How the British Invented Color Revolutions
As the British Empire shifted from a colonial to a neocolonial system, it had to develop quieter, more discreet methods for removing rebellious vassals
"WHAT'S UNFOLDING before our eyes is a very specific type of coup called the `Color Revolution’.”
So said former Trump aide Darren Beattie, speaking on the Tucker Carlson show, September 15, 2020.1
Most people felt something was fishy about the upcoming election. But it was hard to say what.
Beattie gave a name to the problem. He called it “color revolution.”
He defined color revolution as “a regime change model favored by many in our national security apparatus.” It uses “an engineered, contested-elections scenario” to disrupt and override legitimate elections, Beattie explained.
America had been using this technique for decades to overthrow regimes overseas.
Now a similar operation was being planned against President Trump, Beattie charged.
His warning proved prophetic.
Americans may disagree on whether we experienced a Biden “coup” or a Trump “insurrection,” but most would agree that the events of November 3, 2020 to January 6, 2021 don’t seem to qualify as a normal “election.”
Beattie Accuses “Atlanticists”
When Beattie warned of “color revolution,” he broke a fearsome taboo.
The last person who tried to expose color revolutions on national TV was Glenn Beck in 2010.2 Fox News cancelled Beck’s show soon after.
Now Beattie had taken up the torch. But he went farther.
While Beck blamed George Soros for funding color revolutions, Beattie accused the U.S. government itself, specifically our “national security apparatus.”
Beattie pointed, in particular, to a cabal of foreign policy operatives known as “Atlanticists.”
Atlanticist is diplomatic jargon for a person who puts British interests over American ones.
British Front Groups
In my last article, “How the British Sold Globalism to America,” I explained how British influence networks exert “soft power” in Washington, operating through front groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The primary mission of these British fronts is to push Atlanticism —the notion that America must always come to Britain’s rescue when she embroils herself in wars.
Prior to going on Tucker Carlson’s show, Beattie had written a series of articles on the Revolver News site, which he edits.3
Beattie’s series had exposed a snakepit of U.S. NGOs established and funded by the U.S. government, whose mission is to subvert elections and topple governments around the world, under the guise of “promoting democracy.”
Their weapon of choice is color revolution.
Beattie referred to these groups as “Atlanticist NGOs.”
Frankenstein’s Monster
According to Beattie, these “Atlanticist networks” (again, Beattie’s words) include such groups as the Transatlantic Democracy Working Group, The German Marshall Fund, The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its two daughter groups, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
Beattie revealed that the same “color revolution professionals” who run these “Atlanticist-aligned” NGOs (as Beattie called them) can also be found playing leading roles in the anti-Trump “Resistance.”
In effect, Beattie was claiming that America had created its own Frankenstein’s monster.
The very weapons we had deployed to subvert other countries’s elections were now being turned against us, to undermine our 2020 election.
Who had done this? Who had the power to commandeer America’s “democracy-promotion” NGOs and turn them against their own master, the U.S. government?
Who were these “Atlanticists” whom Beattie accused?
The Great Game
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Atlanticism” as “A policy or principle of close military, economic, and political cooperation between Europe and North America, or a European and North American country; spec. support for or advocacy of NATO.”4
That definition may be true, but it is also misleading. It misses the point that the true purpose of Atlanticism is to consolidate the military alliance between the US and UK.
The 1941 Atlantic Charter, which sets forth the guiding principles of Atlanticism, is an agreement between two countries, Great Britain and the United States.5
All other countries are simply pawns in the great game.
NATO (sometimes called the “Atlantic Alliance”) is the enforcement mechanism of the Atlanticist order.
NATO’s first secretary general Lord Hastings Ismay famously explained that NATO’s purpose is, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.”6
In 1944, when Charles de Gaulle objected to U.S. meddling in French affairs, Winston Churchill slapped him down with these words:
“If Britain must choose between Europe and the open sea, she must always choose the open sea. Every time I have to decide between you and Roosevelt, I will always choose Roosevelt.”7
With those words, Churchill reminded de Gaulle that France’s place in the so-called “Atlantic Community” was a minor one at best.
British Propaganda
The expression “Atlantic Community” was coined by American journalist Walter Lippmann in 1917. Like so many U.S. journalists at the time, Lippmann worked under the shadow of British handlers, especially one Norman Angell, a British Fabian who had somehow become an “unofficial member” of the editorial board of Lippmann’s magazine, The New Republic.8
Angell had come over in 1915 on a grant from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Founded in 1910 by Scottish-born steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, the Endowment pushed an Anglophile agenda. Carnegie was an outspoken advocate of “British-American union,” i.e. merging the US and UK into a single superstate. His Endowment called for an end to U.S. “isolation” and propagandized for U.S. intervention in World War I.
In keeping with the Carnegie Endowment’s goals, Angell moved The New Republic from a neutral stance toward open support for Great Britain in the war.
An English-Speaking “Nucleus of Authority”
Lippmann is widely hailed as the inventor of Atlanticism.
On February 17, 1917, he wrote an article for The New Republic, titled “In Defense of the Atlantic World.” It was an open call for war.
Lippmann argued that America must stand with the “Western world” against the barbarous hordes of the East. He wrote:
“[Germany’s] war against Britain, France, and Belgium is a war against the civilization of which we are a part. … Because on the two shores of the Atlantic Ocean there has grown up a profound web of interest which joins together the Western world. … We cannot betray the Atlantic community…”9
Lippmann’s article supposedly kicked off the Atlanticist movement.
In reality, Lippmann was merely repeating shopworn British propaganda lines, which had long portrayed the British Empire as the West’s final bulwark against Eastern barbarism.
Sir Norman Angell later clarified the true meaning of Atlanticism when he wrote that any world government must be led by a “nucleus of authority"—specifically by “the West” — which in turn must be led by “the English-speaking world.”10
The Round Table Agenda
As explained in my earlier articles, “How the British Invented Globalism,” and “How the British Sold Globalism to America,” British leaders at the turn of the 20th century recognized that England could no longer afford to police its global empire.
They formed a plan to transfer the cost of empire to the United States. The plan was for the Americans to police the world, at their own expense, while Britain would call the shots, retaining control of imperial policy.
That is Atlanticism, in a nutshell.
A secretive group called the Round Table was formed, partly with funds from the Rhodes Trust, to put this plan into action.
From roughly 1909 to 1945, the Round Table gradually drew the United States into a web of interdependency with Britain. This was done, first, by establishing The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in 1921, to exercise backchannel control over U.S. foreign policy. Secondly, transnational entities were established, such as the UN, NATO and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which further bound the U.S. to Britain’s fate.
By these means, the British ensured U.S. support for any future military operations they might wish to undertake.
Having secured U.S. cooperation, the next step was decolonization—granting self-rule to Britain’s colonies, so England would no longer bear the burden of policing and defending them herself.
The Switch to “Informal Empire”
One of the great myths of our time is the supposed “fall” or disintegration of the British Empire. No such thing ever happened.
Decolonization was already planned well before World War I.11
The only thing holding up the plan was the need to neutralize Germany as an imperial competitor and secure permanent U.S. military support for the new global order. These goals were achieved in 1945, with the partition of Germany and America’s entry into the UN.
Between 1946 and 1980, Britain granted self-rule to most of its colonies, but only slowly, one by one, and under certain conditions.
Before granting independence to any colony, the British would install local rulers willing to honor past business arrangements. Those who played ball were rewarded. Those who made trouble were removed.
Britain thus switched from "direct" to "indirect" rule, from "formal" to "informal" empire.12
To put it in Marxist terms, Britain switched from a colonial empire to a “neocolonial” one.
“Passive Resistance”
To maintain the new system, Britain needed quieter, more discreet, methods for removing rebellious vassals. One such method turned out to be color revolution.
British studies of "passive resistance" and "non-obedience" began as early as World War 1, when philosopher Bertrand Russell proposed that invading armies could be defeated without firing a shot, if civilians refused to comply with enemy occupation forces. 13
Russell’s ideas influenced British military planners such as Basil Liddell Hart and Stephen King-Hall, who incorporated nonviolent resistance into Britain’s growing arsenal of psychological weapons.14
Decolonizing Africa
On February 3, 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke before the South African Parliament. “The wind of change is blowing,” he said, and Britain must blow with it, by liberating its African colonies.15
The British insisted that other European powers follow their example. Britain did not want its newly liberated colonies to be swallowed up by rival Europeans.
Portugal refused to cooperate. The Portuguese declared they would fight to the death to hold onto Angola, Mozambique, and their other African possessions.
The Carnation Revolution
Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar died in 1970, but his Estado Novo regime lived on, continuing its long-running colonial wars against African insurgents.
On April 25, 1974, Portuguese Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano was suddenly overthrown in a "soft" military coup. It became known as the “Carnation Revolution,” because demonstrators put carnations in the muzzles of soldier's guns.
The Carnation Revolution is the first example I know of a full-fledged "color revolution."
Britain denies taking part in the coup, but the signs of British psywar are evident.
Prior to the coup, only days before Caetano was supposed to visit London, The Times reported a massacre of 400 people by Portuguese special forces in Mozambique. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson demanded that Caetano cancel his visit, accusing him of “genocide” and calling for Portugal’s expulsion from NATO.16
By this means, Britain undermined support for Caetano, at a time when the future coup leaders were already issuing threats and demands.17
After the coup, Britain quickly recognized the new leftwing junta and provided it with assistance in dismantling Portugal’s African empire.18
Gene Sharp, Psywar Operative
Today's activists revere Gene Sharp, an American pacifist, as the father of "strategic non-violence." Sharp wrote the standard "playbook" for color revolution, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973).
What the activists don't realize is that Sharp was a psywar operative, with strong ties to both U.S. and British intelligence.
Sharp spent 30 years at the Center for International Affairs, nicknamed the “CIA at Harvard.”19
More importantly, Sharp spent 10 years in England (1955 to 1965), working with the British peace movement and earning a Ph.D. from Oxford. Sharp's iconic work, The Politics of Nonviolent Action, was, in fact, his Oxford doctoral thesis.20
“Swarming Adolescents”
In 1967, Australian psychologist Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) in London, predicted that "swarming adolescents" would soon be harnessed as a political weapon, capable of toppling governments by the 1990s.21
He was right.
In 1989, a wave of non-violent uprisings swept the Soviet Bloc, toppling Communist regimes. The Czech uprising was nicknamed the "Velvet Revolution," a term that later came to be used interchangeably with "color revolution."
The "velvet revolutions" of 1989 were largely orchestrated by Western governments, working through front groups.
“Democracy Promotion”
The Western front groups that helped bring down the Soviet Empire are, in many cases, the same “Atlanticist NGOs” whom Darren Beattie accused.
In the NGO world, they are known as “pro-democracy,” “democracy-building” or “democracy-promotion” groups.
Promoting “democracy” has been a core agenda of the Atlanticists since Woodrow Wilson declared that America must fight to “make the world safe for democracy.”
Obviously, there are times when fighting for “democracy” is commendable.
The fall of the Soviet Union undoubtedly helped the captured nations of Eastern Europe.
Yet, all too often, cries of “democracy” and “freedom” have been used to enlist naïve young people into unsavory endeavors, such as the destabilization of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The Freedom House Model
Most historians agree that the first US “democracy-promotion” NGO was Freedom House, founded on November 10, 1941, in Washington DC.22
From its inception, Freedom House was a British intelligence front.
Its original purpose was to fight “isolationism” and push for America’s entry into World War II.
In April, 1940, Winston Churchill created a special intelligence unit called British Security Coordination (BSC), to carry out covert operations against the U.S. antiwar movement.
With the full cooperation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, BSC set up offices in Rockefeller Center, under the command of Canadian intelligence operative William Stephenson, code-named Intrepid.23
Freedom House was formed by the merger of two pro-war organizations, Fight for Freedom (FFF) and The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA).24
Both were British fronts run by Churchill’s BSC, according to Thomas E. Mahl’s Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-1944.25
The National Endowment for Democracy
On November 17, 1983, the U.S. Congress authorized funding for a new entity called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a public-private entity which would receive U.S. government funding.26
NED’s purpose was to serve as an umbrella group for a network of democracy-promotion NGOs, including two daughter groups which would eventually become known as the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI).
That same year, Gene Sharp, the British-trained psywar operative who had ostensibly invented color revolutions, formed a group of his own, the Albert Einstein Institution in Boston.27
All the above groups had two things in common.
First, they all followed Gene Sharp’s “playbook” for color revolution.
Second, they all helped the U.S. government fund and organize color revolutions in other countries, for the ostensible purpose of promoting democracy.
According to Darren Beattie, all of these groups took part in the destabilization and dubious termination of Trump’s presidency.
Cui Bono?
It remains to be seen whether Beattie’s accusations will stand the test of time.
One thing is certain, though.
The British government is extremely pleased by Trump’s ouster.
And they don't want him coming back.
On February 4, 2020, while Trump’s second impeachment trial was pending, the Royal Institute of International Affairs—also known as Chatham House—declared on its website that, “The Trial of Trump is Not Enough to Repair Democracy.”28
Warning that election “disinformation” spread by Trump supporters poses a threat to democracy, Chatham House called for a “9/11”-style commission to further probe the January 6 “insurrection.”
London Calling
Chatham House is not just any think tank.
It operates under Royal Charter, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II.
Moreover, it is the sister organization of the Council on Foreign Relations. Together, the two groups formulate and coordinate foreign policy for the US and UK.
After all these years, it is starting to become clear what Norman Angell meant when he spoke of a “nucleus of power” at the core of the Atlantic Community.
It appears the nucleus may be in London.
This is the world the Atlanticists made.
Welcome to the Atlantic Community.
Richard Poe is a New York Times-bestselling author and journalist. He co-wrote with David Horowitz The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. Poe is presently writing a history of globalism. His work is available at richardpoe.substack.com and RichardPoe.com.
Linked on Revolver News, May 15, 2021.
Based in part on a Twitter thread dated September 9, 2020.
FOOTNOTES
Darren Beattie interview, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Fox News, September 15, 2020
“George Soros: The Puppetmaster,” The Glenn Beck Show, Fox News, November 9, 10, 11, 2010
“The Curious Case of George Kent: State Department’s Belarus `Color Revolution’ Expert And `Never Trump’” Impeachment Witness, Revolver.news, August 16, 2020
“Transition Integrity Project: Is this Soros Linked Group Plotting a “Color Revolution” Against President Trump?”, Revolver.new, September 4, 2020
“Meet Norm Eisen: Legal Hatchet Man and Central Operative in the “Color Revolution” Against President Trump,” Revolver.news, September 9, 2020
“Further Proof Presidential Debate Commission is Rigged: Chairman is Co-Founder of Top “Color Revolution” Org Linked to Steele Dossier and More,” Revolver.news, October 9, 2020
“Atlanticism,” Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition, June 2020
The Atlantic Charter: Declaration of Principles Issued by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, August 14, 1941
David M. Andrews, The Atlantic Alliance Under Stress: US-European Relations After Iraq (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 61
Antony Beevor, D-Day: The Battle for Normandy (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), p. 20
Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 92-93
Walter Lippman, “In Defense of the Atlantic World,” The New Republic, February 17, 1917; reprinted in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Early Writings: 73
See Angell, The Political Conditions of Allied Success (New York, 1918); Angel, “The English-Speaking World and the Next Peace,” World Affairs, 105 (1942), 10; Angell, “The British Commonwealth in the Next World Order.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 228 (1943), 65-70; Angell, “Angell Sums Up at 85.” Freedom & Union (December 1958), 7-11; all cited in Duncan Bell, Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, October 22, 2019), pp. 199-200
As early as 1883, influential policymakers such as historian John R. Seeley were suggesting that the cost of defending Britain’s colonial empire might outweigh the benefit. In his book The Expansion of England, Seeley lamented the “great burden which is imposed by India” and suggested that “England would be better off now… had she remained standing, as a mere merchant, on the threshold of India, as she stands now on that of China.” J.R. Seeley, M.A., The Expansion of England: Two Course of Lectures (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1883), pp 221-224.
British banker Lord Avebury further clarified the problem when he warned, in 1906, that the U.S. was getting rich at Britain's expense. American businessmen profited from the Pax Britannica, while Britain spent 60 percent more than America on its military, to keep the world safe for business. In short, England was going broke playing global policeman. The Right Hon. Lord Avebury, “The Future of Europe,” The Nineteenth Century and After: A Monthly Review, Vol. LIX, January-June 1906, pp 416-428.
British journalist W.T. Stead proposed a solution to the so-called “imperial problem”—the problem of how to sustain Britain’s increasingly tenuous hold on global hegemony—in his 1901 book The Americanization of the World. Stead proposed merging the U.S. and the British Empire into a single superstate. The idea was to form such a close bond with the United States, that the British could safely delegate the job of global policeman to the U.S., confident that the Americans would support British foreign policy. W.T. Stead, The Americanization of the World (New York, Horace Markley: 1901).
The coordination of US and British foreign policy was accomplished in 1921 with the creation of two “sister” think tanks, The Council on Foreign Relations (US) and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (UK). See Richard Poe, “How the British Invented Globalism,” Substack, April 27, 2021 and “How the British Sold Globalism to America,” Substack, May 5, 2021.
Beginning around 1916, an influential faction known as the “Round Table” or “Milner/Rhodes” group began pushing the idea of rebranding the British Empire as a “Commonwealth,” and granting limited self-rule to the colonies. Detailed proposals for this post-imperial “Commonwealth” were put forth in two books by British statesman Lionel Curtis: The Problem of the Commonwealth (Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, 1916) and The Commonwealth of Nations (London: Macmillan and Company, 1916).
Another Round Table member, Alfred Zimmern, in his book The Third British Empire (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), suggested that global government—in the form of the League of Nations—was the natural offspring and ultimate expression of the British Empire and Commonwealth.
Thus we see that the decolonization process which the Round Table publicly endorsed as early as 1916 (through Lionel Curtis’s books) actually came to pass, more or less according to plan, with Great Britain shifting from a colonial to a neocolonial system. “[W]hether this [Milner] group succeeded in transforming the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations or merely succeeded in destroying the British Empire is not yet clear, but one seems as likely as the other,” wrote Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley in 1966. See Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), p. 146. See also pp 144-148, 164-173.
In a 1953 paper, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” British historians John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson argued that the decolonization process (which was already far advanced by that time) did not represent a sharp break with the past, since Great Britain had always exercised “informal” economic control over certain of its dependencies (China, for instance), with no need for establishing “formal” colonial rule. Despite the ongoing process of decolonization, this practice of “informal” rule would continue unimpeded into the future, the authors implied, allowing Great Britain to continue its past business arrangements with former colonies (citing India as a specific example). Gallagher and Robinson went so far as to claim that the “informal” portion of Britain’s empire had always been the larger part, and that trying to determine the limits of British power by the amount of territory “coloured red on the map” was “like judging the size and character of icebergs solely from the parts above the water-line.” Moreover, they argued that the difference between “formal” and “informal” rule was trivial, since Britain retained political control either way. “[F]ormal and informal empire are essentially interconnected and to some extent interchangeable,” they concluded. See John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Free Trade," The Economic History Review, Second series, Vol. VI, no. 1 (1953).
Bertrand Russell, “War and Non-Resistance,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 116, No. 2, August 1915, pp 266–274.
“It was precisely Liddell Hart’s struggle with the dual necessities of preventing war and being ready to wage it decisively that led to his involvement with the topic of nonviolent action and to discussions with some of its leading proponents. Notable pacifists of the interwar period, including Richard Gregg, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Kingsley Martin corresponded with Liddell Hart about the possible use of nonviolent action as an alternative to war, or as a means to mitigate its destructiveness.” (p. 306)
“After the Second World War, having observed and commented on civilian resistance campaigns in places like Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands, Liddell Hart was ready to reopen the question of defense by nonviolent means. … As a journalist, he interviewed more than one hundred German generals imprisoned in England after the war. He reported that they often professed to have been bewildered by the appearance of nonviolent action, and to have found violent partisan resistance easier both to counter and to punish. These insights led him to write a supportive review of Sir Stephen King-Hall’s Defence in the Nuclear Age, which presented one of the first thorough arguments for a full-fledged national defense based on nonviolent resistance, and to encourage a younger generation of scholars working on civilian-based defense, including Gene Sharp and Adam Roberts. (p. 306)
“Liddell Hart, Captain Sir Basil Henry,” Protest, Power, and Change: An Encylopedia Nonviolent Action from ACT-UP to Women’s Suffrage, Editors, Roger S. Powers, William B. Vogele (New York and London: Routledge, 2011), p. 306
“Over tea and cake, he [Basil Liddell Hart] told Gene [Sharp] that work on nonviolent resistance was extremely valuable and suggested he investigate nonviolent resistance in Denmark during the Nazi occupation…” (p 67)
“Basil Liddell Hart’s encouragement was a major victory and there were others in the establishment who thought the same way too. Stephen King-Hall was a retired naval commander, Minister of Parliament and aristocrat who carried the title of ‘Baron’. In 1958 he published a book, Defence in the Nuclear Age, which advocated a policy of nuclear disarmament and a defence policy based upon a mixture of conventional military forces and nonviolent resistance.” (p 70)
“Gene set about organising a conference in Oxford which would gather the biggest names in the field to discuss the potential of what he now called ‘Civilian Based Defence’. The speakers would present papers on a variety of subjects, including: ‘Forms of Military Attack’ by Alun Gwynne Jones, then military correspondent of the London Times, later Minister of State for Foreign Affairs; ‘The Coup d’Etat’ by Lieutenant-Colonel D.J. Godspeed, military historian; and ‘Aspects of Totalitarian Systems’ by Professor Ernst Bramsted, a noted researcher on dictatorships. The conference led to the publication of a book of these contributions titled, The Strategy of Civilian Defence, in 1967.” (p. 70)
“Gene had now estabished a modus operandi. He was concerned with peace, but while the bulk of the peace community stood outside of the establishment, he saw the cooperation and collaboration of establishment figures like Liddell Hart and Stephen King-Hall as essential to his success. For civilian based defense to work, it had to win the approval of the most senior figures in western governments. … Gene was working towards… turning the populations of countries threatened with Soviet invasion into a weapon system.” (p 71)
Ruaridh Arrow, Gene Sharp: How to Start a Revolution (Big Indy Limited, 2020), pp 67-71
PM Harold Macmillan, Wind of Change Speech, Cape Town Parliament, February 3, 1960
Oscar Jose Martin Garcia, "'The End of the Carnival': The UK and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal," April 2015, Contemporary British History 29(2) DOI:10.1080/13619462.2014.970392
Manus McGrogan, “Rendezvous With a Revolution: British Socialists in Portugal 1974–5,” International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Volume 19, Issue5, June 12, 2017, pp 646-665: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2017.1336463
Oscar Jose Martin Garcia, "'The End of the Carnival': The UK and the Carnation Revolution in Portugal," April 2015, Contemporary British History 29(2) DOI:10.1080/13619462.2014.970392
“In 1965, Gene Sharp, then a graduate student at Oxford, was recruited by a powerful American nuclear strategist named Thomas Schelling to join a new, cutting edge, wired-in incubator for US Cold War defense, intelligence, and security policy development: the Center for International Affairs at Harvard. The ‘CIA at Harvard,’ as it was then called, was the epicenter of the Cold War intellectual establishment, serving as hearth and home to top-flight Cold Warriors like Henry Kissinger, McGeorge Bundy, Samuel Huntington, and Zbigniew Brzezenski. … Sharp’s affiliation with the CIA at Harvard would be long, positive, and productive. He would remain there for thirty years, calling it his ‘academic home.’”
Marcie Smith, “Getting Gene Sharp Wrong,” jacobin.com, December 2, 2019
See also, Marcie Smith, “Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One),” nonsite.org, May 10, 2019
“In the same year [1960], Sharp enrolled at Oxford University to study for a DPhil. The doctorate took a long time, partly because of the many distractions of life, including teaching, and partly because of the sheer complexity of his topic. In 1968 the thesis was approved, and in 1973 after much further amendment it was published in Boston as The Politics of Nonviolent Action.”
“Gene Sharp Obituary: Political scientist and author who was the leading theorist of non-violent protest and resistance,” The Guardian, February 12, 2018
Jonathan Mowat, “The New Gladio in Action?”, Sociología critica, April 15, 2017
“Freedom House is the oldest American organization devoted to the support and defense of democracy around the world. … [founded] November 10, 1941…”
“Our History,” FreedomHouse.org: accessed January 31, 2023
“When Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940… polls in the US still showed that 80% of Americans were against joining the war in Europe. Anglophobia was widespread and the US Congress was violently opposed to any form of intervention. … Churchill's task, as he himself saw it, was clear: somehow, in some way, the great mass of the population of the US had to be persuaded that it was in their interests to join the war in Europe, that to sit on the sidelines was in some way un-American. And so British Security Coordination came into being.
“BSC was set up by a Canadian entrepreneur called William Stephenson, working on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Services (SIS). An office was opened in the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan with the discreet compliance of Roosevelt and J Edgar Hoover of the FBI. But nobody on the American side of the fence knew what BSC's full agenda was nor, indeed, what would be the massive scale of its operations.”
William Boyd, “The Secret Persuaders,” The Guardian, August 19, 2006
“Churchill, who in 1939 became First Sea Lord, was made aware of the professional intelligence job Stephenson had performed after escaping from the prison camp. He asked him in June, 1940, to set up shop in New York and head ‘British Security Coordination’ from an office in New York’s Rockefeller Center. …”
“Stephenson’s role was to try to counter the type of isolationism America was undergoing in 1940, as represented at the Court of St. James by U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, the future President’s father.”
Burt A. Folkart, “William Stephenson, 93; British Spymaster Dubbed ‘Intrepid’ Worked in U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1989
“One thing is evident. Members of the American elite, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, were not tricked into the war; they were not victims. They were as eager as the British to fight Hitler.
“The Americans were eager to dance but did not know the steps; the British knew the steps but needed a rich partner. These elite interventionists invariably worked with and for and through a number of organizations that were fronts for British intelligence. [Kindle Location 530-534]
“British intelligence was already established in the United States before the April 1940 arrival of William Stephenson, now almost universally known as Intrepid. But operations were consolidated and greatly expanded under Stephenson; from 1940 to 1945 he represented a shifting kaleidoscope of British intelligence and propaganda agencies, most of them housed in Rockefeller Center under the name British Security Coordination (BSC). [Kindle Location 3248-3252]
“…Stephenson had been chosen by “C,” Stewart Menzies, the head of MI-6, to go to the United States as his personal representative to ‘establish relations on the highest possible level between the British SIS and the U.S. Federal Burau of Investigation.’ The mandate given to Stephenson was to ‘assure sufficient aid for Britain, to counter the enemy’s subversive plans throughout the Western Hemisphere… and eventually to bring the United States into the War.’
“Stephenson first arrived in the United States on April 2, 1940, ostensibly on an official mission for the Ministry of Supply. It was on this trip, even before Churchill’s May 10, 1940, ascension to prime minister, that the meeting took place which set the early close working relationship between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and British Intelligence.
“This meeting between Stephenson and J. Edgar Hoover had been smoothed by a mutual friend, the boxer Gene Tunney. …
“After a short time in the United States, Stephenson took over the thirty-eighth floor of the International Building in Rockefeller Center, which the Rockefellers, anxious to help, let for a penny rent. This was a convenient address. Several British agencies promoting intervention were also housed here. The British Press Service was located on the forty-fourth floor. The British intelligence front group Fight for Freedom located its operations on the twenty-second floor in the same building, also rent-free.”
“By January 1941, Stephenson no longer worked under the traditional SIS cover name Passport Control but under the new umbrella name British Security Coordination, which covered all the varied secret organizations Intrepid represented in the United States.” [Kindle Location 310-330]
Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-1944 (London: Brassey's, 1999)
“Freedom House was formed by two organizations (the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA) and the Fight for Freedom (FFF) committee) dedicated to the Allied cause, albeit to differing extents.” (p. 49)
Emily A. Zerndt, "The House that Propaganda Built: Historicizing the Democracy Promotion Efforts and Measurement Tools of Freedom House" (2016), Dissertations, 1940, pp. 15, 49-50, 74-75
“Agent Sandy Griffith and his Market Analysis Inc. did spurious polls that were published by BSC [British Security Coordination] fronts such as Fight for Freedom and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies.” [Kindle Location 3269]
Thomas E. Mahl, Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-1944 (London: Brassey's, 1999)
David Lowe, “Idea to Reality: NED at 30,” NED.org, 2013
Marcie Smith, “Getting Gene Sharp Wrong,” jacobin.com, December 2, 2019; Marcie Smith, “Change Agent: Gene Sharp’s Neoliberal Nonviolence (Part One),” nonsite.org, May 10, 2019; “Gene Sharp Obituary: Political scientist and author who was the leading theorist of non-violent protest and resistance,” The Guardian, February 12, 2018
Dr. Leslie Vinjamuri, “The Trial of Trump is Not Enough to Repair Democracy,” ChathamHouse.org, February 4, 2020
Great research
Excellent summary, Thanks. Those Brits are cunning if nothing else, and it's about time that more than just Larouch folk know about this.