By Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, USAF ret
STARRS Board of Advisors
Fellow Americans and fellow pilots — buckle up.
As a retired USAF fighter pilot who’s flown combat missions and stared down real enemies, I’ve spent years studying how nations fall. Not always from outside armies… but from the enemy WITHIN.
That’s the “Fifth Column.”
Let me walk you through its history in the United States — from its bloody origin to the clear and present danger we face in 2026. Buckle up. 🇺🇸✈️
The term “Fifth Column” was born in the Spanish Civil War, October 1936.
Nationalist General Emilio Mola was advancing on Madrid with four columns of troops. In a radio broadcast, he boasted he had a “fifth column” already inside the city — secret sympathizers ready to sabotage the Republicans from within and open the gates.
The phrase stuck. It means exactly what it says: traitors inside your own lines working for the enemy.
America first heard it loud and clear in 1940. President FDR, in a fireside chat on May 26, warned of the “Trojan Horse… the Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.”
He was talking about Nazi agents and sympathizers. The German-American Bund was holding rallies, waving swastikas, and infiltrating unions and defense plants.
Then Pearl Harbor hit. Navy Secretary Frank Knox publicly claimed the “most effective Fifth Column work” in Hawaii had aided the Japanese attack.
Result? Widespread fear led to Executive Order 9066 and the internment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. (History now debates the scale, but the fear of sabotage was real — Axis agents WERE operating in the US.)
But the REAL Fifth Column in America wasn’t just Nazis.
It was the Communists.
Even before WWII ended, Soviet agents and their American helpers were burrowed deep into our government. The Venona Project — declassified FBI and Army intelligence decrypts from the 1940s — proved it beyond doubt.
Alger Hiss (State Department), the Rosenbergs (atomic secrets), dozens of others in the White House, Treasury, and OSS were feeding Moscow classified intel.
The Communist Party USA wasn’t some harmless club — it was the heart of a Red Fifth Column taking orders from Stalin.
The 1950s exposed it. Senator Joe McCarthy was loud and sometimes sloppy, but the threat was real. Hollywood, unions, academia — all infiltrated.
By the 1960s the strategy shifted: the “long march through the institutions.” Instead of spies stealing bomb plans, the New Left focused on culture, education, and media.
They didn’t need to blow up bridges — they could erode patriotism, rewrite history, and divide Americans by race, class, and gender.
Sound familiar?
Fast-forward to today.
The Fifth Column didn’t disappear with the Soviet Union. It evolved. We see CCP influence in our universities and tech.
Open borders flooding us with unvetted millions while cartels and adversaries exploit the chaos.
Radical ideologies in the military and classrooms that teach our kids America is the villain.
The “enemy from within” — exactly as President Trump has warned. Academia, Big Tech, certain NGOs, and even parts of the bureaucracy act as force multipliers for foreign powers and anti-American values.
It’s not conspiracy. It’s pattern recognition.
The history lesson is crystal clear:
Nations that ignore the Fifth Column lose from the inside out.
Rome had its internal betrayers. France in 1940 had its defeatists. We beat the Nazis and contained the Soviets because we eventually named the threat and fought it.
In 2026, with America surging economically and militarily under strong leadership, the internal saboteurs are panicking.
They want chaos. They want weakness. They want us divided.
Patriots — stay vigilant. Support leaders who put America First. Teach your kids real history, not the rewritten version.
Call out the cultural subversion wherever you see it — in schools, boardrooms, or the cockpit.
The Fifth Column only wins if good men do nothing.
We’ve got the wings. We’ve got the will. Let’s keep America flying high.
THE HISTORY OF THE US & THE “FIFTH COLUMN.” A PRIMER.
(Part Two)2) America first heard it loud and clear in 1940. President FDR, in a fireside chat on May 26, warned of the “Trojan Horse… the Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery.”
He was talking…
— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) May 7, 2026
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