My bros I have been doing a lot of
reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a
story because I love it okay
once upon a time there was a dude in
Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol
hated him some goddamn fascists.
See Spain had recently ended its civil
war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in
Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy
buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty
bullshit
so soon after war breaks out Pujol
travels to his local British embassy and goes “hey I wanna spy on
the Nazis for you”
“who the fuck are you?” say the
British, and kick him out
but Pujol is not deterred! He still
wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German embassy instead. “hey” he
says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them”
“yeah
okay” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit”
and
just like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German
intelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and
such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his
way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later
writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England
Pujol
had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon
public library, where he checked out a number of English guide books
and set about just wholesale making shit up
this
is slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely
did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were
basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen,
because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a litre of
wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so
that’s probably the same right?
Here
is where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves
this. “wow this dude is a
great spy” they say, because apparently none of them had ever been
the England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new
awesome spy that the British start to get worried
you
see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly
unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by
reading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio
transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and
reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England.
The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by
parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept
the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed
in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies
so
there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a
prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as
double agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking
up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great
spy- a spy the British do not have in their jail
“oh
shit” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they
have to and from this mysterious super spy.
“hey
wait” says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending.
“someone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio”
At
this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the
British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally
an Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t
interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again. It wasn’t until MI5 started
asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “oh yeah we
know that guy”
so in
1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially
becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case
officer so he can start making up even better bullshit
and he
does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d
recruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to
disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+
sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK
none of these people actually exist
Pujol
just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of
their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of
MI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but
ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive
in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy
network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agents
Pujol,
now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a
huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge
intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of
attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation
Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII
Adventures). Obviously you know how this ended
crazily
enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent.
After the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which
require personal authorization from Hitler), and a
Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)
unable
to resist being totally fucking ridiculous,
Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this
time against the USSR. “no,” he said “just help me fake my own
death and then I’m moving to Venezuela”
and
that’s exactly what he did. Juan Garcia Pujol died in 1988, at the
age of 76
Okay I’m just editing my reblog to add this picture of Juan Pujol Garcia because I feel that it adds so much to the story to picture him doing ALL THE ABOVE with this expression:
What a legend.
Thank you Jess for this extremely important addendum.
he’s my hero and also adorable
This is…holy fucking shit, I have no words for how much glee this story brings me. It’s like Mother Night but not soul-crushing
He was Catalan and his real name was Joan (not Juan) Pujol i Garcia.
After the fascists won the Spanish Civil War, Spanish names were mandatory, since the Catalan language and culture were completely banned by the fascist regime, but he referred to himself as Joan. So let’s refer to him as Joan as he would have wanted, and not use the name that the Spanish fascists imposed.
Here’s an interesting interview with him from the year 1984 (in Catalan)
Another weird and frustrating phenomenon when you get sucked into an argument with conservative types (something I usually try to avoid bothering with anymore) is that there’s this very narrow set of people they’re convinced are key figures, even “leaders” on any given topic. Talk about climate change and they bring up Al Gore. Talk about women’s rights and they bring up Anita Sarkeesian.
To this day I have NO IDEA what any of those people have ever said on those topics, and in most cases, I never even heard of them outside of conservative complaints and memes. I would never know the name Anita Sarkeesian if she wasn’t one random blogger out of thousands that an obscure niche of people went positively ballistic over. I’ve never heard of anyone accepting the existence of global warming just because non-scientist Al Gore said to.
If I tell them this they never believe it. They’re completely convinced that the beliefs they hate actually revolve around some random youtubers or B-list politicians they randomly elevated into their own bugbears and the idea that the people they fight hardest against actually have barely any influence or fame outside their own subculture seems almost impossible for them to accept.
George Soros.
I always see people saying George Soros pays people like me to protest (I wish), or buses people to vote on battleground states, some way or another he has us under our thrall.
I don’t even know who the fuck George Soros IS
I don’t even feel bothered to Google him and find out- he’s utterly irrelevant to my life. But apparently all liberals are on his payroll somehow.
I, too, never heard of George Soros before just recently.
They could make up absolutely any name in these arguments and it would have just as much meaning to me. “You’re only pro-vaccine because you’re shilling for Jiminy Ferpendoodle!!!”
I’ve heard this referred to as the central fallacy of the authoritarian mindset: It’s not that authoritarians don’t care about facts, it’s that facts aren’t real until they are confirmed by an Authority. Of course no liberal believed in Global Warming until Al Gore said so! Why would they believe it, until Someone In Charge said it? And moreover, if you can prove That Person Isn’t Really An Authority, the facts will change! See also:
Why Creationists are obsessed with disproving Darwin – not his theory, but the man himself. As if casting doubt on Darwin-a-dude-born-in-eighteen-fucking-oh-nine-for-chrissake-’s personal beliefs will somehow completely disprove the ensuing two centuries of scientific research.
Why various idiot politicians try to legislate away Global Climate Change, as if making laws against the ocean will stop it from rising.
I’m sure you could add on ten thousand bullet points but it’s Saturday and I don’t wanna do the research when I could be cleaning my kitchen and playing Minecraft.
This is actually supported by psychological and sociological research into authoritarianism; on @ampersandworm‘s comment on doing the research, I have to recommend Bob Altemeyer’s excellent (and free!) book, The Authoritarians, where he summarizes his research into the authoritarian mindset in a layman accessible manner (and, yes, I do love the irony that, in response to a comment about how conservatives only believe something when supported by An Authority, I’m linking to An Authority for discussion on that mindset). It is really worth a read to gain some insight into the mindset of American authoritarians.
We know a lot about authoritarian followers, but unfortunately most of what we know indicates it will be almost impossible to change their minds, especially in a few months. Here are a dozen things established by research.
They are highly ethnocentric, highly inclined to see the world as their in-group versus everyone else. Because they are so committed to their in-group, they are very zealous in its cause.
They are highly fearful of a dangerous world. Their parents taught them, more than parents usually do, that the world is dangerous. They may also be genetically predisposed to experiencing stronger fear than most people do.
They are highly self-righteous. They believe they are the “good people” and this unlocks a lot of hostile impulses against those they consider bad.
They are aggressive. Given the chance to attack someone with the approval of an authority, they will lower the boom.
They are highly prejudiced against racial and ethnic majorities, non-heterosexuals, and women in general.
Their beliefs are a mass of contradictions. They have highly compartmentalized minds, in which opposite beliefs exist side-by-side in adjacent boxes. As a result, their thinking is full of double-standards.
They reason poorly. If they like the conclusion of an argument, they don’t pay much attention to whether the evidence is valid or the argument is consistent.
They are highly dogmatic. Because they have gotten their beliefs mainly from the authorities in their lives, rather than think things out for themselves, they have no real defense when facts or events indicate they are wrong. So they just dig in their heels and refuse to change.
They are very dependent on social reinforcement of their beliefs. They think they are right because almost everyone they know, almost every news broadcast they see, almost every radio commentator they listen to, tells them they are. That is, they screen out the sources that will suggest that they are wrong.
Because they severely limit their exposure to different people and ideas, they vastly overestimate the extent to which other people agree with them. And thinking they are “the moral majority” supports their attacks on the “evil minorities” they see in the country.
They are easily duped by manipulators who pretend to espouse their causes when all the con-artists really want is personal gain.
They are largely blind to themselves. They have little self-understanding and insight into why they think and do what they do.
Points number 6, 7, 8 and 9 are what lead to the “argument from authority” tendency that OP noted.
when people say “George Soros” they mean “the Jews” but know they can’t say the latter out loud. see also “globalists”
