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Comment by beejiu | Hacker News Reader

Keeping out communists from a state broadcaster at the height of the Cold War sounds sensible.

If you're supposed to be defending democracy in the cold war, excluding people based on their political views amounts to surrendering.

That's a very purist viewpoint. The other side hired people to work against Britain and managed to get them into sensitive organisations, particularly the security services of course. Should Britain have surrendered to that in the name of purity?

Excluding foreign agents is perfectly reasonable. Excluding anyone with communist views is not.

Communism, for better or worse, was the system of the opponent. It's the reason that various people did turn over to their side or give them secret intelligence. Did Pravda knowingly employ right wing Russians? They wouldn't even have bothered with this kind of ridiculous question.

Outside actual national security, like the military, isn't the moral high ground precisely "we use reason, you use force"? I'm really not interested in picking sides when, as I heard a friend say, "the dog bites the dog and everyone has fur in their mouth."

Democracy is a noble ideal, and I believe in it, but anyone can call themselves democratic. You need to put your money where your mouth is.

Being a communist doesn’t mean being a foreign agent

There's an old story about sombeody like Manny Shinwell (a CP member in the house of lords) and somebody in the labour party convinced they were being bugged and speaking Yiddish to each other on the phone (as if MI5 couldn't find somebody to understand Yiddish, polari, you-name-it)

But being a communist does mean you are more likely to be recruited if you are in a position of power and at a time of 'war'.

Wouldn't that be an an too obvious foreign agent?

Just pay a 100% capitalist

Debatable since foreign powers were clearly trying to grab influence thru the funding of communist parties in western countries

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