False Flag at Greenwich: "Bourdin's Folly," the Nicoll Pamphlet, and The Secret Agent

Reviewing the extensive bibliography on the case, the present paper corroborates David Nicoll's thesis in The Greenwich Mystery! (1897) that the terrorist outrage constituted a false flag attack designed to discredit the anarchist movement and justify changes to Britain's asylum laws. The paper also finds that the Nicoll pamphlet, rather than private communication with an "omniscient friend," represents the primary source of The Secret Agent (1906), furnishing Conrad with details about the plot, the various parties involved, and even the explosive device used. On the other hand, although Conrad would have been suspicious of the official narrative promoted by the press following the attack, professional reasons led him to emulate the London dailies to the extent of presenting the Greenwich bombing in a sensationalist and xenophobic light in The Secret Agent. Moreover, it is argued that Conrad's precarious position as a Polish émigré and asylum-seeker in Britain prompted him not only to psychologize many of the crucial political issues arising from the incident, but also to downplay domestic complicity in the terrorist plot in favor of foreign involvement from far-away "Crim-Tartary." We conclude that the false flag paradigm which Conrad, following Nicoll, uses to account for the terrorist attack nicknamed "Bourdin's Folly" implies that resistance is itself hijacked by those forces that have vested interests in sustaining a "bad world for poor people."