The fifth estate, the fifth column
The fifth estate, the fifth column
Terms often used in politics and war (the politics of war?) (the war of politics?).
They are not the same but do have some equivalence and you will often see one used for the other.
Not to worry….. the far left and the far right both consider the other side to be the “fifth ______”.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Estate
Fifth Estate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about grouping in society with non-mainstream viewpoints. For other uses, see Fifth Estate (disambiguation).
The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media or "social license". The "Fifth" Estate extends the sequence of the three classical Estates of the Realm and the preceding Fourth Estate, essentially the mainstream press. The use of "fifth estate" dates to the 1960s counterculture, and in particular the influential The Fifth Estate, an underground newspaper first published in Detroit in 1965. Web-based technologies have enhanced the scope and power of the Fifth Estate far beyond the modest and boutique[1] conditions of its beginnings.
Nimmo and Combs assert that political pundits constitute a Fifth Estate.[2] Media researcher Stephen D. Cooper argues that bloggers are the Fifth Estate.[3] William Dutton has argued that the Fifth Estate is not simply the blogging community, nor an extension of the media, but 'networked individuals' enabled by the Internet, e.g. social media, in ways that can hold the other estates accountable.[4]
Making reference to the medieval concept of
"three estates of the realm" (clergy, nobility, and commoners)
and to a more recently developed model of "four estates", which encompasses the media,
Nayef Al-Rodhan introduces the weblogs (blogs) as a "fifth estate of the realm". Blogs have potential and real influence on contemporary policy-making, especially in the context of elections, reporting from conflict zones, and raising dissent over corporate or legislative policies. Based on these observations, Al-Rodhan suggests moving beyond traditional thinking that limits the “estates of the realm” to governmental action and proposes a broader perspective in which civilians or anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can contribute to the global political change and security.[5]
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"fifth column" -
https://www.cato.org/blog/what-fifth-column-anyway
But the piece raised another question for me: “What’s a ‘Fifth Column,’ anyway?” The expression has been around forever, but what does it really mean?
Ahead of the Siege of Madrid in the Spanish Civil War, a general under Francisco Franco claimed that he would take the city with the four columns of troops under his command and a “fifth column” of nationalist sympathizers inside the city.
The city never fell to the nationalists, but fear of this “fifth column” caused the Republican government under Francisco Caballero to abandon Madrid for Valencia and it led to a massacre of nationalist prisoners in Madrid during the ensuing battle.
So a “fifth column” is not so much an insidious group of spies or traitors as it is the threat of such a group which causes the incumbent power to miscalculate and overreact. That doesn’t clear up what Kouri is trying to get across, but it does have the air of unintended
confession."
…