FIFTH COLUMN

(Preface: A reference from Encyclopaedia Britannica: The term ‘fifth column’ originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the Spanish Civil War. As his army was approaching Madrid, a message was broadcast that the four columns of his forces outside the city would be supported by a “fifth column” of his covert supporters inside the city, intent on undermining the Republican government from within.
The term was used as the title of Hemingway’s only play, written while the city was being bombarded. The play was published in 1938 in his book The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.)

This entry is a serious warning, with a touch of unavoidable sarcasm, to all societies of today and tomorrow. It is easy to see that its subject comes as an antipode to patriotism, but its ill effect on society is deliberately downplayed in the West. It used to be perhaps overplayed in Soviet Russia, tagged as cosmopolitanism, but after the terrible experience of the 1990’s, it must certainly have been put in the right perspective.

The bottom line is deceptively simple: each society has its own fifth column. Properly generalized, and put in historical perspective, starting with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, or, probably, even earlier, this is going to become a very interesting dissertation on the true meaning of the phrase “enemy among us.” (This critically important and explosively controversial subject is raised in different sections of this book.)

The least vulnerable to the virus of the fifth column society is the totalitarian nation-state: all for one, one for all. Uniformity, in this sense, if only in this sense, is a blessing.

It is easy to pinpoint a number of more or less obvious fifth-column problems in an empire state. However, the doom of the Roman Empire was not so much caused by an abundance of the foreign element within its borders as by the authorities in Rome developing an “outsourcing” mentality. By outsourcing their national security (relying on foreign mercenaries as their personal “bodyguards” in Rome and as armed protectors of the Empire along her borders), the “clever” leaders of Rome had signed her doom.

Another key feeder of the fifth column is the phenomenon of the so-called “dual citizenship.” In a separate Apte Dictum entry, I jokingly wrote that “Dual citizenship,” like “dual religion,” is a form of polygamy. It is no laughing matter, however, to allow dual citizenship to become a social norm. Strenuously disallowed in Russia, for instance (except for certain tightly controlled “exceptions”), it has become a rather common occurrence in the United States, boding ill for the future of the nation.

“Dual citizenship” means dual loyalties. I can well understand the position of  the American Globalists, who sincerely believe in the power of the dollar and in the power of the bomb, where the United States seems to hold a sure edge over all other nations. Consequently, they believe that such minor personal conveniences as multiple citizenships (and offshore bank accounts) do not matter on the large scale of things, as long as more dollars can be printed and more bombs are made. The concept of national interest has been effectively internationalized, and by being inordinately expanded to include every pan-globalistic whim of the imperial superpower, it has completely lost clarity and precision. If you start listening to the standard arguments of these neo-internationalist champions of a world without borders, where multiple citizenships are the norm, nationalism is… so yesterday! But, as modern history of colonialism, with its rise and eventual meltdown of capitalist empires, has shown us, nationalism in its fight against colonialism does not even require a parity of resources, but it successfully relies on asymmetrical struggle, in which national cohesion and collective loyalty to the same objective are bound to prove decisive against all types of superior force.

It is, then, within the context of a global clash between the self-imposing and the self-asserting nations, or, perhaps, under the conditions of any international conflict, where one side becomes blind to the nationalist factor, involved in such a conflict, that the issue of dual citizenship, or dual loyalty, becomes decisive, and may indeed upset the best-laid plans of arrogant giants turning themselves into mice, just because they can, and the irresponsible men behind the giants, who love to give them advice which does not hold water.

Returning to the question of each society having its own “fifth column,” it is too easy and too predictable to associate this “fifth column” with national sectarianism, quite successful in the last two decades in breaking up formerly cohesive composite groups into weaker and still unstable entities, ready to be exploited by the bigger players. But, ironically, the petty centrifugal forces at work here have found a far stronger centripetal counterforce, which leads to the emergence of new formations, held together by a combination of factors, which include religion, broader national and cultural affiliations, and, most importantly, a powerful spirit of resistance to the perceived neo-imperialist outside threat.

It is therefore not national sectarianism, but the internationalist diffusion of nationalism-as-such, promoted by the modern ideologues of Globalization, that I see as the greatest threat to the existing capitalist societies and as their most pernicious “fifth column.”

As for who is the ultimate beneficiary of their subversive actions, their “General Mola,” make your guess!