A secretive unit within the British Foreign Office waged a “black propaganda” campaign against the USSR and China from the 1950s to the 1970s to undermine their global influence, the Guardian has reported, citing a researcher who studied a trove of recently declassified intelligence documents. London did not shy away from stirring up anti-Semitism, racism and Islamist sentiment to achieve its goals, the academic claims.
“These releases are among the most important of the past two decades. It’s very clear now that the UK engaged in more black propaganda than historians assume and these efforts were more systemic, ambitious and offensive,” Rory Cormac, a professor of international relations at Nottingham University, told the Guardian.
According to the newspaper, the documents reveal “hundreds of extensive and costly operations” conducted by the Information Research Department (IRD) – a covert unit initially established by the post-WWII Labour government to counter Communist propaganda. The unit “went far beyond merely exposing Soviet disinformation,” Cormac has said, adding that the UK “definitely intended to deceive audiences in order to get the message across.”
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