-Caveat Lector-
Well, you're absolutely right about this, nessie. And some of the
neolib enthusiasts subscribe to our list. Our current malaise began
with the elimination of JFK...his murder was followed by the murder of
Bobby, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm....and probably a host of
others who also met with 'mysterious' deaths... When the opposition was
in disarray, the national security state went into overdrive with its many
clandestine operations..
Next, came the indoctrination of TWO generations of Americans who would
learn to follow orders and march to the militarist tune they were
playing.
It was a masterful job of propaganda... and it was brilliantly
coordinated. Look at the plethora of crackpot, right-wing think tanks
that magically sprouted up like so many weeds during the seventies and
eighties.
And look at the role talk radio played in pushing the American
people to the extreme right. Hollywood came out with one pro-war movie
after another. "The powers that be" felt that American youth were getting
too soft.... they had to be toughened up, get back into that old
ass-kicking mood. How else would they be able to keep the empire going.
Another essential arm of the propaganda mill was the
religious right. The elite needed a number of wedge issues to further
divide the population: abortion, women's rights, prayer in schools,
"family values," etc. It was a masterful campaign.
Like lemmings going off a cliff, the American people have been herded
along...as the master illusionists (the politicos, spin doctors and
ideological quacks) work their word magic, poisoning the wellspring of
public discourse.
But even elites must now and then bow to the will of the people. ...Major
concessions are occasionally won, now and then.
I'm guardedly optimistic...only in the sense that I think the demographics
of the place are changing drastically... In a decade or two ( if we don't
look that way now), the US will resemble South Africa under the old
apartheid system... A few rich old white geezers holding all the wealth,
with a vast white-brown-black-yellow underclass living in poverty...
It's going to be hard to maintain our social myths and fictions in view of
the hard reality that is already here....
On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, nessie wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> ________________________________________________
> A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
> http://www.ainfos.ca/
> ________________________________________________
>
> Folks: This review of a recent book on the cultural cold war waged by the
> CIA is relevant to the current struggle over fundamental issues such as
> indigenous autonomy. The book apparently tells a story that few people
> have known outside the intelligence community and those that follow it.
> There were a few articles published on the Congress for Cultural Freedom
> in The Nation magazine back in the fifties, I believe, and so the story is
> not unknown. But it has been mostly forgotten. Today in Mexico and in the
> US there is a very hot war between neoliberalism and the rest of us,
> especially those with living alternatives, such as the Zapatista
> communities. Part of the war is assasination, harassement, torture and
> displacement. But part of the war is propaganda and ideology. For thirty
> years we have been treated to a coordinated campaign to sell free market
> ideology. It was a campaign shaped in the wake of the Cultural Revolution
> of the 1960s that undercut the legitimacy of capitalism and of existing
> political institutions. It has been financed by the state and by Right and
> Liberal foundations,a nd perhaps by the CIA as in the earlier period. The
> main point, it seems to me, is not who funds such efforts but that we
> understand their nature, their goals and the need to expose and undermine
> them. A little historical perspective is usually an excellent ally in such
> a task. I, for one, plan on getting this book and reading it carefully to
> flesh out what I have learned about this in the past.
> Harry
>
> Originally From: Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
> MONDAY BOOK: THE INTELLIGENTSIA AND THE CIA
>
> A grainy black-and-white photograph from the Fifties graces
> the cover of Frances Stonor Saunders's new history of the CIA's
> cultural cold warriors. Four men sit hunched round a table strewn
> with the remains of a meal; there are wine glasses smeared with
> fingerprints and the dregs of a bottle, while an afternoon sun slants
> through large windows. One man throws a menacing glance over
> his shoulder at the photographer.
> That look, and this clutch of figures, speak volumes about the
> mission of that tight network of intellectuals and espionage agents
> who worked alongside the CIA to promote the ideal of a new age
> of enlightenment - the pax Americana. Fearful of the Soviet Union's
> cultural influence, the agency operated a sophisticated cultural front
> to win over leftist artists and their audiences. This was the cold
> warriors' "battle for men's minds", stockpiled with a vast arsenal of
> journals, books, conferences, seminars, exhibitions, concerts and
> awards.
> Among the agency's most powerful operators was Michael
> Josselson, a former agent in the intelligence section of the
> Psychological Warfare Division. He went on to head the influential
> Congress for Cultural Freedom. Stonor Saunders vividly captures
> both Josselson's character, and the dynamic appeal of the pax
> Americana to a young Jewish intellectual with a passionate interest
> in literature and the right political bent. His network relied on his
> friends, many former members of the wartime Office of Strategic
> Services, and on his wife, Diana Dodge. After their wedding in
> Paris in 1953, he confessed that he was not really in the import-
> export business. Together, the couple formed an effective
> partnership.
> Diana describes an idyllic life in postwar Paris where "you felt
> you were in touch with everything going on everywhere - things
> were blossoming, it was vital". She also succumbed to the romantic
> fantasy of the intelligence world, and was given her own code
> name. An agent would hand over memos and cables from
> Washington to Michael during their Martini hour at the Josselsons's
> apartment. "We'd read the incoming cables, then I'd flush them
> down the toilet."
> But there was more to the American cultural frontline than
> romance and ideological conviction. The agency's biggest weapon
> was its bank account. From its inception in 1952, the Congress that
> Josselson headed received millions of dollars to act as America's
> unofficial Ministry of Culture. "We couldn't spend it all," recalled
> former CIA agent Gilbert Greenway. "There were no limits, and
> nobody had to account for it. It was amazing."
> Radio Free Europe alone received a budget of $10m at its
> founding in Berlin in 1950. Elsewhere, a former case officer
> described piling his car high with bundles of dollar bills for
> distribution into "quiet channels". By the Sixties a joke was
> circulating that, if any American philanthropic or cultural
> organisation carried the words "free" or "private", it must be a CIA
> front.
> While thousands reaped the benefits of their position, others
> were victimised by the agency's relentless pursuit of Communist
> "fellow travellers" in the arts. During spring 1953, when the impact
> of the Rosenbergs' treason trial and execution had exposed
> resentment at America's presence in Europe, the United States
> Information Agency conducted a purge of "pro-Communist
> writers". More than 30,000 books were banned from USIA
> libraries, including works by Dashiell Hammett, Langston Hughes,
> John Reed and Herman Melville. The number of titles shipped
> abroad by USIA in 1953 plunged from 119,913 to 314.
> When the CIA's involvement in American culture was finally
> exposed in the Sixties, it revealed a staggering number of
> household-name artists who had received its tainted funds. Through
> myriad projects, from cash- heavy prizes to magazines such as
> Encounter and international conferences, the beneficiaries included
> WH Auden, AA Milne, Nancy Mitford, Mary MacCarthy, Stephen
> Spender, Jackson Pollock, Isaiah Berlin and George Orwell. Did
> they realise they were being used? Stonor Saunders argues that
> most of these artists knew where their money was coming from and
> "if they didn't they were... cultivatedly and culpably, ignorant".
> The damage the CIA caused was irreparable and pervasive.
> Behind the "unexamined nostalgia for the `Golden Days' of
> American intelligence lay a more devastating truth," Stonor
> Saunders writes. "The same people who read Dante and went to
> Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated
> the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting
> subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens,
> overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted
> assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster." "In the
> name of what?" asked one critic. "Not civic virtue, but empire."
> Who Paid the Piper? illuminates a dark corner of America's
> cultural history, drawing on an extraordinary range of interviews
> and recently opened documents. Frances Stonor Saunders is strong
> on biographical sketches, and a thorough researcher. But questions
> about the real impact of the cultural cold war remain to be
> answered. In spite of its murky sources, did this money still produce
> some of the most significant art of the 20th century?
>
>
>
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
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CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
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