Fifth column
As a fifth column (literally "... pillar", originally from the Spanish transfer in the meaning "... force " or "fifth train ") are clandestine, subversive active or Subversion suspicious groups designated as its objective the overthrow of the existing order in the interest of an alien aggressive power.
Origin of the term
The term fifth column was coined in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when it referred to supporters of the insurgents who had stayed in government-controlled areas after the coup to take action if necessary. The Spanish general Emilio Mola , one of the military leaders of the military coup against the republic , had announced that he would lead four columns against Madrid ; the offensive would be initiated by “the fifth column”, namely that group of Franco's supporters lurking in Madrid .
Expansion in the course of the Second World War
In Great Britain the term was applied to all "hostile" foreigners to be interned on the Isle of Man , that is to say to citizens from the Axis powers . It was similar in Canada and the USA.
After the end of the Second World War, the Warsaw Pact states trained communists from Western countries who, in an emergency , were supposed to occupy or destroy strategic goals in the NATO area together with special forces from the Pact armies . Conversely, the NATO countries supported anti-communist resistance groups in the Eastern bloc . Therefore, the term is often used in a figurative sense for “willing helpers”, especially for political groups that supposedly or actually worked together in international political conflicts with their own country's opponent for ideological reasons.
The former Czech Prime Minister Miloš Zeman applied the term to the Sudeten Germans , whose "interest representation" Sudeten German Party under Konrad Henlein had gained increasing influence during the 1930s. You were the "fifth column of Adolf Hitler," said Zeman in 2002 newspaper interviews.
Usage today
To avoid propaganda, espionage and sabotage, the Geneva Convention allows warring states to intern members of hostile states located on their territory . These are therefore under the general suspicion of possibly cooperating with hostile foreign countries. But even on this side of military conflicts, the fifth column is often used as a derogatory, often slanderous catchphrase for actual or alleged political or economic competitors. From the second term of office of President Putin, who found his support mainly in conservative people in the province, the propaganda with its nationalism and traditional symbols military and orthodoxy described young urban liberals as the fifth column of the "hostile" foreign countries.
Heiner Geißler provided an example in Germany in the 1980s in the context of the discussion about the stationing of US medium-range missiles . He described the SPD as "[...] the fifth column on the other side", in this case the "Eastern Bloc".
The expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 immediately after the Second Gulf War was justified, among other things, with the suspicion that the Palestinians living there acted as the fifth column of Saddam Hussein . After the leader of the PLO , Yasser Arafat , the Iraqi invasion in Kuwait had welcomed, were after the relief of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled from Kuwait and other Gulf states of Kuwait within weeks, the political and financial support of the PLO broke down.
Web links
- Fifth column. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . (English).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b column . In: Duden , 2018; u. a. also with “the fifth column (political group that works in war or the like with the opponent of their own country; after the answer of General Mola in the Spanish civil war to the question which of his four columns would take Madrid, where he with the fifth column meant the national in the city) "
- ^ The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories . 1991, p. 178–179 (English, full text in Google Book Search).
- ^ The Czech Foreign Minister on the Benes Decrees ( Memento from November 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) - (formerly) at News.at , March 2, 2002
- ^ Paul Baines, Nicholas O'Shaughnessy, Nancy Snow (eds.): The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda Verlag SAGE, 2019, ISBN 9781526486257 , p. 493.
- ↑ "I'm afraid we're going to have a global pandemic of conspiracy theories." , Novaya Gazeta, April 24, 2020; "And this constant distrust of the other - the enemy from within, the enemy from outside - was continuously part of the daily agenda of the authorities and the media."
- ↑ The S21 arbitrator: Heiner Geißler - the personified friction surface . - RP online , August 3, 2011
- ^ Angry welcome for Palestinian in Kuwait - BBC News , May 30, 2001