Kim Philby was an MI6 agent who had been working for the KGB since college. The man looked like a young Noam Chomsky, but spent his career fucking over MI6, the CIA, and notably Stephen Bandera's fascist 'resistance' movement in Ukraine.

Despite some gross but typical ingrained excuses for Western fascism...

When his forces reached the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, they found thousands of political prisoners had been slaughtered by the Soviets.

In retaliation, they joined the Gestapo in murdering thousands of Jews and Poles in the Lviv Pogrom. It is estimated that around one and a half million Jews were killed in Ukraine during the Holocaust.

The article is pretty damn good and talks frankly about Bandera and the UK/US effectively working with Nazis and spin-off fash as well as that legacy being celebrated in modern Ukraine.

I don't think it's smuggling in positive propoganda by stealth though. Just an accurate account and that reality, especially then, had a Soviet bias.

Also, Kim Philby Soviet stamp emoji when?

  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This isn't Philby specifically but I'm reminded of hearing about an American double agent asking for help when faced with a lie detector test.

    Supposedly his handlers just told him to chill out, get hydrated properly and be polite to the guy running the test, and it worked.

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      That's a good story and even better if true. Definitely highlights the power of social hacking and how much unconcious bias is based on social interaction. Probably just how interpretable the results of fairly junk science like lie detectors are too.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Probably was Aldrich Aims, he's is one of the best known American double agents and passed a bunch of lie detectors. He did it for money though so he's not as cool as the Cambridge Five in my opinion.

      Kendall Myers is his wife Gwendolyn were very based however. They worked for the state department and passed secrets to the Cuban government for 30 years out of ideological loyalty.

      According to a "law enforcement official", they were "true believers" in the Cuban system.[11] The United States federal affidavit quoted a diary entry by Kendall Myers as saying, "I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit",[11] and referred to Fidel Castro as "one of the great political leaders of our time."[13] Other entries quoted reference a comparison of health care in the United States and healthcare in Cuba, and "complacency about the poor" in the United States.[11]

      Unfortunately they caught him and he is now locked up at ADX Florence supermax facility, where they put all the terrorists.