The secret state
The secret state
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秘密状态
DOI：
10.1177/030639687902000301
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发表时间：
1979
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
E. P. Thompson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
E. P. Thompson
在卡特总统的“人权”花言巧语背后，隐藏着第三世界数十个独立独裁国家的现实。与此同时，在发达的资本主义国家，其领导人对其公民享有的自由感到自豪，正在引入新的社会控制措施。在英国，这些攻击的目标包括公民知道以他们的名义做了什么的权利。菲利普·阿吉和马克·霍森鲍尔被驱逐出英国，克里斯平·奥布里、约翰·贝里和邓肯·坎贝尔根据《官方保密法》被起诉，这些都是政府为阻止记者报道公众不应该知道的事情而采取的联合行动的一部分。通过这些行动，英国政府不仅将注意力集中在了官方保密上，而且还集中在了它试图隐藏的问题上——中央情报局（CIA）在英国、西欧和第三世界的行动；英国安全部门的规模不断扩大，他们对政治活动人士进行监视的目的越来越简单，信号情报机构（SIGINT）的作用不仅在于监视共产主义世界，还在于窃听许多第三世界国家的通信。历史学家E.P.汤普森从两个方面分析了这些案例。首先，围绕英国政府的秘密，尤其是那些与国内外监视和秘密行动有关的机构。其次，他指责左翼在过去十年中未能对公民自由和民主权利的问题做出回应。在过去的两百年里，由激进分子和工人阶级组成的自由意志主义者团体团结在一起，反对国家一再限制政治权利的企图。这种“愤怒的神经”迫切需要重新发现。他特别抨击了那些以所有国家、所有警察、所有法律都是坏的为理由而不认为有必要采取行动的左翼人士。在这样做的过程中，汤普森提出的问题不仅与英国有关，而且与所有自由民主国家有关。
Behind President Carter's 'human rights' rhetoric lies the reality of dozens of dependent dictatorships in the Third World. Meanwhile, in the developed capitalist nations, whose leaders pride themselves on the liberty enjoyed by their citizens, new measures of social control are being introduced. In Britain the targets of these attacks include the right of citizens to know what is done in their name. The deportation from Britain of Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball and th prosecution, under the Official Secrets Act, of Crispin Aubrey, John Berry and Duncan Campbell have been part of a concerted campaign by the state to stop journalists from writing about matters of which it is determined the public should remain ignorant. By its actions the British state has focussed attention not only on official secrecy but also on the very questions it sought to hide from view — the operations of the CIA in Britain, western Europe and the Third World; the increased size of British security services and their brief to keep political activists under surveillance, and the role of Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), not only in monitoring the communist world, but in eavesdropping on the communications of many Third World countries. E.P. Thompson, the historian, here takes up two aspects thrown up by these cases. First, the secrecy that surrounds the British state and especially those agencies concerned with surveillance and covert actions at home and abroad. Secondly, he takes the left to task for failing to respond on questions of civil liberties and democratic rights in the past decade. Throughout the last two hundred years the liber tarian strand of radical and working-class groups have come together to oppose repeated attempts by the state to curb political rights. This 'nerve of outrage' is in urgent need of re-discovery. In particular, he attacks those on the left who dismiss the need for action on the grounds that all states, all police, all law are bad. And, in doing so, Thompson takes up questions which are relevant not only to Britain but to all liberal democracies.