Hacker News Reader

Comment by aguaviva | Hacker News Reader

Some of it was Kremlin propaganda.

Care to cite some examples? You know, the factual kind?

Vladimir Bukovsky charged the Western disarmament movement (in particular the CND) with taking Soviet funding in the 1980s. YMMV up to your credence in him.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP85T00153R0003000...

The concern here was nuclear power, not arms.

"Our external strategic objectives, as decided by delegates at our annual conference, are: ... 4) The closure of the Nuclear Power Industry."

Nuclear power is not, as a photograph of a banner on the CND's website tells me, the answer to climate chaos.

https://cnduk.org/about/aims-and-objectives/

Noted, but to the extent the Soviets may have aided the CND -- their interest seems to have been in its pro-disarmament, rather than its anti-nuclear industry stance.

If we go by the article you provided (and I am skimming it properly) - it doesn't mention nuclear power at all.

The nuclear disarmament movement achieved nothing and just because the Soviets supported something and maybe groomed some members doesn't mean they were pulling the strings. Having read about the KGB in London makes it seem like it was a pretty amateurish organization that never recovered from Operation FOOT. There are allegations that a leader of the Labour Party was a KGB agent, and still no one would insinuate that the Labour Party was a front of the KGB.

Some of the things in the world may never be known for certain. The layman can look at the constellation of factors that lead up to an event.

The NKVD/KGB/FSB was and continues to be known to engage in kneecapping actions in enemy states. Many Northern nations were kindled into taking an anti-nuclear stance. It is taking a lot of initiative for Northern Europe to extricate itself from dependence on Russian natural gas. Russia used natural gas control as retaliation following sanctions.

Occam’s Razor would suggest these things are linked.

I think it is more productive to examine our failures than to blame all faults on a distant enemy

That is inconvenient. You could change your own organization, and nobody wants that. Much better to defend each and every problem on your own side as a distraction and that acknowledging your side's issues would only help the other side, and to concentrate on pointing out what others do wrong. That way you have zero responsibility to actually change anything.

Why not both: recognize one’s own shortcomings but engage in critical thinking around geopolitics?

Given the incredibly organic nature of anti-nuclear (power) sentiment during its heyday (the 70s-80s), when everyone was freaked out over TMI and Chornobyl; and the fact that so far, there've been no "revelations" of the Soviets or their latter counterparts having funded or infiltrated any of these groups (apart from attempting to influence the disarmament issue) --

Occam's Razor would seem to cut the other way, actually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com