The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the world of arts and letters, by Frances Stonor Saunders (The New Press, 1999)
Two things make this book notable: Almost every big name in American arts and media from the 1950s and 60s that you ever heard of, from literature to the orchestras, had their career handed to them by rich CIA patronage. Most of them also knowingly participated in this propaganda war.
The Cultural Cold War waged by the CIA through their big name assets in the media and arts succeeded, but we only know about all of this now, after secret documents have been exposed and interpreted by authors like Saunders.
So the first question is: if the CIA reached this deep into culture decades ago, and were successful, would they abandon the method today? The next question is, if so many surprisingly notable artists and journalists were on the take to produce American propaganda unbeknownst to their fellow artists, to say nothing of their audiences, which surprising names from our times today will be revealed in the future to have been on the CIA payroll?
The other notable aspect of this book is its revelations concerning the origins of the neo-conservatives, though the author doesn't use the term, nor is interested in this other tale. As America sought to roll back a Soviet cultural advance among the intelligentsia across a war-shattered and not-recovering Europe of the later 1940s, they relied on former Communists and “fellow travelers” to persuade neutralists and those leaning toward Communism back toward the American way.
This is how the disillusioned Trotskyites first gained wealth, notoriety and access to the press. Irving Kristol, for example, an ex-Trotskyite in 1946 Germany, is here found getting his start as a CIA-front publisher. It's his son who today publishes the Weekly Standard, house organ of the neo-cons.
- Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org> |
