?” The reason: that “we are departing from the right path, we are following the course chosen for us by the communist-atheists for whom religion is a form of social disease.”
Other material focused on existing and influential organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. One pamphlet from the IRD, supposedly issued by the group, takes issue with the quality of Soviet weaponry. As for the Soviets themselves, they were “filthy-tongued atheists” who had little time for Egyptians, mere “peasants who lived all their lives nursing reactionary superstitions”.
In Africa, propaganda efforts were made to malign the activities of Soviet front organisations such as the World Federation of Democratic Youth. Nationalist, revolutionary figures were also targeted. A statement from early 1963, forged by the IRD, has the WFDY falsely accusing Africans of being morally feeble, uncivilised, and “primitive”. The theme is repeated in another forged statement three years later, and in a fake release by Novosti noting the poor quality of African students enrolled at an international university in Moscow.
These recent revelations do have a certain flavour of told-you-so obviousness, but serve as reminders that the news, however official, reeks when consulted between the lines (and lies). Cormac reminds us that the current UK foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has her own “government information cell”, a distant echo of the IRD. It pays to look behind the merits of the next news bulletin, if only to be disillusioned.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
The British are petty shopkeeping pimps and philological liars. They are devious and backstabbers and the Anglo-Zionist MSM is pushing the most idiotic disinformation like AZOV HEROES EVACUATED instead of the fact the Nazi cowardly bastards surrender. It is saying that 93,000 German NAZIS were evacuated from Stalingrad in 1943 and relocated to Siberia and only 7,000 made it back. Indians know the British racist liars the best.
It’s funny how not a single western media source is using the word “surrender”, for that is what it is… the Azov neo-Nazis in the Azovstal steel plant have surrendered.
Instead, they’re using “evacuated”.
And after all the weeks of bluster about how “thousands of brave Ukrainian Azov fighters”, sometimes quoting figures of up to 2,000 fighters, it turns out there’s no more than around 300 ragtag bunch of neo-Nazis who used civilians as human shields.
It’s funny how the western media so quickly accuse others of state propaganda, but are themselves the very mouthpiece of state misinformation.
In today’s western Twitter propaganda against Russians, the mass Nazi surrender to the victorious Red Army would have been described as :
In other news, the German army has ended its combat mission at Stalingrad. 91,000 German soldiers have been evacuated to Siberia – February 2nd 1943
Uki hoholassholes and NATO faggots propaganda has reached a new comedic level in propaganda as the dumbasses stole a border prop and claimed that the Ukie Nazis have reached Russian border, it was fake Hollywood Jew props. The Russians are handing the Kiev pimps their ass daily. SLAVA ROSSIYA!
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Surrendered means you are captivated and POW. Azov fighters are evacuated and still fighting. They will be back, baby
No. They’re all done.
But 3elenski ordered them to surrender, are they refusing his order then?
they have surrendered their sad nazi asses and will be in POW camps until they get put on trial for war crimes. reality is a choice numb nuts
Meth addled freak
Better than the Irish? I very much doubt that. Read their history of slaughter at the hands of the snaggle-toothed anglo vermin. They were the first to be genocided by that filth and the first to free themselves (partially) from that filth. Northern Ireland will also be liberated in time just like Palestine. Time is on the side of the righteous and evil shall not prevail.
During cold war there was no need for propaganda. Russia was poor and backward. Citizens were hating each other, most of them permanently drank… oh, wait. Nothing has changed…
I have postmarked Russian postcards from that era with messages and scenes that prove that you are totally wrong. Nice try though, Bigot.
youre 12 years old you weren’t even alive and you talk like a dweeb US troll with goofy ideas about what other countries are like. you should go work for zelensky. maybe you could be his coke tester
Don’t be a moran, moron
Little Britain, has for centuries, has oft been described as Perfidious Albion.
The prime reason was to excite the British population when the leadership wanted to ferment conflict around the globe.
The problem for Britain’s propaganda Dark Arts strategy today is the reality that Britain no longer a unified ethnic race.
Britain today is a melange of Whites, Browns,Blacks and half breeds that do not agree with each other. Mass immigration is historically the fastest way to destroy any nation, and this has been the case for millennia.
Britains Zionist elite who have held the reins of power for many years have now adopted the WOKE culture. Britain is now shambolic.
‘GO Woke and Go Broke’. Is this the plan to enslave the populace of the UK and the world?
Slava Rossiya.
These woke idiots are supporting Palestine, don’t you know? lol
More on the ww1 propaganda of the British media in history. During the 17 or 18 hundreds when England and France were at war. It was reported at the time that a France ship had been sunk and a French sailor captured. The sailor was paraded in a cage through the city of hartlepool with crowds of people chearing the capture of a French man. It turned out that the captured sailor in the cage was a Monkey yes a Monkey and the people of hartlepool were told that the Monkey was a French man!
UK government to cut funding for BBC – There are more people who actively looking for the right information online nowadays. It is good to see anglo-zionist MSM dying slowly.
And now Southfront should release an article about its own way how it creates articles. =)
Yes, this is pretty much how we today see these trolls spamming stupid shit in the comment sections here, on YT, everywhere. For example this JHK degenerate, he didn’t seem to comment here but is a perfect example of this tactic.
James Hiroshi Kira
I think propaganda used to demonize an advesary in the home populations mind metastases into a shooting war. Once that happens and conscription and the mobilization of the society takes place what you as an individual think about the war means nothing if you are a potential soldier. You’re locked into hell, look at the AFU conscripted soldiers getting blown up in Russian cauldrons, probably 400 to 600 of them every day, and the irony of it is the Russians blowing them up feel more sorry for them than their countrymen organizers that sent them there and many of those trapped soldiers couldn’t care less about the reasons they are there. Watch your politicians and watch your son’s and get them out in time when you see the vultures circling.
It ain’t called the angloZionaZi empire of shit for nothing. Mix your in-bred ruling anglo trash (colonial swamped Pirate Rock & Slumville, USSA), add the oligarch kraut families that paved the way for Onkel Adolf and destroyed Urupp and Germany and then throw in the evil khaZar Zio filth that got this latest slaughter going in Ukropland, the same rats that profited most from the entire WW2 bankster genocide fest.
This time however, more of the sheeple have started to wake up after their covaid$ death squirt. Everywhere you look the Zio filth are shrieking and gone rabid in their wars whether in occupied, apartheid Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Africa etc. The sickening howling of these rabid dogs that will be destroyed….
Mother Russia as the last Christian nation on the planet is tasked by God yet again to eradicate the Bolshevik ZionaZi pestilence intent on destroying humanity. No doubt she will prevail just as she did in 1945.
Z
Interesting that the British Empire would fight the Germans to the last American just as they are now committed to fighting the Russians to the last Ukrainian.