Hladni rat u kuturi: CIA u svetu umetnosti i književnosti

by Frances Stonor Saunders, Nevena Mrđenović (Translator)

Šokantni dokazi o umešanosti CIA-e u gotovo sve oblasti iz sfere kulture u godinama posle Drugog svetskog rata. Autorka kombinuje odnedavno dostupna dokumenta i ekskluzivne intervjue sa savremenicima, svedocima, pa i samim učesnicima, i otkriva nam do sada dobro čuvane podatke o tajnoj kampanji u kojoj su neka od najzvučnijih imena boraca za intelektualne slobode na Zapadu postala instrument američke vlade.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Art, American History, The United States Of America, Conspiracy Theories

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Frances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders is a British journalist and historian.

Reviews

[Naeem · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know all that paranoia that besides politics and economics, the CIA also has infiltrated all kinds of cultural institutions -- academic journals, music, international academic conferences, popular journals, export of popular music? Well now your paranoia can be exorcised, because it is all true!

Read this book and weep. Weep, not at the blood, and torture, and killing -- this book has none of that. This is drip, drip, drip of the CIA's backing of cultural influence. Sort of akin to finding out that US food aid policy is legislated to make profits from 3rd worlders and re-structure their eating habits. (I Will mention 2 books that deal with that later)

Read enough of this stuff and pain becomes laughter! Because it is funny actually to consider how much of our conscious life is built around denial. Funny -- in that nitrous oxide sense of your gut hurts from so much laughing. I mean it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's gonna take me a while to fully process this, but the practical bottom line comes down to the following.

1) The scale of CIA intervention in "soft" politics is vast. Unlike what spy movies would have us believe, and as attested to by such converts as Phil Agee, an Agent's job is quite bureaucratic and banal: funding magazines, unions, shows, events, hosting important figureheads at opportune times. For this, they make use of the most extensive power structure in the modern world, namely that of Big Capital - the preferred mediators have always been businessmen, "philantropic" foundations, old boy networks... Basically, the CIA is the highest weaponized consciousness that can course at will through the veins of society.

2) Throughout its history, the CIA has served to fund pro-American messages while keeping up a layer of plausible deniability. This has been acknowledged many times, both in internal documents and in external analyses. Ever since the Cold War has kicked down a notch, leaks have come out discrediting X or Y CIA narratives. However, they have never volunteered to tell the truth about anything if it hurts their cause, and every step towards transparency they've taken, they have been forced to take. Diligent journalism has been the key here, not a sudden moment of moral clarity from within the Agency. Assets have kept up a veneer of ignorance until the day they were forced by undeniable revelations to confess. Agents have piously denounced the "mistakes" the agency made in accidentally subverting this or other right or law, and gone on several years later to organise war crimes against the enemy du jour.

In other words, a healthy dose of skepticism is an absolute bare minimum requirement when it comes to evaluating Agency voices on record. Saunders has demonstrated this marvellously.

[Simon Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

WITH "FREEDOM" FIGHTERS LIKE THESE WHO NEEDS TOTALITARIANS?

A fine, readable book on the CIA programme to fund allegedly leftist/high cultural movements during the first half of the so called cold war. The cast of characters are a fairly unlikeable bunch - examples Nicholas Nabokov (3rd rate composer and cousin to the much more talented novelist), Irving Kristol (grandpa to the neo-conservative movement), Arthur Koestler (one time communist, writer and rapist, full time loud mouth). It hardly surprises one that those shady characters sold their souls to the CIA. What is surprising that it took so long for their cover to be blown.

Other characters include those on the right of the Labour party in Britain, and other ostensible leftists such as Willy Brandt. The pious and owlish Isaiah Berlin pops up here, then there, with advice and support but always keeping himself comfortably in the plausible deniability zone. The more one knows of Isaiah Berlins life the less comfortable one is with his writings and reputation, he was a one time spy for the putative Israeli state - and now an "independent" operator around the edges of the CIA's underhand program. What next one wonders? George "Big Brother" Orwell, a writer who I think is seriously overated, makes an appearance for his shabby informing to the secret services of his fellow writers. Of course one cant blame Orwell for the CIA production of Animal Farm but it is fascinating to look over their shoulders as they make the changes to make it politically correct in the CIA sense of that overused phrase. Sometimes, when reading this book, you get the impression that these self proclaimed and government funded freedom fighters are incapable of defending their point of view, or attacking their opponents, in the open with the pen which is what this reader thought cultural freedom in a democratic society might entail.

The book takes sometime to get going, there being a large cast of characters to introduce. While it is undoubtedly an important and interesting book, constant immersion in the activities of such entities as the Congress for Cultural Freedom, Encounter, CIA, MI5, Information Research Department,etc can have a dampening effect on your soul. As can the accounts of McCarthyism which had a devestating effect on a huge number of progressives in the United States.

That said, it has its entertaining side to - the level of bitching between our warriors for "Cultural Freedom" is sustained at a high level: Stephen Spenders level of naivety is awe inspiring, Koestlers crassness makes one wince. Its most valuable service is in puncturing myths of the Good vs the Bad that was the official plot line for the Cold War.

A worthwhile book, and a fascinating read - and one that has a renewed relevance in recent years given the with us or against us polarisation of the War on Terror.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

After WWII, in 1947, you could hire a German orchestra for the evening for four cartons of cigarettes, and for 24 cartons you could purchase a 1939 Mercedes Benz. The highest price though was for certificates that “cleared the holder of any Nazi connections.”

After WWII the Germans suddenly became our “new friends, and the savior-Russians the enemy.” Playwright Arthur Miller wrote, “This wrenching shift, this ripping off of Good and Evil labels from one nation and pasting them onto another, had done something to wither the very notion of a world even theoretically moral. If last month’s friend could so quickly become this month’s enemy, what depth of reality could good and evil have?”

Quickly it was decided that the Cold War’s “operational weapon” was to be culture. My grandfather Henry Wallace (FDR’s second Vice-President) suggested that instead of endless propaganda, both the Soviet Union and the US should merely show all other countries, which system was better for its people through economic example (their actions) rather than clandestine muscling. Silly grandpa advocating détente decades before Nixon, just to forego the billions of dollars, the endless deaths and torture caused by the Cold War. No wonder Truman and his boy toy Clark Clifford hated him. Jean Cocteau warned, “You will not be saved by weaponry, nor by money, but by a thinking minority, because the world is expiring, it does not think (pense) anymore, but merely spends (depense). Instead, the cultural backwater known as the US decided on adding cultural warfare to its Marshall Plan (which was already connected to the CIA) to combat the Soviets. During the Cultural Cold War, the CIA’s favorite propaganda was where “the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes to be his own”(which was created in 1947). Today that’s comically the motto of the six remaining companies that control US media. Make your imbecilic listeners believe their politics are actually their own ideas, not ours.

The Cold War propagandists loved to talk about “Soviet deceit” as though there was no US deceit, or British deceit. Study the long list of countries invaded by the US and Britain on false pretenses over centuries, then compare it to the short list on countries invaded by the USSR, for a comedic reality check. According to Cold War propaganda, the Soviets were involved in “vicious” covert activities to “discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States and other western powers”. Not mentioned was that those US and British aims were nothing less than world domination, nor was mentioned the centuries of Britain’s attempts at world domination or US recent attempts at same beginning with invading the Philippines (US massacre at Bud Dajo, anyone?). How dare the Soviets follow in our nasty footsteps!

The US planning document NSC-10/2 demands plausible deniability for US Cold War “activities”; if our Cold War activities were so morally righteous, why the strict need for plausible deniability? The US defined covert action as anything supporting US foreign policy that can’t be traced back to the US. In other words, if the Soviets did the same thing it would be called “vicious” or “terrorism” by hypocrites. As Harry Rositzke (OSS and CIA) called such US activities, “it was a visceral business of using any bastard as long as he was anti-communist.” A CIA colleague added, “Wisner brought in a whole load of fascists after the war, some really nasty people. He could do that because he was so powerful.”

In 1949 Congress passed the CIA Act, which said it could spend funds “without having to account for its disbursements.” Soon, many patriotic Americans were falsely accused of being communist (including my grandpa Henry A. Wallace, and composer Aaron Copland – p.70). “The Marshall Plan was the slush fund used everywhere by CIA at that time, so there was never any shortage of funds.”

The Left Selling Out the Left: Many figures on the Left rushed to get on the new hate wagon. Bertrand Russell “suggested (in direct violation of Nuremberg Principles) threatening Stalin with the atomic bomb.” “His politics seemed to change with the wind.” Future peace activist William Sloan Coffin, used to work for the CIA where he comically said, “Stalin made Hitler look like a boy scout.” Apparently if you mostly kill off people in only your own country as Stalin did, you are worse than Hitler? Then why pray tell isn’t the US worse than Hitler for clearly killing millions of Native Americans? And why did Coffin give Hitler a mere slap on the wrist for instead killing his millions OUTSIDE of his own country? Or did Uber-Christian Coffin offer bonus redemption points for Hitler’s directly targeting Jews? Authors Peter Matthiessen and James Michener also made their future careers by selling their souls to the CIA (p.246). Famed director Elia Kazan in 1952 had no trouble naming names at a McCarthy hearing. Karl Jaspers declared “Truth also needs propaganda.” Ah, but Karl, who gets to choose what is truth? The land of Jim Crow? The land that happily fire-bombed residential Dresden without a constructive war aim in mind? Let he who is filled with sin cast the first stone? The US spent $34 million in 1950 on psychological warfare, and then quadrupled it. When facts alone won’t win your ideological war, just start making shit up – especially if you have an unlimited budget and zero moral restraints. Especially if your country needs to hide its nasty un-Christian civil rights record.

Soon the CIA’s European target (and that of their flunky in Paris Nabokov) was less the Soviet Union or Moscow, it was more Left Bank intellectuals like Sartre and de Beauvoir, who many people were listening to. Parisians were clearly less impressed with Dulles and Eisenhower than with performances by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The CIA became “America’s Ministry of Culture” by pumping “tens of millions of dollars into the Congress for Cultural Freedom.” Propaganda was not cheap. Most US companies and foundations were happy back then to launder CIA funds, according to William Colby. “The use of philanthropic foundations was the most convenient way to pass large sums of money to Agency projects without alerting the recipients to their source.” Foundations are “unchecked by stockholders.” “Bona fide foundations such as Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie were considered the best and most plausible kind of funding cover.” Trustees for Ford or Rockefeller were usually from the intelligence community. The Rockefeller Foundation was a mind-control funder, funding even CIA’s MK-ULTRA during the 50’s. The CIA worked with Kim Roosevelt and Christopher Monty Woodhouse to overthrow Iran’s democratically elected Mossadegh and install the brutal dictatorship of the Shah. US taxpayer dollars turning Iran into a shithole dictatorship – such a noble goal.

Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Diego Rivera in 1934 to paint a mural for the Rockefeller Center; when Nelson saw Diego included Lenin in the mural, as well as Rockefeller’s dad drinking martinis with a harlot, Rockefeller had the entire mural jack-hammered off. Oops… The Museum of Modern Art’s early history was intertwined with the CIA’s art propaganda campaigns (p. 268) The CIA was a big fan of abstract expressionism because it couldn’t be seen as overtly political. Too bad, its leaders had a nasty habit of killing themselves – first Pollack and Gorky (1956), then Franz Kline, David Smith and Mark Rothko.

The US Communism Party was whittled down so strongly that at its end most members were FBI agents and William Colby said, “I always believed the old adage that the FBI kept the Communist party alive through their dues payments of their agents.” Author Howard Fast wrote, “The Communist party of the United States, in fact, at that moment, was practically a branch of the Justice Department.” Nothing to see here, folks. This was “an America where owning a Paul Robeson record could be considered an act of subversiveness.” So much for the land of “freedom and liberty”. During this time, future Columbo actor Peter Falk “applied for entrance to the CIA’s training program.” A report submitted to Eisenhower stated that the Soviet Union’s “avowed objective was world domination by whatever means and whatever cost.” How dare they? Anyone following US foreign policy since Eisenhower knows that the avowed US objective has been world domination by whatever means and whatever cost, and we aren’t sharing it with anyone, even our water boy, Britain. Even today, good luck finding a Cuba hater who will admit that the worst human rights violations in Cuba, are actually happening at Guantanamo. Oops.

The War against Communism was also quickly framed as god-less communists against the side of God. Henry Luce’s (Time/Life’s owner) favorite sold-out theologian was Reinhold Niebuhr. Truman quaintly framed the pro-God vs anti-God struggle as freedom vs tyranny. You can have the freedom to believe in the same imaginary God I do, or I’ll get tyrannical on your ass. When Truman’s Secretary of State protested Soviet denial of voting rights in the Balkans, the Soviets correctly responded that in the Secretary’s own home state, negroes there were denied the same right. Hypocrisy is a bitch. To prove its cultural superiority, the US sent dozens of black artists to perform in Europe – these same artists, who were treated like hired help in most US states were instead treated with respect in Europe. US Cold War propagandists like Eric Johnson “we’ll have no more Grapes of Wrath, we’ll have no more films about the seamy side of life.” Goodbye Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Richard Wright; sweep that stuff under the carpet.

George Orwell: Did you know that the CIA financed and distributed the animated film Animal Farm? It employed 80 cartoonists and required 300,000 drawings. CIA involvement meant the ending was changed because “in the original text, Communist pigs and Capitalist man are indistinguishable, merging into a common pool of rottenness.” You can’t have that. Heady from the success of the altered Animal Farm, the CIA turned to Orwell’s 1984, to remove Orwell’s message: about “the abuses that ALL controlling states whether of the left or right, exercise over their citizens.” Orwell had seen a menace in BOTH “us” as in “them”. The CIA first removed leaders using sashes because totalitarian societies didn’t use them therefore armbands needed to be used. Then trumpets couldn’t be in the movie because totalitarians didn’t rely on trumpets either. The film comically ended with two endings: one for American audiences and one for British. Never mind that Orwell had left strict instructions that 1984 not be tampered with in any way. Thank you, CIA. I picture the CIA telling the Beatles to just remove that line “All you need is love” and the song would then be okay. Americans were never told that most of “1984” was stolen from Russian author’s Yevgeny Zamyatin’s book “We.” An Inconvenient Truth.

Orwell had it out for homosexuals and sadly “confused the role of the intellectual with that of the policeman”. Why does this book say that? Because it says that Orwell kept a “blue quarto notebook” of 125 names of people too Left for him who he would disparage to author Arthur Koestler (who was indirectly on the CIA payroll). On that list was my grandpa as well as Paul Robeson, who Orwell falsely accused of being “very anti-white” and a “Wallace supporter”. If Paul was truly “very anti-white”, what the hell was Paul doing traipsing through the Jim Crow South during the 1948 US Presidential Campaign with my Grandpa and white folk-singer Pete Seeger? Not one name on Orwell’s reckless list was anyone ever involved in ANY illegal undertaking and this book says his list “became a dossier with very real potential for damaging people’s reputations and careers.” These many reasons were why author Mary McCarthy wrote that it “was a blessing” that that Orwell died so young.

This book shows that centrist Dwight McDonald was a CIA asset (who wrote a nasty smear book vilifying my grandfather who believed in racial equality and détente). While the US concentrated on winning its Cultural Cold War, the Soviets launched the first satellite into orbit. One month later, the US launched one of their own; it was much smaller and still it crashed in full view of the TV cameras. Oops… In 1964, Nation Magazine outed the CIA’s involvement in “magazines of opinion”. The story was amplified by its back-page inclusion as well in the New York Times. Double oops…

This was a book about Cold War propagandists, especially CIA’s Michael Josselson and Nicolas Nabokov. Much discussed is the CIA clandestinely controlled Congress for Cultural Freedom (the cultural freedom to choose ONLY capitalism) and Encounter Magazine. The three major publications that somehow escaped the control of the CIA were Ramparts Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and I. F. Stone Weekly. They did the unspeakable – they opposed the Vietnam War. Self-criticism in a US magazine? Unspeakable. By 1966, the CIA was feeding the White House for its smear campaign against Ramparts. More maddening was the fact that Jesse Helms and the CIA never found ANY Soviet involvement in the magazine. Instead, Ramparts published an effective expose of CIA covert operations that got traction in other publications. I used to enjoy reading Ramparts in the 60’s as my mom subscribed to it along with the hip I.F. Stone Weekly. Of I.F. Stone, Arthur miller wrote, “There was no other journalist I can now recall who stood up to the high wind (of anti-Communism) without trembling.” This was a really good book – I learned a lot.

[أسيل · Rating 4 out of 5]

ناتو ثقافي

عرّابة مثقفين وافاع ثقافية لاذعه وكراكيز فكرية
تجيد فن الكذب والخداع ولا يظهر عليها انها تفعل شيئاً
تظن انها تتصرف بحرية ووفق ارادتها وبالواقع مكبلون مقيدون
بقوى لا سيطرة هم عليها
فما يهم ان ترفض كل شيء وتكذبه او ان تندفع عليه او تبقى مراقباً؟!
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مثلما للطبيخ نفس وللطعام ذائقة فالقراءة كذلك
الطبيخ نفس ومن يقدم عليه عليه ان يقوم به بحب وتأني
والقراءة نفس ..فبأي نفس ستقرأ لكاتب قد عرفت انه ليس الا اداة
لخدمة غرض ما ويطبق عليك الوعي المزيف
والقراءة ذائقة بقدر طيب مذاقها بقدر استهلاكك لها
ومثلما العواطف قد تتمرد بينما العقل يملى
فذائقتك تتمرد حينما تحشو بطنك حتى الامتلاء



فبأي كيمياء غريبة اذن استطاعت المخابرات المركزية ان تقدم نفسها
لمثقفين كبار بحجم شليزنجر باعتبارها وعاء ذهبيا لليبرالية مأمولة؟

وهذا الكتاب يستعرض كيف جندت المخابرات الامريكية الكتاب والمثقفين والرسامين وكيف وضعت خططها ونفذتها وكيف انشأت مؤسسات ثقافية واصدرت مجلات وصحف وكتب وعقدت مؤتمرات وورشات وندوات وزيارات ومعارض وافلام وفنون تشكيلية
وجوائز ومنح علميةوكيف سوقت وجندت ونفذت مخططاتها
من خلال تقديم اموال ورشاوي وكيف مارست تزييف الوعي للجماهير من خلالهم
ليكونوا مزامير وابواق وطبول خدعوا جماهيرهم ومتابعينهم لتحقيق
اهداف خاصة لصالح منظماتهم فترى كيف ان مفكرو وكتاب ما عرفوا بالحداثيين
كان محض كذب وتزييف

ويستعرض الجاسوسية الامريكية في مجالي الادب والثقافة من خلال جوسلسون العقل المدبر وفريقه نابكوف ولاسكي وغيرهم لضرب الشيوعية من خلال الثقافة الشيوعيه
وكيف جندت كتاب معروفين ليصبحوا ادة طيعة في يدها سواء اعرفوا ام لم يعرفوا وكيف استغلوا روايات اورويل وانتجوا فيلمين لروايتيه مزرعة الحيوان و1984 زرعوا الاول بانحاء العالم ووضعوا نهايتين مختلفتين لرواية 1984

وتذكر الجمعيات والمؤسسات وخاصة مجلة الحوار ومجلة الشعر الصادرة باللغة العربية والممولة منهم,, والكتب التي احرقت واعدمت مثل كتب مكسيم غوركي

تكمن اهمية هذا الكتاب بتوضيح الالية وكيف يتم التلاعب بالعقول
واستغلال لاوسع مدى لتحقيق اهداف خاصة
ولا زال الوضع قائماً للآن!!!

هنا مقتطفات من الكتاب


https://www.facebook.com/whm.alwswl/m...

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كتب احد كبار المسؤولين عن العمل السري في ال
CIA
الكتب تختلف عن كل وسائل الدعاية الاخرى اساسا لان كتابا واحدا يمكن
ان يغير توجهات وسلوك قارئ بشكل لا يتحقق عن طريق اي وسيلة اخرى
الامر الذي يجعل الكتب اهم سلاح في استراتيجية الدعاية بعدية المدى
كان برنامج الكتب السرية في ال
CIA
يسير ونصب عينيه السياسة التالية كما يقول المصدر نفسه
نشر الكتب او توزيعها في الخارج دون الكشف عن اي تأثير او نفوذ
للولايات المتحدة وذلك عن طريق دعم المطبوعات الاجنبية والناشرين بشكل سري
نشر الكتب التي لا يظهر بها اي اثر لعلاقة واضحة بحكومة الولايات المتحدة
وخاصة اذا كان موقف الكاتب دقيقاً او حساساً
نشر الكتب لاسباب عملية بصرف النظر عن قيمتها التجارية
حفز ودعم المؤسسات المحلية او العالمية لنشر الكتب او توزيعها
الحفز على تأليف الكتب السياسية بواسطة مؤلفين اجانب غير معروفين
اما عن طريق دعم الكاتب مباشرة اذا توفرت امكانيات الاتصال السري او بشكل غير مباشر عن طريق الوكلاء او الناشرين

[أبو محمد · Rating 5 out of 5]

ميزة الكتاب الكبرى أنه جاء في شكل دراسة ليمنع سخافات أصحاب نظرية (النوايا البيضاء) و (العالم اللطيف لا مؤامرات فيه) من الظهور .. هذه دراسة عميقة موثقة بدقة و لا مجال فيها للمزاح ..
ترجمة لطيفة و أسلوب لطيف في الكتابة يعوض مشكلة كبر حجم الكتاب ..
و هذه أهم النقاط التي لاحظتها بجوار الفكرة العامة للكتاب :

* مدى احتقار أهل النخبة للمتحولين فكرياً (صـ 106) .. كل من تابع ما بعد الثورة المصرية (2011) رأى هذا الأمر بعينيه .. نحن لا نتحدث عن المتحولين في المواقف السياسية .. بل المتحولين من فكر الى فكر مضاد .. اسلامي - علماني أو رأسمالي - اشتراكي .. ألم يُحتقر فاعل هذا وسط العاقلين و لم يبدو حقيقياً أبداً ؟

* مسألة (محاربة الشيوعيين بالشيوعيين) القديمة هي نفسها (نظرية محاربة الاسلاميين الجهاديين بالاسلاميين المعتدلين) التي طرحها ميتران الفرنسي و استخدمتها أمريكا مؤخراً.. ان النظرية التجريدية واحدة في الحالتين ..

* ألا يشبه كتاب (موت الإله) الذي كتبه شيوعي سابق بدعم من المخابرات الأمريكية للطعن في الشيوعية كتاب (وثيقة الترشيد) و (المراجعات) التي قام بعملها بعض من رموز التيار الجهادي المصري فكانت من أشد الكتب المضادة لفكرة الجهاد العالمي ايلاماً ؟

* اخضاع العالم لمفهوم أمريكي يُظهر أن هناك حرية زائفة تتحرك في نطاق معين لا تخرج منه .. واحدة من أهم المسائل التي يطرحها الكتاب كرؤية أمريكية مرغوبة فعلاً منذ وقت مبكر (صـ 125)

* اعطاء اليسار حرية زائفة للعمل شبيه للغاية بالهامش الذي يطرحه حكام الأردن و السعودية و مصر و غيرها .. حرية لا تجعلهم يشتكون من القمع و مع ذلك لا تجعلهم ينجحون حقاً في هدم الدولة الحديثة القوية عميلة الغرب ..

* نظرية العمل على تشكيل المجموعات النخبوية و الاهتمام بها كأولوية قصوى مسألة في غاية الخطورة .. مرة أخرى نحن نتكلم عن تطبيق نظرية (الولاية الثنائية) الانجليزية بصنع نخبة فكرية و سياسية من أهل البلد تابعة للغرب و تنفذ مطالبه كيلا يحدث تدخل مباشر يثير الحساسيات .. و يتضح هذا بجنون في تعري للنخبة بأنها :
هي تلك الجماعة محدودة العدد القادرة و صاحبة المصلحة في المناورة بالأمور المذهبية ، رجال الأفكار الذين يجذبون الخيوط الفكرية لتشكيل أو على الأقل تهيئة التوجهات و الأراء لدى أولئك الذين يقومون بدورهم بتوجيه الرأي العالم ..
و هكذا في هجوم مارشال على المؤسسة المخابراتية المسئولة عن صناعة هذه النخب يصف وظيفتها بأنها : العمل على النخبة في كل ميدان لتوجيه أعضائها نحو الفلسفة التي يؤمن بها المخططون ، واستخدام النخبة المحلية يمكن أن يساعد في اخفاء الأصل الأمريكي لهذا الجهد لكي يبدو كأنه تطور محلي ..
هذا تعريف جنرال مارشال الأمريكي و قوله وليس قول محمد قطب هذه المرة !


* مقال فيدلر الصريح بصورة زائدة عن الحد عن رؤيته لآل روزنبرج المحكوم عليهم بالإعدام و حجم الاستنكار النخبوي عليه يظهر بشدة احدى مشكلات المجتمع النخبوي عامة .. أنه لا يقبل الصراحة في كل شئ خاصةً ان جاءت في حق أصدقاء أو فيمن يتعاطف معه .. مسألة حرية الرأي و الفكر هذه وهم كبير ..

* وضعت المخابرات كذلك عشرات الخطط لمحاربة (الحياد) ! نعم هي تحارب الحياد بصورة أشد و تعتبره أحياناً أخطر من الشيوعية .. أما معنا أو علينا .. هذه النظرية الأمريكية منذ زمن و لم يكن بوش أول من قالها .. الولايات المتحدة من قديم و هي على نفس المبدأ اذن ..

* الفترة المكارثية المريرة جنونية حقاً .. ذلك القمع الأمريكي(المهذب) قاتل و فعال للغاية .. الفصل الذي يتحدث عن هذه الفترة مميز جداً ..

* مرة أخرى نشاهد الانحياز الايديولجي في البكاء على الحريات المسفوكة من الشيوعيين الأمريكيين عند اعدام آل روزنبرج أو المكارثية .. في حين يتجاهلون تماماً فظائع ستالين .. مسألة التباكي على الحريات من جانب الشيوعيين و الليبراليين و العلمانيين في البلاد الاسلامية هي مجرد مزحة سخيفة أخرى متكررة منذ زمن بعيد ..

* في الفترة المكارثية أيضاً تظهر بعنف مسألة تنافس المؤسسات الأمريكية كمراكز قوى تتقاطع مصالحها و تضارب أحياناً .. أعتقد أن تجاهل هذه النقطة في التعامل مع أمريكا يمكن أن يسبب كوارث .. فتوريخوس الذي عقد اتفاقية مع كارتر كان يبدو فيها الأخير راضياً عنه برغم غمط الاتفاقية لحق أمريكا في بنما نال جزاؤه بعد ذلك بشهور قليلة في تفجير طائرته بواسطة (جهاز أمني أمريكي) ليس بالضرورة أن يكون السي آي اي ..
الأجنحة المتنافسة هناك بين الصقور الأعنف و الصقور الألطف يمكنها أن تحرقك ان لم تنتبه اليها .. قد تجد ادارة أمريكية تضحك في وجهك بل و لديك يقين حقيقي عن دعمها لك لكنك تنسى وجود مناطق أخرى في الادارة يمكنها أن تعمل ضدك و تغتالك !

* عندما ثار برتراند راسل من أجل آل روزنبرج قام جوس ليون بدفع أحد الصحفيين لعمل لقاء معه لتفنيد مزاعمه .. هنا نحن نتكلم عن (الفرصة الإعلامية) التي هي فخ لإستدراجك و القضاء عليك ..

* أصحاب الشهادات العالية الجامعية و تجنيدهم بواسطة السي اي ايه .. التحكم في النخب الأمريكية .. في هذه النقطة يبدو كتاب المتلاعبون بالعقول أكثر تفصيلاً ..

* يقول أحد كبار المسئولين الأمريكيين في السي آي اي أن " الكتب تختلف عن وسائل الدعاية الأخرى أساساً . لأن كتاباً واحداً يمكن أن يغير توجهات و سلوك قارئ بشكل لا يتحقق عن طريق أي وسيلة أخرى الأمر الذي يجعل الكتب أهم سلاح في استراتيجية الدعاية بعيدة المدى " .. فهل هناك دليل أكبر من هذا على خطورة التحكم من جانب الجهات النخبوية العميلة في سوق الكتب ؟ خطورة أن تجد الكتاب الاسلامي المفيد له طبعتان على نفقة الكاتب بينما الكتاب الالحادي له عشرون طبعة على حساب جهات مؤسسية كبرى تجعل الكاتب يصبح من الأثرياء بلا جهد سوى افساد عقول جيل جديد ؟ ان الرجل المخابراتي يؤكد على ضرورة أن يقوم الأمريكان (بتسهيل) طبع تلك الكتب في الخارج و في كافة أنحاء العالم بغير أن يظهر أي دعم أمريكي .. بتليفون صغير لأحد دور النشر يشجع على النشر .. بمساهمة اعلانية غير مباشرة .. بدفع الاعلام لاستضافته .. الرجل يشرح ذلك بإيجاز (صـ 271) حتى مسألة صنع جوائز تحفيزية يكونون هم في خلفيتها (صـ ٢٧٦)

* الجزءالمثير للضحك في هذا الكتاب هو كلام جورج دونديرو نائب ميسوري في الكونجرس عن الحداثة : الحداثة ليست سوى مؤامرة عالمية لإضعاف قوة أمريكا ..
ذكرني هذا بنكتة حرامية علي بابا في الكهف عندما عطس علي بابا المختبئ فراحوا يبحثون عن مصدر العطسة بينهم ليعلنوا في النهاية أنه (هناك غريب بيننا) !
اذا كانت الحداثة مؤامرة على الغرب و الشيوعيين كثير منهم اعتبرها مؤامرة على الشرق الشيوعي من الغرب و المسلمين يعتبرونها مؤامرة عليهم من كليهما .. فمن اذن صاحب المؤامرة !
من الذي (عطس) يا اخواننا ؟!

* كيف تعمل لجنة المخابرات الثقافية بعيداً عن رقابة دونديرو و رفاقه في الكونجرس ؟ سهل ! انها السرية ! أن تقوم بتعمية الكونجرس نفسه عن بعض نشاطاتك التي قد يرفضها ! هكذا نجد التعمية من الأجهزة الأمنية على المؤسسات المنتخبة هي الحل للالتفاف على الديمقراطية .. فهل ينبه هذا الأمر شيئاً في ذاكرتك ؟

* ذلك التبجح السخيف من ايزنهاور بحرية الفكر و الابداع عنده برغم ما فعله روكفلر مع فنان شيوعي سابق تم قمعه بوسائل أمريكية ناعمة .. المشكلة - كما قلنا سابقاً - أن الوسائل الناعمة في القتل لا تسمح لك بأن تدعي المعاناة ! لن يصدقك أحد و سيقولون عليك أنك تحب نظرية المؤامرة .. عندما يقوم رسام معين بالانتشار و هو شيوعي فيتم قمعه عن طريق القبض عليه و سحقه و حرق رسوماته يصبح هذا الرسام صاحب قضية يمكنه بعد ذلك أن يكسب لها تعاطفاً هائلاً فلديه دليل مادي على القمع .. أما عندما يقوم أحدهم بالتحكم في كافة دور عرض رسوماته ومنع المتعاقدين من شراء ابداعاته و منع أهل الفن من الالتفات اليه الا بكل نقد و تحقير ساعياً في النهاية الى تحطيمه معنوياً .. فهذا القتل (الناعم) الأمريكي أثبت فعاليته أكثر ألف مرة من القمع العنيف ..

* أعمال (الكيتش) .. الفن السخيف .. عندما تصبح لوحة تمثل منخاراً نابتاً من مؤخرة فيل ليتشمم زهرة خضراء ، سعرها مليون دولار .. هنا يبرز كلام دوايت مكدونالد المغتاظ مما يفعله آل روكفلر و غيرهم " قليل من الأمريكيين هم الذين يمكن أن يعترضوا أمام مائة مليون دولار ! " أي أنك ستصبح سخيف و لا تفهم و غير حداثي ان اعترضت على لوحة ثمنها مرتفع جداً يشتريها الصفوة !

* فصل استخدام الدين بواسطة الولايات المتحدة هو صفعة حقيقية على قفا العلمانيين الذين يعتبرون هذه الدولة ربهم الأعلى ! ان الولايات المتحدة دولة (مؤمنة بالرب) جداً كثير من تصوراتها عن الغير نابع أساساً من أصول توراتية و انجيلية ..

* أن يصبح رجلاً مثل جون وين رمزاً للشجاعة في الأفلام بينما هو قد تهرب من الخدمة العسكرية أصلاً .. أن تصنع السينما لك أبطالاً هم في الحقيقة حثالة جبانة ..

* و عن استخدام هوليوود و الأفلام بواسطة المخابرات في الحرب الثقافية تقرأ الكثير .. طبعاً الأمر واضح للغاية الآن لكل متابع جيد للسينما الأمريكية .. ففي فترة احباط القوات الأمريكية في أفغانستان يظهر فيلم الرجل الحديدي الأمريكي الذي يحطم أنوف الأفغان .. هذا مثال من مئات الأمثلة والشواهد ..

* اذن ماذا عن الاتفاقات التجارية التي تحوي بنوداً سرية للترويج للأفلام الأمريكية ؟ في الكتاب بضع اتفاقات من هذا النوع توضح أهمية الحرب الثقافية و مدى خطورة الجزء السري منها .

* مثير للدهشة ذلك التطابق المذهل في الحيل الاعلامية التي استخدمها الاعلام المصري بأنواعه - باعتباره أكبر اعلام عربي - لتضليل الشعب بعد الثورة مع عشرات الحيل التي استخدمتها الأجهزة الاعلامية الأمريكية بعد حادثة مقتل مارتن لوثر .. فصل يحتاج أيضاً الى تأمل و دراسة ..


في المجمل الكتاب ممتاز و يثير الفكر و ينبه الغافل ..

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

It could hardly surprise anyone at this point, except in the details, but the CIA had a hand in all kinds of cultural enterprises during the 1950s and 1960s. The premise was simple: let's combat totalitarian, non-democratic art by controlling our own art non-democratically and totalitarianally. Emphasis on the 'anally'.
A lot of Saunders' analysis focuses on journals like "Encounter", "Partisan Review" and others, and the wide-ranging cast of intellectual and morons in government and intelligence work who tried to manipulate a whole generation of artists into working under the thinly-veiled funding and auspices of the CIA. The revelations aren't that big, since it all broke in the late 60s and was investigated by Congress. A lot of writers and intellectuals pretended they didn't know anything about it. Whatever.
The best bits are about the Abstract Expressionists who, rejected by Soviet formalism, became the CIA-backed darlings of modern art via the Rockefellers, MoMA and all kinds of foundations and shit.
A winner all around and is a useful tool for taking no one, academic or artist, seriously.

[أحمد دعدوش · Rating 3 out of 5]

كناب مهم وممل معا. مليء بتفاصيل دقيقة لا تهم إلا باحثا متخصصا، ويمكن تجاوز ثلاثة أرباعه دون فوات الفائدة.

[Bên Phía Nhà Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

đọc cuốn sách này để tìm hiểu về chuyện Orwell đã được CIA tuyên truyền như nào trong thời kỳ chiến tranh lạnh. ngoài cuốn này còn có một cuốn chuyên viết về bác sĩ Zhivago và sự ra đời bản dịch cũng như bản tiếng Nga ở ngoài Nga như thế nào.

Đều là những cuốn sách cực hay và nên đọc cho ai muốn tìm hiểu sự tuyên truyền như không tuyên truyền, chúng em có làm gì đâu, chỉ cho tiền cho các bạn từng mê cộng bây giờ thành cấp tiến muốn nói gì thì nói thôi mà.

Xem Animal Farm do CIA làm với cái kết cục khác hẳn cũng rất là funny, và cả 1984 nữa. Cái xã hội Big Brother đang quan sát chúng mày thực ra là một thứ cực kỳ tinh tế mà không phải ai cũng ý thức được đâu, hỡi các đồng chí hai chân lẫn bốn chân ạ :D

[Cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written for an audience that already knows something about the Cold War and US politics in the 1950s, and for me it was an uphill climb since I know little about this period in American history. Fortunately Saunders is a good writer and manages to make most of it fairly interesting, although there are lots of quotations from government documents and people's letters that are laborious to wade through. Her thesis is that the CIA and its predecessors tried to engage the Communist enemy on a cultural level as well as a military / political one, with surprising results. She tells a few humorous tales along the way--books being air-dropped into the USSR as a means of "converting" the populace, and some tragic tales too: The eventual disintegration of the CIA's cultural wing, The Congress for Cultural Freedom, and the disillusionment of its staff as they drifted away to do other things. Recommended only for hard-core students of CIA history.

[muhammad lafi · Rating 5 out of 5]

تحفة بحثية قدمتها لنا الشابة البريطانية فرانسيس ستونر قبل تسع سنوات، كانت جديرة بالضجة التي قرعت رأس الغرب
صحيح ان هذه المسألة لم تكن ذات وقع مؤثر في مواجهة الاعلام الموجه، خصوصا وانها تحكي عن تاريخ قد مضى في توجيه الرأي العام ومنهجة قناعاته بالفن والثقافة والسياسة،لكنها تركت اثرا يستدل به في عصر الحرب الثقافية الجديدة ضد الأمة العربية..
استشهادات بسيطة يمكننا عكسها مما اتت به فرانسيس مما كان موجها ضد المنظومة الاشتراكية لنعكسه على واقعنا المعاصر
خلق اليسار الجديد المتأمرك لمجابهة الشيوعية، الاسلام المتأمرك لمواجهة حركات المقاومة
استخدام كتاب ورسامين وموسيقيين وانشاء ودعم جدد لاتأثير على الوعي العام.. وسائل الاعلام الحديثة والمفردات التغريبية
كيفية استغلال مفاهيم الديمقراطية والحرية لتبرير خيانات وخلق بلبلة..
الحال لا يختلف الا في الزمان واتساع رقعة المكان أكثر
كتاب مهم يلقي نظرة الى الوراء لشرح الكثير من الحاضر..
الحرب الثقافية الباردة

[lyell bark · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a pretty cool book how the cia funded left wing groups, artists, thinkers, philsophers etc. as a way to combat communism. cool. sort of name heavy sometimes which i s a bit annoying but whatever man. now next time your talking to all your cool friends down @the mission district you can tell them not only is the cia good at giving lsd to housewives, not killing fidel castro repeatedly, blowing up cats, and selling crack to black ppl, but they are also good at turning leftists into spineless bozos. yowzers. hot button issue!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential non-fiction. Everyone should read this book to get a deeper (shocking!) understanding of the Cold War. Who knew Jackson Pollack's ab-ex paintings were tools of the CIA to stop the spread of Communism!! The only negative effect of reading this book is coming away with the feeling that the CIA has infiltrated absolutely every nook and cranny of American life.

[Baher Soliman · Rating 2 out of 5]

كيف يمكن أن تتلاعب الأجهزة الأمنية والمخابراتية بالعقول عن طريق إخضاع الفنون والثقافة لهيمنتها ، واستكتاب المثقفين بما يوافق هواها ، هذا ما حاولت رصده ( ف.س. سوندرز) من خلال كتابها " الحرب الباردة الثقافية " أو " من الذي دفع للزمار " .

من خلال الوثائق يسلط الكتاب الضوء على كيفية محاربة الولايات المتحدة للشيوعية ، كانت الحفلات الموسيقية والكتابات الروائية والمعارض الفنية والمحاضرات العامة ، وسائل مهمة استخدمها الأمريكان لضرب الشيوعية ، فمثلًا أوبرا ريجوليتو يعاد تقديمها بطريقة معادية للفاشية ، ولإحكام السيطرة على الشيوعيين أنشأت المخابرات الأمريكية " منظمة الحرية الثقافية " وكان لها فروع في ٣٥ دولة ، ومن خلال هذه المنظمة قامت المخابرات الأمريكية بالتدجين الثقافي لمواجهة الشيوعية .

لقد جعلت المخابرات الأمريكية عالم الفن والثقافة ألعوبة في يدها ، وهذا ما يحاول الكتاب التأكيد عليه ، فالجماهير كانت تتلقى على مدار ٤٠ سنة نمط ثقافي موجّه معادي للشيوعية ، فلما سقطت لم يكن هناك مقاومة من الجماهير .

أنشأت المخابرات الأمريكية المنظمات التي كانت تهدف لا إلى جمع المعلومات ، ولكن كرأس جسر في أوروبا الغربية لوقف زحف الأفكار الشيوعية ، كان على تلك المنظمات أن يمارسوا الضغط على المثقفين ؛حتى يفكوا ارتباطهم بالجبهة الشيوعية ، كان على هذه المنظمات أن تكون رسول لإنجازات الثقافة الأمريكية ، فكان أحد الملامح الرئيسية لجهود الوكالة في أوروبا الغربية كما يقول الكتاب هو التنظيم الدقيق لشبكة من الجماعات المستقلة لتقديم الغطاء لبرامجها السرية في أوروبا الغربية ، وتؤكد المؤلفة أن أنسب وسيلة لتمرير مبالغ كبيرة من المال لمشروعات الوكالة دون التنبه إلى مصدرها كانت هي المؤسسات الخيرية .

كانت الحالة المكارثية تمثل تهديدًا بشعًا لكل الكتاب والمثقفين ، عندما كان " أرنست هيمنجواي " يشكو لأصدقائه من أنه تحت مراقبة ال FBi كانوا يتصورون أنه يتوهم ذلك ، وعندما أفرج عن الملف الخاص به في منتصف الثمانينات ، كان ذلك دليلًا على أن شكوكه كانت في محلها ، وعندما تم نقاش مشكلة الرقابة على الثقافة في بداية الخمسينات في أمريكا ، قال إيزنهاور أننا لا يمكن القيام بالغربلة دون أن نكون كالحمقى أو النازيين .

تقول المؤلفة أنه كتب أحد كبار المسؤولين في المخابرات الأمريكية ، أن الكتب أهم سلاح في استراتيجية الدعاية بعيدة المدى ، فكانت الوكالة تنشر الكتب التي لا يظهر عليها أي صلة بحكومة الولايات المتحدة ، والسؤال الأن ..هل هناك أسماء للكتب أو المؤلفين الذين كانوا في حظيرة السي أي إيه يرتعون ! . الحقيقة أن الكتاب لا يبخل علينا بهذا ، فتكشف المؤلفة عن أسماء بعضهم مثل "جورج ميشنر " الذي عمل لدى الوكالة منذ منتصف الخمسينات ، وكذلك "هوارد هنت " مؤلف روايات مثل شروق الوداع ، وغريب في المدينة ، وكذلك " هاري هيوبرد" الذي كان يكتب - على حد قوله- روايات موالية للسي أي إيه ، فحالة الكاتب الجاسوس- على كل حال- ليست جديدة ، واستخدمت في الحرب العالمية الأولى .

السينما نفسها كانت تحت مراقبة المخابرات الأمريكية ، كان "كارلتون ألسوب " منتجًا وفي نفس الوقت يعمل لدى السي أي إيه ، وفي أوائل الخمسينات كان يكتب تقارير عن السينما ، كانت تهدف هذه التقارير إلى : رصد ومتابعة الشيوعيين والمتعاطفين معهم في هوليود ، ومتابعة إنجازات إحدى جماعات المخابرات المسؤولة عن إدخال موضوعات محددة في أفلام هوليود ، في أحد التقارير يحذر " كارلتون ألسوب " من سيناريو أعد على رواية بعنوان " المارد" لأنه يمس القضايا الثلاث : تصوير غير متعاطف للأمريكيين الأغنياء القساة الأجلاف - تشويه سمعة المكسيكيين في تكساس على أساس عرقي - استغلال العمال المكسيكيين وتضخيم ثروة الأنجلوساكسون .

بعد وفاة الروائي جورج أورويل عام ١٩٥٠ بفترة قصيرة ، ذهب عملاء المخابرات الأمريكية " كارلتون ألسوب" و " هوارد هنت" إلى إنجلترا لمقابلة أرملة الكاتب ...لماذا ؟ وذلك ليطلبا منها التوقيع على حقوق فيلم " مزرعة الحيوان " ، وعندما خرج فيلم الكارتون مزرعة الحيوان كان بتمويل المخابرات الأمريكية ، أما رواية أورويل الأخرى٤ ١٩٨م لم تغفل عنها الوكالة ، بل تقول المؤلفة أن رجال المخابرات أعجبهم نقد أورويل للشيوعية متغافلين أنه كان ينقد كافة النظم المتسلطة ، وتؤكد الباحثة أن أورويل لم يكن بريء تمامًا من لعبة الحرب الثقافية الباردة ، فقد سبق له وأن سلّم قائمة تضم ٣٥ إسمًا باعتبارهم متعاطفين مع الشيوعية .

أهمية هذا الكتاب في كونه يُفتّح العقول لأساليب الأجهزة الأمنية في تشكيل الرأي العام والتحكم به ، وهي أساليب متكررة إلى حد كبير ، فهذه الأجهزة لا تعمل بالجنرالات فقط ، بل بقطيع كبير من الفنانين والمثقفين ، هم كما وصفهم الكتاب ب " الزمارين " فهم يد وفم ولسان تلك الأجهزة التسلطية .

[Mazen · Rating 4 out of 5]

يقول فوكو ان السلطة و المعرفة وجهان لعملة واحدة، و لكن الثقافة و السلطة كذلك، فأفكار الطبقة الحاكمة هي الطلبقة الحاكمة في كل عصر، يرصد الكتاب بشكل تقريري و مفصل كيف جندت السي آي أيه المثقفين و الرسامين و الموسيقيين و الفنانيين في أوروبا و الولايات المتحدة لصناعة ناتو ثقافي يمكنه مواجهة المد الشيوعي السوفيتي و الستالينية بعد الحرب العالمية الثانية، و كيف تم تمويل مؤسسات ثقافية بأرقام فلكية لابراز نوع جديد من الفن و الثقافة و الدعوة للعيش علي الطريقة الأميركية الرأسمالية. حاولت وكالة الاستخبارات المركزية تجنيد اليسار الغير شيوعي، و المثقفين التائبين عن الشيوعية مع موجة نشاط المكارثية في الكونجرس لكي كونوا خط الدفاع الأول ضد الشيوعية فتم ابراز للواجهة كتب مثل " موت اله " ، و " مزرعة الحيوانات " ، و " 1984 " و اسقاطها علي الدولة السلطوية الشمولية الشيوعية انذاك. تم كل هذا بتنسيق عالي المستوي من كافة المؤسسات الأميركية و الملياردرات، فدعم الروك فيلرز و مؤسسة فورد الفنانين الحداثيين وقاموا باقامة معارض لهم في اوروبا و أمريكا، و أثروا علي سيناريوهات افلام هوليود لتبييض قليل من صورة النازيين في أفلام مثل رومل ثعلب الصحراء و تصوير الالمان بدل من كونهم وحوش نازية الي خصوم شرفاء، عكس مثلا الشيوعيين، فنفس السنما التي احتفلت بالروس قبل ذلك و صورت الروس رجال نبلاء ذوو بأس، اظهروهم كشيوعيين محبي للفوضي و ملحدين كارهي للدين. عملت مؤسسة الرئاسة و الكونجرس علي تصوير الحرب الباردة علي انها حرب ضد الالحاد و الكفر، فجعلوا من أمريكا حضارة تؤمن بالرب و الدين و وضعوا جملة " في الله نثق " في الله نثق، فكيف تريد من الاقتصاد الاميركي الايمان بخطة خمسية و الله أعد له خطة ألفية؟، كل هذا كان يتم بتجنيد من وكالة الاستخبارات لجيش من أساتذة الجامعة و الطلاب في مدارس الايفي ليج الباحثي عن المغامرة. مازالت الولايات المتحدة تمارس نفس اللعبة، فكما خلقت يسار أوروبي أمريكي خاضع له مساحة و هامش من الحرية محدود غير قادر علي تغيير أي شيء، سمحت بخلق اسلام سياسي منهزم غير لمحاربة حركات المقاومة، و مثلما تم استخدام اليسار في اوروبا لاضعاف الحركة الشيوعية و غربلة النقابات العمالية، تم استخدام حركات الاسلام السياسي بدعم آل سعود و أمريكا لاضعاف حركات المقاومة العربية بعد الحرب العالمية، و لاضعاف الاتحاد السوفيتي في أفغانستان. الكتاب مليء بتفاصيل التفاصيل و قد يكون مملا في بعض اجزاءه، الا أنه مهم لادراك ان كله ما نتعرض له هو بروباجندا خالصة في أغلب الأحوال.

[أميرة بوسجيرة · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب مهمّ جدًا لفهم موضوع الدعاية (البروباغندا) وأساليبها وتاريخ تطبيقها خلال الحرب الباردة..

أسلوب الكاتبة مُرهق بسبب تنقلاتها بين السنوات بشكل غير منهجيّ، لكنه يستحق الجهد.

خلاصة الكتاب:
- من دفع للزمار؟
= المخابرات.
- لماذا؟
= لفرض السيطرة.

ولا غالب إلّا الله.
جمادى الآخر 1445

[John Pistelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone once said that beneath or behind all political and cultural warfare lies a struggle between secret societies.
—Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo (1972)

This 1999 book by British journalist Saunders is the classic account of the CIA's semi-secret mid-20th-century sponsorship of cultural organizations, literary and political journals, artistic movements, and related ventures (including films and political campaigns) throughout the world to combat the influence of communism.

Taking the form of a narrative history, The Cultural Cold War focuses on three men who were the relays between seemingly independent artists and intellectuals and the American (as well as British) intelligence services.

Saunders's stars are Melvin Lasky, a Bronx-born and City-College-educated militant anti-communist who became a prominent editor in Germany after World War II; Nicolas Nabokov, cousin to the more famous novelist Vladimir, a White Russian émigré and flamboyant composer who would go on to be at the center of the artists and writers knowingly or unknowingly recruited to fight communism; and Michael Josselson, descended from an Estonian Jewish family exiled after the Russian Revolution, who became an American citizen and then an intelligence and psychological warfare expert  overseeing the Agency's domination of arts and letters.

This trio's travails are the emotional spine of the book, and Saunders treats them with sympathy, especially Josselson, whom she seems to regard as a tragic figure, a man of cultivation and passion caught in world-historical circumstances well beyond his control. At times, I felt I was reading a sequel to Gravity's Rainbow , another big and complex story about humanists compromised by the domineering services to which the masters of war inevitably wish to put humanism.

While The Cultural Cold War is a dispassionate book with a minimum of editorializing, Saunders seems to reserve most of her judgment not for the intelligence officers, but for the artists and intellectuals themselves. They either cynically or naively accepted CIA money laundered through philanthropic foundations (many of which were simply fronts, little more than mail drops for the transfer of funds) even as they nevertheless congratulated themselves for being on the side of a free society where the government did not interfere with cultural life.

The CIA was instituted in 1947, an outgrowth of the wartime OSS (Office of Strategic Services), and it became a tentacular and autonomous bureaucracy operating unaccountably worldwide. Its motivation in waging a cultural Cold War was to recruit a "non-communist left." Understanding the appeal of dissidence to artists and thinkers, and understanding too the pre-war attractions of communism during the 1930s, the CIA grasped that keeping rebellious intellectuals in the fold of liberalism would be crucial to ensure the success of "the American century."

To that end, they funded a European organization called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the famous British liberal literary journal Encounter (edited by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol), and art and music exhibitions meant to emphasize the progressive side of American culture to European audiences skeptical that America had a culture at all. Exemplary here are the CIA's covert promotion of Abstract Expressionist painting as an individualist and apolitical antidote to socialist realism and of jazz and other African-American arts as a riposte to the Soviet Union's charges of American hypocrisy in complaining about communism's civil unfreedom.

Saunders emphasizes that the CIA really did represent the liberal side of the internal American debate over how to handle the Cold War, referring to "many romantic myths about the CIA as the extension of the American literary liberal tradition." The men she writes about were generally horrified by the know-nothing populism of Joseph McCarthy, while a number of presidents, including Truman and Johnson (but excluding the suave would-be Pericles Kennedy), resented intellectuals, distrusted modernist art, and would have preferred a more populist cultural ethos of God and country.

The American intelligence service, she notes, was staffed by the country's traditional Anglo-Protestant elite, an educated class who felt the responsibility of national stewardship: "Many of them hailed from a concentration in Washington, D.C., of a hundred or so wealthy families...who stood for the preservation of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian values that had guided their ancestors." Yet their waging of the Cold War would result, ironically, in that elite's and those values' cultural dispossession.

Part of this book's sly comedy comes in the intelligence elite's sometimes uncomprehending interaction with the "new class," primarily Jewish intellectuals, but in the background there is also the emergence of Catholic writers and black artists and postcolonial talents, all of whom the CIA recruited as a bludgeon against communism. If the literary-sociological headline of midcentury American writing is the rise of Jewish, Catholic, and African-American authors to unprecedented prominence, Saunders implies that this was in a way a project of the WASP elite, a move in the Great Game against Russian communism and for western values.

But for Saunders, this new class, particularly the New York Intellectuals, did not acquit itself well, especially those who would go on to fill the ranks of the neoconservatives. Irving Kristol seems more or less to be the book's villain. He represents for Saunders a type of pseudo-thinker who possesses an essentially militarized mind, a man who cannot conceive of intellectual life outside of polarizing combat and enemies to slay. Saunders tends to portray Sidney Hook, Diana Trilling, and Leslie Fiedler in the same unflattering light.

Quoted throughout the book as moral authorities, by contrast, are more independent-minded figures devoted to a nuanced conception of the literary and political life: Arthur Miller, Saul Bellow, Gore Vidal, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, and New York Review of Books co-founder Jason Epstein.

Saunders tentatively concludes that when American intellectuals, even those who had gone along with the cultural Cold War, turned against Johnson over Vietnam, he ordered the plug to be pulled on the operation, judging that "'liberals, intellectuals, Communists—they're all the same.'" The CIA's cultural activities were exposed in a California-based radical magazine called Ramparts, and later reported in the New York Times. But Saunders implies that the Agency could probably have squashed Ramparts's reporting or at least effectively replied to it. But they did not; they allowed their own exposure, perhaps out of a sense that the cultural Cold War had run its course. If this is true, it makes the radical magazine's exposure of liberal intellectuals' collaboration with the CIA itself an instrument of the Agency's will, a familiar hall-of-mirrors effect from spy thrillers: is there anything the CIA doesn't control?

This problem of mirroring is the thesis, ultimately, of Saunders's book. She writes of the irony in combatting totalitarianism by exercising (or participating in) in the state's total control over intellectual and artistic life. American and British writers and artists, in trying to fight the Soviet Union, became far too much its counterpart. This comes out, for instance, in passages where Saunders records how the Agency attempted to quash art that reflected too negatively on the U.S., recalling nothing so much as the strictures of socialist realism:

Echoing Sidney Hook's complaints of 1949 that Southern writers reinforced negative perceptions of America, with their "novels of social protest and revolt" and "American degeneracy and inanity," the American Committee now resolved to "steer clear of incestuous Southerners. Their work gives an exceedingly partial and psychologically colored account of our manners and morals." [...] Sales of books by Caldwell, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Richard Wright...slumped in this period.

Near the conclusion of the book, Saunders suggests that collaboration with state power, even in an ostensibly good political cause, is an abdication of the intellectual's responsibility to tell the truth:

[E]thics were subject to politics. They confused their role, pursuing their aims by acting on people's states of mind, choosing to slant things one way rather than another in the hope of achieving a particular result. That should have been the job of politicians. The task of the intellectual should have been to expose the politician's economy with the truth, his parsimonious distribution of fact, his defense of the status quo.

Furthermore, in a preface to the 2013 edition, Saunders offers an argument against any excessive political conviction any use of propaganda:

My sympathies are with Voltaire, who argued that anyone who is certain ought to be certified. I believe that Milan Kundera's "wisdom of uncertainty" is a touchstone for intellectual inquiry. The Cultural Cold War could be described as a polemic against conviction (which can be distinguished from faith or belief or values) and the strategies used to mobilize one conviction against another. In the highly politicized context of the cultural cold war, this refusal to take sides was designated, pejoratively, as relativism or neutralism. It was not a position or sensibility tolerated by either side—both the Soviet Union and the United States were committed to undermining the case for neutralism, and in the theater of operations which is the focus of this book, Western Europe, that campaign devolved from very similar tactics.

The Cultural Cold War, then, argues for a rather unfashionable thesis: the autonomy of art and intellect from politics. The authority of artists and intellectuals to scrutinize and criticize their societies is based on their disinterested distance from its governing institutions. This distance is a modern phenomenon and is ever in danger of being compromised. The idea that artists do not exist to serve the church, the state, or any other collective or constituency hardly existed before the 19th century, though there are hints of it in Greek literature's famous moments of even-handedness (The Persians, for instance) or in Shakespeare's constitutive ambiguities.

Materially, the distance of intellectuals from power can rarely be total, especially today when so many of us are gathered under the aegis of the university. (I myself am paid in part with taxpayer funds.) Nevertheless, we give up this ideal of artistic and intellectual independence, the true meaning of "cultural freedom" betrayed in practice by the Cold Warriors, at the risk of relinquishing whatever social power we still have.

Saunders's old-fashioned idealism, like the blurbs on the back of the book from Edward Said and Lewis Lapham, wistfully calls to mind an  "ideological formation" (to use the comrades' jargon) that scarcely exists in this country any longer, a non-communist left worth supporting—non-communist not because it represents Cold War managerial liberalism (the "snivelling, mealy-mouthed tyranny of bureaucrats, social workers, psychiatrists and union officials" Saunders quotes William S. Burroughs as denouncing) but because its exponents were civil and cultural libertarians.

And what of today? What intellectual and artistic organs are being moved as we speak by the hidden hand of the deep state? I suppose we all have our suspicions, and "none" would be an absurdly naive answer. But who knows for sure? I imagine we'll learn more about what is really going on right now in about 30-50 years. In the meantime, to get an idea of how paranoid you should be, you should read The Cultural Cold War.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

So you think you are a radical artist. Your painting, writing, or music is designed to go to the core of the human psyche or the roots of modern society. You’ve created something that no one has ever thought of before. Your work is powerful enough to spark a revolution, a reorientation to how we understand the world, instigating new ways of life that will finally make all of humanity act in ways that will usher in a new era of justice and freedom. And the gallery owners are taking notice. The publishing houses are paying attention. Your band or orchestra has been invited to play in Europe. But there is just one thing you might want to keep in mind. Just who exactly is financing your projects? Is it simply a bunch of wealthy art lovers? Maybe some businessmen? The Freemasons? The Mafia? The Illuminati? The Communists? Could it be Satan himself? Or is it more likely to be the CIA? In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a good chance the latter is who it really was. Frances Stonor Saunders’ The Cultural Cold War gives a well-researched account of a propaganda program run by the Central Intelligence Agency as a counter-action against the Soviet Union’s attempt at swaying European intellectuals. Saunders gives a detailed account of the program as well as an examination of its ethical implications. This is, however, a book that is thoroughly predictable.

It all started in the 1950s when the American Communist Party sponsored a conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. The conference provided an open platform for American authors and intellectuals to give speeches and lead discussions on issues related to politics, socialism, and communism. Outside on the streets, a group of demonstrators gathered to picket the conference. Some American intelligence agents had shown up to monitor what was happening. One of them made the observation that all the conference attendees were highly intelligent, educated, and cosmopolitan while the demonstrators outside were mostly oafs and boneheads. This observation sparked a debate in the CIA about the role of intellectuals in society; they did some soul searching and realized part o the problem was that the Soviet Union were using the fine arts, literature, philosophy, and science to promote their brand of revolution. This was true in Western Europe, especially in France, England, and Germany. The CIA was particularly obsessed with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simon de Beauvoir who were strongly anti-American and pro-USSR, albeit from the safety and comfort of their cushy lifestyle in Paris.

That is how the Congress for Cultural Freedom was formed. Funded by the Farfield Foundation, a shell company drawing on a slush fund provided by an intersection of the American government and the private sector, the Congress set up art festivals, concert tours, and conferences originally in Europe and then in other parts of the globe too. Their pet project was the publication of a magazine in the U.K. called Encounter. Geared toward the educated classes, this arts and literature magazine had an editorial policy of promoting pro-American views. The Congress also actively promoted the paintings of the Abstract Expressionist movement; even though the artists associated with that school were politically oriented towards the Left, their work was celebrated for being the ultimate expression of a human individual’s personal freedom. This was in contrast to the Social Realism art movement that was prominent at that time in the Soviet Union. The thinking behind all this was to steer the educated classes towards a Leftist, Liberal, or socialist anti-communist political stance on one hand, and away from a position of political neutrality on the other hand.

Back in America, the CIA was up to similar tricks. They succeeded in getting seats filled by Congress of Cultural Freedom members on the boards of major American art galleries, most notably the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. They actively pressured MoMA to promote the Abstract Expressionist movement at a time when their directors had no interest in that kind of art. The Congress also financed publishing houses like Random House, Fawcett, and New Directions while pushing them to publish works that were critical of communism and favorable towards American freedom. The Books of George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Ezra Pound, and W.B. Yeats were disseminated as propaganda even though Pound and Yeats were openly fascist and anti-Semitic while Orwell was himself a socialist whose political beliefs at the end of his life had a lot in common with the totalitarian state that he criticized in 1984. Koestler was a serial rapist. The Congress also worked closely with Hollywood film studios to ensure that anything associated with John Ford, John Wayne, or Cecil B. DeMille had some sort of pro-American theme to it. B-movies with titles like I Was a Teenage Communist were peddled as entertainment. While Joe McCarthy was ruining the careers of movie stars and film producers by falsely accusing them of using Hollywood to make communist propaganda films, the CIA was doing just that, only making sure that the propaganda was about American freedom instead. The ultimate goal was to control American society through the medium of popular culture. The CIA also maintained strong ties to Time-Life publications, America’s biggest news media agency at the time. It is no wonder that the author compares the Congress for Cultural Freedom to the Ministry of Information in Orwell’s 1984.

The whole Congress program began to unravel when a British writer tried to publish an opinion piece that was critical of US policy in Encounter. The CIA strongarmed the editorial staff into steering away from that type of content and sticking to the original anti-communist policy as first intended. High-ranking members of the Congress for Cultural Freedom then woke up to the fact that they were being played by the CIA; a sense of disillusionment set in and the propaganda campaign slowly declined.

Saunders sharply identifies the key dilemma that the CIA posed in this matter. Their objective was to steer anti-communist or neutral intellectuals into the pro-American, moderate Leftist/Liberal camp. They used the arts as propaganda to pit the USA against the USSR as a battle between ultimate freedom and ultimate slavery. Freedom of speech and individual liberty were at the core of this propaganda but in the background, the CIA were exerting power over institutions in America and abroad that controlled the output of information. While directing society’s attention to what they wanted them to see and hear, they were pulling strings in the shadows to marginalize works that expressed views critical of American politics and society. It is not the stark hypocrisy of this practice that makes it so startling; it is the shady and ethical ambiguity of it that sends a chilling message. Soviet propaganda was hamfisted and direct while the CIA were using a technique more akin to sleight of hand magic tricks to create an illusion of freedom. The USSR and the CIA were doing the same thing in two different ways. The CIA’s tactics appeared to have worked better because their propaganda did not appear to be propaganda on the surface, and as people have said, propaganda works best when people don’t recognize it as propaganda. This is why advertisements do not just advertise individual brands and products. In a wider sense, they advertise a lifestyle that encourages subservience to a neo-liberal political and economic system, a subtly controlled consumerist society where freedom of choice is more about what you choose to buy as opposed to what you choose to believe or do.

In The Cultural Cold War, Saunders accomplishes what she set out to do in exposing the inherent dangers of intelligence propaganda operations. She makes a good point of showing how the Congress for Cultural Freedom did not censor information so much as they directed people’s attention in the direction they want them to be looking. She points out that while they aroused people’s emotions by celebrating freedom and liberty, they were limiting people’s freedom manipulating them.

The larger problem with this book is in the writing itself. Saunders dwells a lot on what intelligence agents and their useful idiots were actually doing. Most of the time, this involved meetings, discussions, arguments, and planning sessions. The old adage that the FBI is made up of lawyers and the CIA is made up of accountants is easy to see here because a lot of what goes on in this story involves moving money around from department to department, making sure the funding goes in the right direction. The intelligence agents are a bunch of bland bureaucrats and the artists, editors, and organizers they work with are mostly mediocrities in their own fields. The worst part of this book is the way Saunders keeps inserting long lists of people’s names into the text. There are times when it is like reading the genealogies in the Old Testament. Even worse, a lot of the lists have the same names while they are just inserted into a different context. Sometimes after reading a long list of names, you might have to go back and re-read the beginning of the paragraph to remind yourself what the main purpose of the list was in the first place. Overall, this is a dull read and unless you’ve been living under a rock for most of your life, you will know that this stuff is business as usual for the CIA. There aren’t any shocking revelations here. These kinds of smoking guns aren’t too exciting when there are too many of them to be found.

You might finish The Cultural Cold War feeling relieved that such an insidious plot has ended. You should not sleep too soundly with that thought, however. Collusion between the government, the mass media, advertisers, and the entertainment industry is stronger than ever while public intellectuals are a dying breed. The powers that be like citizens who are smart enough to install an air conditioning system or repair an airplane, but they aren’t happy with the kinds of people who are smart enough to analyze society and effectively ask questions about the bigger picture. They want people who can do complex technological work, not people who can think about the reality of what is going on. When people get lost in conspiracy theory rabbit holes, so much the better. Both Liberals and Conservatives are doing this now just like the Soviet Union and the CIA were doing it during the Cold War. And the internet has opened up a whole new range of possibilities for information control and propaganda too. When you see influencers or vloggers on Youtube or Tik Tok, they often have Patreon accounts so they can make money. Who’s to say that intelligence agents are not supporting their accounts financially while sending them PMs with “suggestions” for the kind of content they would like to see? You also hear a lot about Russian disinformation campaigns that are set up to meddle in American politics; don’t think for a minute that the American government isn’t doing the same thing overseas. If you think the problems that Saunders addresses in this book ended when the Congress for Cultural Freedom folded half a century ago, you’re wrong. Intelligence agents have just refined their techniques, becoming more subtle, more clandestine, and more powerful. Internet data mining isn’t just beneficial to advertisers since advertisers are a link in a supranational corporate power structure. Your freedom and rights as a human being are not their priority even though that may be what they are telling you.

Sleep well. Would you like to buy some new and improved sleeping pills? They are on sale this week only. A good night’s sleep will help to ease all your worries away.

[Darn Arckerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished it a while back, but I'm trying to enter some old finished books on here to start actually participating on this website, and this is the first one I think I marked as reading. It's great. I think part of the thrill is just the neverending stream of famous names and the exclusive gossip you can get about them from this landmark history of how the US empire leveraged all those names to its ends. Orwell was a snitch. James Michener "used his career as a writer as cover for his work in eliminating radicals who had infiltrated one of the CIA’s Asian operations". T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden voted to give Ezra Pound a cash prize put up by Paul Mellon (the son of the Mellon of Carnegie Mellon) to encourage writers to be more conservative; "When William Barrett attacked the jury’s decision, Allen Tate challenged him to a duel." The story about how the CIA built modernism has become a lot more commonly known recently, I think, but the ending of this book is still pretty shocking. It sounds pretty likely that the "Cultural Cold War" was ended because some faction or individual within the government decided to blow it up. It's easy to imagine how many Cold Warriors didn't exactly like that the US government was giving all this money and fame to all these lefties, even for all the supposed benefits to their side. It all does make you wonder about the state of state propaganda today. How much of our landscape is secretly constructed by intelligence agencies or military interests? My hunch is that it's not as much today, just because they don't do it in secret anymore. We know that Steve Mnuchin and the Kochs produced Wonder Woman. In our age, bribery's legal, and cultural corruption is practiced openly and proudly.

[Conrad]

At least one review of this book on goodreads contains the usual naive-hysterical view that the CIA touches everything, and everything they touch turns to shit. While they certainly did do their share of nasty work during their salad days pre-Carter, the CIA also funded and promoted significant figures in the anti-totalitarian left, which is why I'm interested in this book.

Apparently the CIA - through its Association for Cultural Freedom - was a significant supporter of Modernism in music, literature and art, and Abstract Expressionism more specifically. They sought to provide an antidote to the Social Realism championed by Stalin in his capacity as Literary Dictator of the USSR (and if you ever want a laugh, give his lit crit a try.) They funded conferences for musicians and left-leaning writers, handed out cash to struggling artists of whom Clement Greenberg would have approved, and even reportedly had plants on the staff of several major literary journals. In some of these acts they undoubtedly did the United States' cultural stock a favor - the tail does not always wag the dog. But the confluence of lit crit and intelligence agencies really gets my blood a-pumpin', so I want to get my mitts on this book, as well as its preceding volume by the same writer.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I see why this "exposé" got more mainstream praise than most actually biting examinations of the CIA. Honestly I think most would be better served reading the original Ramparts stories on the congress for cultural freedom or just reading the basics online. Much of the book consists of memories and reflections from those intimately involved with the CIA and the author is extremely sympathetic to their cause. Her primary objection seems to be that the CIA funding for these projects was secret, and should have been done openly because she clearly agrees with their general argument, that everything they were doing was purely defensive in nature, a response to the "totalitarian threat" of Soviet communism. She bends over backwards to justify the crimes of the US intelligence community, repeats long disproven US propaganda on subjects like the Rosenbergs and the Hungarian counter revolution, and generally chooses the side of the organization she is nominally critiquing. If you really want all the details of who was involved, who was witting, who was unwitting, the book largely covers that but to most readers I'd probably say give it a pass.

[Faaiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stalin really did a number on the Cold War era leftists and the Non-Communist Left so much so that they went running into the arms of the CIA lol. This book charts the history of the CIA's support in amplifying certain voices among the left who happened to parrot CIA talking points. Of course, this was a mixed bag of intellectuals, some of which knew of the CIA's involvement in funding their intellectual pet projects and some who were simply acting as useful idiots. This is not to say that the CIA's modus operandi was to initiate these NLCs overtly into its ranks and handed them a list of talking points to include in their magazines. Although those who were surreptitiously acting as case officers did nudge them in those directions from time to time. The main crux of the strategy was for the subject to move in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes to be his own. Of course, by championing themselves as the bastion for freedom of speech and intellectual inquiry, critique, and champions of freedom, while sidelining certain topics completely and making sure that America was not being critiqued too harshly or its contradictions exposed too much, they ended up hitting the hammer on their foot when their cover blew and evidence of the CIA's financial backing came to the surface in the late 60s.

Some quick notes:
- Important to note that while certain high profile names were associated with these organizations supported by clandestine CIA money, their impact was hardly totalizing. Dissent and pushback was always there. Accusations of them being CIA supported were there from the inception of the Congress for Cultural Freedom et al.
- What the case officers have to say about these leftists is quite amusing in itself and shows the level of disdain many of them felt about them, here are some choice quotes:

he expressed concern that “this type of leadership for a continuing organization would result in the degeneration of the entire idea (of having a little DEMINFORM) into a nuts folly of miscellaneous goats and monkeys whose antics would completely discredit the work and statements of the serious and responsible liberals. We should have serious misgivings about supporting such a show.”

Hugh Trevor-Roper was appalled by the provocative tone, set by Koestler and taken up by other speakers. “There was very little in the way of serious discussion,”he remembered. “It wasn’t really intellectual at all in my opinion. I realized that it was a reply in the same style to [the Soviet peace conferences] —it spoke the same language. I had expected and hoped to hear the Western point of view put forward and defended, on the grounds that it was a better and a more lasting alternative. But instead we had denunciations. It left such a negative impression, as if we had nothing to say except ‘Sock them!’There was a speech by Franz Borkenau which was very violent and indeed almost hysterical. He spoke in German, and I regret to say that as I listened and as I heard the baying voices of approval from the huge audiences, I felt, well, these are the same people who seven years ago were probably baying in the same way to similar German denunciations of Communism coming from Dr. Goebbels in the Sports Palast. And I felt, well, what sort of people are we identifying ourselves with? That was the greatest shock to me. There was a moment during the Congress when I felt that we were being invited to summon up Beelzebub in order to defeat Satan.”

According to CIA executive Miles Copeland, there was initially “some fuss about the Burnham flirtation with the ‘extreme Left’ (wasn’t he in a ‘cell’ of some kind that included Sidney Hook, Irving Kristol, and Daniel Bell?), but all was okay when someone remembered [a] remark to the effect that if Jim were a serious Communist he would have joined the Party and not been a mere Trotskyist.

I do wish the book also included from the Soviet side just to see how they were waging the Culture War but that would not fit well in the scope of this book and make it way too lengthy.

I for one cannot wait to see a future expose on which current leftist organizations are similarly enmeshed in with The Company

[Edward]

"I really havn’t been following the latest influencer drama - Tucker and Owens vs. Fuentes - where apparently the followers of each are accusing the other of being federal assets.

In my opinion they are all federal assets. One cannot rise to their level where they are known and promoted on a national level without being controlled; I have a future post on this, but the book The Cultural Cold War explains how basically every major literary figure during the Cold War was a CIA asset. Nothing has changed, just the shift from literary to internet influencers. The purpose for the upper elites is to cover all the ground; liberal, conservative, dissident, pessimistic, racist, egalitarian, etc - to have a controlled figure for each subgroup, as Eustace Mullins explains. They can then be raised or lowered at will based on turning on or off media attention and funding depending on elite objectives, and it also serves to keep legitimate figures out of the space. Tucker acts populist but in important moments he will be counted on to betray his base (such as the 2020 election); Fuentes convinces his young male audience that being an incel is great, while he grooms his audience with a pro-pedophile message and smears the movement to the outside world as a joke.

The point of the squabbling, then, is just bread-and-circus slop for the masses, signifying nothing."
~Neoliberal Feudalism, August 26, 2025

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such an interesting book! It covers an aspect of the Cold War that is often overlooked - that of the cultural cold war, hence the title. What this meant in practice was fighting the Soviets at the game they had been playing for quite some time before America joined.

There are lots of gems in the book but I will mention a few of my favorites.
1) Funding for this was hidden in the Marshall Plan funds. Clever mechanism where Marshall funds were deposited in the central bank of the country receiving funds and mutual agreement, 5% of all funds became the legal property of the United States. This was to avoid covert operations being directly linked with US Tax payer dollars. As in, perhaps the US tax payers might not want to be funding certain CIA operations.
2) They believed the communist illusion would not be dissipated by conventional methods. The communists were not using conventional methods and up to that point, they believed this had failed. Therefore, all tactics were available.
--To this end, they believed that America needed to fight for an ideal, namely Freedom.
3) Ultimately failed as the government by way of the CIA began to exercise more and more control over operations to the point where it essentially became the Pravda equivalent always promoting the party line.

[Sloane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a kernel -- I would give it five stars if not for Saunders' failure to remove her own liberal politics from her investigation into the cold war (re wholly condemning the Soviet Union and thereby confirming her own liberal bias). Regrettably, it shapes the arc of her story by blunting it where it could've been further sharpened and wielded well. The United States and the USSR were NOT two sides of the same coin, lmao. This is pretty typical of liberal historians who are anti-US in some way but who have no material politic to use as a framework instead, though. In sum, they are left with insufficient tools for critic and historical science. Real review to come, perhaps!

[Nour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rating based on value for my academic paper - but besides this, I could also recommend this for everyone interested in cultural studies. Really astonishing.

[Kevin Tole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second time I have read this book. I read it first when it came out and as I remember it, was somewhat disappointed by the lack of deeper comment on the promotion of American Abstract Expressionism throughout the world. As we all know now, this was very much funded by the CIA and the American government in the 50's and put up as the ultimate white to the black of Socialist Realism. Everything Abstract Expressionism stood for, coming from a stream of American artists living the American Dream, stood in stark contrast to Soviet way of life under Stalin. Once again this time I was left a little disappointed by the lack of follow-through on the visual art and artists but that is just a minor point. What I gained from a second reading is a better understanding of Cold War politics driven by 'psych-ops' of which this cultural assault was part of.

In the frosty days following the defeat of the Third Reich, the establishment of the two super-powers of the US -v- USSR in the ashes of a devastated Europe, and on the establishment of the CIA, a group of figures emerge who put forward a case for a front for Cultural War against the USSR / Marxism / Communism which was seen as the Big Bogeyman by Uncle Sam threatening 'life-as-we-know-it, Jim'. The cast of characters and the genesis of the Congress for Cultural Freedom takes up much of the early part of the book. The Congress received funds directly and indirectly from the CIA through a network of charitable Foundations and went on to establish Conferences, Symposia, Periodicals, Magazines, Exhibitions and Festivals all aimed at promoting the values of the Great American Capitalist Ideal. In order to do this they resorted to exactly the kind of command and control they railed against, seen as being applied by and in the Soviet Union. The main stooges in this devil's pact were the broad church of the Broad Left / Liberal intellectuals who, whilst being cosseted by the luxury afforded by CIA largesse, refused to see beyond the scales of greenbacks that had been laid over their eyes and minds.

Frances Stonor Saunders has undertaken a vast amount of research here and has managed to get individuals to give important interviews without which some of the assertions would have stood in a vacuum. Some of the writing is superb and makes tacit points clearly and succinctly. From a powerfully written Introduction which states clearly the track of development that she will cover in the book, to the final Epilogue (I would hope that this has been updated in editions since my first edition copy) where the demise of the various characters in this mise en scene is charted, a world of deceit, counterfeit, lying and self-deception is laid bare. The CIA's justification is given early in the intro but greatly expanded throughout the various chapters.

'We simply helped people to say what they would have said anyway,' goes the 'blank cheque' line of defence. If the beneficiaries of the CIA funds were ignorant of the fact ..... then their independence as critical thinkers could not have been affected.,.... Allegedly

'The most effective kind of propaganda is defined as the kind where the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes to be his own.'

Against this high-handed, subliminal, capitalist arrogance can be suggestively seen the growth of an ersatz-intelligentsia dictated by US foreign policy where those that 'follow' the line, that are in broad agreement with the views of their uber-capitalist mentors are promoted and any other contrary views are to all intents and purposes ham-stringed, denigrated, ridiculed and if possible, destroyed. This is not the growth of a free-reasoning and clear cultural development that American policy allegedly wished to show as the essential moral values of the West; that AMERICAN CAPITALIST values were morally right as opposed to those seen to be delivered by a Soviet agenda under Stalin, Communism and the hammer-and-sickle which was essentially portrayed as a totalitarian society controlled and directed from the top with no free will.

There are so many good points in critical thinking made in this book that it deserves it's own section for quotes. This is a credit to the reasoning of FSS and her elucidation of the twisted grip of CIA and American realpolitik. The mantle of this book has been taken up and carried forward by film maker Adam Curtis in 'Bitter Lake' and 'HyperNormalisation'. Both are easily found on YouTube.

I urge all thinkers, artists and 'culturalists' - errr - that's you that is - to read this book.

[Alex Stern · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a world full of deception, conspiracy, and propaganda, it's nice to know that abstract expressionism was an inside job.

[Rhuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Frances Stonor Saunders' tour of the CIA-funded intellectual cold war might not be as revelatory as claimed. To a large degree the cold war intellectual hotpot was an extension of the ferment within Russia and Europe during World War One. But Saunders has assembled an unparalleled wealth of information on persons and groups of her chosen era, with their interconnections and intentions. The familiar big names of the "Western academic offensive" are all detailed here: Sidney Hook, Arthur Koestler, Dwight Macdonald; the noble Freedom Manifesto of the Congress on Cultural Freedom; the founding of "Commentary" and "Encounter" magazines; the UK's Information Research Department, as a covert Ministry of Cold War; and the usefulness of Michael Josselson and Melvin Lasky as CIA bagmen. Perhaps most revealing is the devolution of George Orwell, from iconoclast to a caricatured informer right out of his own works, for the real "Ministry of Love."

The generation of culture warriors detailed here began as Marxist dissidents, many of them Jewish, deeply alienated from philistine American culture; grew disillusioned with "really existing socialism" under Stalin; gravitating first toward Trotskyism, then bolting all the way back to the shelter of Western Civilization. This, too, is revealing, though Saunders does not stress the point. Their tortured, total about-face reveals the essential weakness of their position. The Italian ex-Communist, Nicola Chiaromonte, hit the nail square in describing the subservience of "Hook and the boys" to raison d'Etat; their acts of conformism "very unconstructive precisely from the democratic point of view." Thus their morally convenient world was soon ruptured by the behavior of "really existing Western Democracy" via McCarthyism, civil rights, and Vietnam. Yet in the end it wasn't so much the failure of yet another god as their own craving for security and honor - "to speak truth *for* power", for the USSR, then the USA, and for some of them, now Israel - that caught them between the hard rocks of ideals and reality. To turn so completely against one's own youthful passions is always a sterile defeat. The collapse of this well-funded NCL - Non-Communist Left - in the face of Vietnam, biting its feeding hand in LBJ's own White House dining room - underscored the "anomaly from the start," in James Burnham's words.

For all their failings, however, as proponents of "Freedom & Democracy, Inc." these men were useful in keeping the concepts at least half-alive in public consciousness. Their collapse and disappearance has left the US intellectual landscape more of a desert than ever. In the age of "wars on terror," Patriot Acts, elections bought with Supreme Court blessings, one should recall the CoCF's Freedom Manifesto: "No one nation . . . can claim the sole right to represent the idea of freedom, nor the right to deny freedom in the name of any . . . lofty aim"; that "the historical contribution of any society is to be judged by the extent and quality of the freedom which its members actually enjoy" (p. 83). As naive as they may sound, the present absence of such words show how far we've fallen since the days of McCarthy.

[Jith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very fascinating and important topic—whatever your political persuasions—that rewrites your sense of cultural history and even of where we are now. There should be dozens of books on this, and I'd also like to read one deconstructing communist cold war propaganda. I hope it helps people shake patriotic wool from their eyes.....

I'm ambivalent about how she writes, it's between easy academic and British (Oxbridge) weekend journalism, but it gets a bit dense and meandering, is overly long/repetitive, with slightly forced themes in chapters. It is interesting and insightful, though it seems that she thinks and writes compulsively more than reflectively, as if shes building the narrative as she goes. But her primary research, and that she talked with many of the people while they were still around, is invaluable. For me, it would be better as a shorter book with a tighter narrative, with better characterization, and also with a clearer description, maybe in figures, of the timeline, structure and interrelationships of the organizations and people. You need a framework for this number of people and organizations over such a long period.

The book, as per its subtitle, focuses mostly on interference in 'highbrow culture' via the Congress for Cultural Freedom and related activities. I think this shouldn't be separated (and often wasn't in operations) from a lot of mass media, domestic and international mechanisms of US intelligence propaganda. It seems (ironically, considering the superior, imperialistic attitude of these gunslingers) elitist. For example, there are plenty of CIA propaganda operations around election interference/coups/destabilization/indoctrination in Latin America.

It's also perhaps an omission to only mention links to big US newspapers and networks in passing, e.g. Philip Graham at the Washington Post, William Paley and CBS, Henry Luce and Time-Life etc. Pop culture is still culture, and arguably affects many more minds.....but I guess she is following her interest in the european art world.

Yet another book with Allen Dulles, Cord Meyer and James Jesus Angleton hovering in the dark....

Finishing it today, my main thought is that we still live in this culture, saturated in corporate and political propaganda. Tweaking our desires and subverting our dissent, herding us into stores and camps. New ideas have nowhere to take seed in this onslaught. In terms of the nature of art, on the other hand, i think art always has a political aspect, but I also think it, and the artist, is ruined by external agendas.

Off to read the more recent "Finks", on the same topic.......