
Literary Magazines for Socialists Funded by the CIA, Ranked - samclemens
http://www.theawl.com/2015/08/literary-magazines-for-socialists-funded-by-the-cia-ranked
======
jonstokes
If anyone can read this and /not/ believe that the security state is very much
active in a covert way on social media, reddit, and even specialized forums
like this...

I realize that to suggest that, say, some proportion of the reddit mods are on
the payroll of a .gov alphabet agency sounds like tinfoil hat territory, but
it would have been dramatically crazier in the 50's to suggest that the CIA
was funding socialist literary magazines, art galleries, and the like.

~~~
notahacker
Really? I'd have thought it was a pretty uncontroversial claim that government
agencies were funding anti-communist media organizations in the middle of the
Cold War (when, let's face it, they were doing it quite openly in many
instances). I wouldn't be at all surprised to they are doing something similar
with moderate Islamic organizations and interfaith dialogue groups (not to
mention many anodyne business ventures with roots in the Middle East) today.

But suggesting that censoring the anti-authoritarian playground that is Reddit
or persuading Hacker Newsers of the virtues of the TSA are sufficiently high
on their list of current national security priorities to dedicate manpower to
in our current environment just seems... rather more of a stretch.

If they are attempting to astroturf these particular corners of the internet
it's something of an understatement to say they're not very good at it.

~~~
Spooky23
You're thinking about to simplistically. The point wasn't always to alter the
message, but to embolden and radicalize the target groups.

A reasonable communist might appeal to the people, you discredit them by
making them more extreme. When the FBI and NYPD infiltrated the antiwar
movement in the 60s, in many cases the agents were agent provocateurs, ultra-
extreme "members" of these groups encouraging violence or other behaviors not
in the interest of the group. The idea was to undermine and anti-war movement
and identify the leaders and undermine them.

(Example:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainesville_Eight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gainesville_Eight)
"Bill Lemmer, the Southern regional assistant coordinator of Vietnam Veterans
Against the War, revealed himself as an undercover FBI operative in May 1972.
Bill Lemmer had been thrown out of a 'fast'/protest by DCVC(VVAW) on the
Capitol steps in Washington D.C. in January 1972 after advocating for violent,
destructive actions on the Washington Monument." )

If there is a covert presence on internet fora, it would probably be in a
similar light -- build trust among potentially influential adversaries by
emboldening them, then cutting them down by hook or crook. The ultimate coup
is to actually co-opt the radical agenda.

~~~
notahacker
See, I believe that government agencies actually do this (best 9/11 conspiracy
theory: some of the ridiculous "controlled demolition" claims were planted or
encouraged to divert the instinctive conspiracy theorists from asking more
damaging questions about response times)

But on Reddit? I don't think government agencies are needed to persuade
Redditors to say and upvote things that don't look good in the media, or that
the Reddit hivemind represents a perceived threat on a par with the antiwar,
socialist or even civil rights movements in the 60s

~~~
Spooky23
How would something like the infamous "Loose Change" video be ginned up and
popularized in 2015? Outlets like Reddit, influential Twitter people, etc.

~~~
notahacker
Sure. But you don't need a 50 Cent Party, or even to be at all active on
social media to find some conspiracy theorists who'll happily do the legwork
of promoting the video for you; you can probably entirely outsource the job to
the people and organizations you keep files on.

------
cryoshon
"Through the CCF, as well as by more direct means, the CIA became a major
player in intellectual life during the Cold War—the closest thing that the
U.S. government had to a Ministry of Culture. This left a complex legacy.
During the Cold War, it was commonplace to draw the distinction between
“totalitarian” and “free” societies by noting that only in the free ones could
groups self-organize independently of the state. But many of the groups that
made that argument—including the magazines on this left—were often covertly-
sponsored instruments of state power, at least in part. Whether or not art and
artists would have been more “revolutionary” in the absence of the CIA’s
cultural work is a vexed question; what is clear is that that possibility was
not a risk they were willing to run. "

I wonder if the CIA really stopped being the Ministry of Culture?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
The roots of cultural control go further back than the Cold War. Arguably it
was Edward Bernays, father of public relations, who used his uncle Sigmund
Freud's theories about humans being irrational economic actors motivated by
primal instincts of fear, sex, and so on, to sell them products they didn't
need.

The U.S. Government (and many around the world, including nazi Germany, whose
head of propaganda admired Bernays) adapted these techniques as means to
control people, or at least keep them from going out of control (Bolshevik
Revolution, Naziism, etc). The popular image of the happy-go-lucky 1950s
wasn't just how things "turned out to be," it was a concerted government
effort to create the ideal and stable society that wouldn't overthrow the
government.

You can see the same influence today in ideological news networks using
compelling and vapid distractions instead of keeping focus on the "real"
issues.

The BBC made a great documentary on this subject: "Century of the Self."

~~~
knowaveragejoe
> The U.S. Government (and many around the world, including nazi Germany,
> whose head of propaganda admired Bernays) adapted these techniques as means
> to control people, or at least keep them from going out of control
> (Bolshevik Revolution, Naziism, etc). The popular image of the happy-go-
> lucky 1950s wasn't just how things "turned out to be," it was a concerted
> government effort to create the ideal and stable society that wouldn't
> overthrow the government.

I was up with you until this point. As with most grand conspiracy theories,
this seems like a big leap from the emergence of commercialism to a pastoral,
planned society for the purposes of control.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Things like suburbs and consumerism were natural, but the reinforcement of
that image as the ideal was effective for government that wanted stable
citizens, and corporations that wanted predictable consumers. Still works - I
didn't think I needed an iPhone 6 until I got one.

------
thirstywhimbrel
Did anyone actually read why these magazines were "highly ranked"?

> the CIA actually thought that Levitas’s anti-Communism was too ferocious,
> unrelenting, and “conservative.” ... the CIA wanted a more moderate and
> “sophisticated” voice ... The New Leader remained progressive in the context
> of U.S. domestic politics; it was one of the first publications to publish
> Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

> Like other magazines affiliated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom,
> Mundo Nuevo published essays critical of U.S. policy in Latin America and
> Vietnam. Its usefulness, from the U.S. government’s point of view, consisted
> in its defense of the responsibility of the artist as an independent critic
> of power ...

I'm probably the only one in this thread, but I actually think some of these
cases fall short of crimes against humanity.

I mean, of all the dirty secret squirrel things governments do, if I had to
pick, then (1) funding the early publication of 'Letter from a Birmingham
Jail' and (2) encouraging artists to challenge entrenched power (to include US
policy) would be pretty high on my list.

~~~
dang
> I'm probably the only one in this thread, but I actually think some of these
> cases fall short of crimes against humanity.

It's good to resist making generalizing statements about the community.
There's little evidence here of readers objecting to the CIA having funded
literary journals during the Cold War. (They funded a lot of things, including
great musicians [1]. It's surprising what good taste they had.) Mostly the
thread consists of extrapolation to present affairs—maybe not the most
substantive discussion because it's so speculative, but probably unavoidable.

1\. [http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/louis-armstrong-plays-
his...](http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/louis-armstrong-plays-historic-
cold-war-concerts-in-east-berlin-budapest-1965.html)

------
bediger4000
So it's not "when did the CIA become a rogue actor", but rather "which stuff
did the CIA fund", right?

Also, is there anything like a "free market" in the US? It appears that some
government agency or another is financing things, or feeding info to entities
in just about every single market. This has been going on since WW2, at least.
So when do I get to scoff at any mention of a "free market"?

~~~
brc
Free markets are about freedom of choice in participation - freedom to create
a business, take or leave a job, freedom to product or buy the products you
want. It's about economic freedom.

That the CIA interfered with things doesn't change the fact that people are
still free to do those things. You could argue about whether people really
free to not buy a diamond ring to announce an engagement or not, in the same
way the CIA has been influencing and financing operations. But the fact of the
matter is there is no state actors forcing you to do such things.

~~~
bediger4000
Any individual might be free to buy or sell or participate or not, but if
there's some covert support, monetary or regulatory or informational, then the
market isn't working according to the participant's input.

A firm offering worse prices to consumers, but getting inside information
might drive its competitors out of business, even if they offer superior
service or value. The outcome is different. I don't see how re-defining a free
market in terms of the participant's choice makes it work like a market in
which the government agency hasn't meddled.

~~~
brc
It's not re-defining what a free market is, that's always been the case.

I guess the point I haven't got across is that even if the government
interferes covertly with one specific product or market, it has little effect
on the overall market. Just think of the number of SKUs in an average Walmart
and you'll get an idea of what I mean.

------
api
In recent years I've started entertaining a bit of a heresy. I wouldn't say I
believe this, but it's at least a question worth asking:

Is there actually any such thing as a "grassroots" movement?

Over the years I've seen so many unmasked as the product of someone or
something with deep pockets: corporations, think tanks, governments. At the
very least it's hard for me to think of any movement where major institutions
didn't play some role.

Intelligence agencies seem to figure prominently too, and not necessarily in
the areas you would think. The 60s counterculture was in part seeded by CIA
LSD research, and Tor was funded by the US Department of Naval Intelligence
(to provide two random examples).

~~~
smacktoward
Occupy.

(Note that this is not necessarily a good thing -- Occupy's leaderless,
grassroots-über-alles nature is a big part of why it eventually tore itself
apart.)

~~~
AJ007
Very suspicious that anti-war protests vanished from the headlines as Occupy
Wall Street took hold.

~~~
speeder
I am from Brazil, from my point of view Occupy was a sort of copy-cat of the
spanish occupy (that spawned from the financial crisis), also vaguely related
to Arab Spring.

At the time, I even tought about how closely it looked to the "Stand Alone
Complex" discussed in the anime series of same name, when people create a
social movement, and they believe they are being copy-cats, but there is no
"original" to copy.

When Occupy happened, it was the same time as occupy-style protests in Spain,
Portugal, Italy and Greece, the Spanish and Portuguese called themselves
"Indignados", and if you saw live feeds of the Greece movement, you could see
people carrying "Indignados" banners too.

Also Arab spring happened at the same time, one thing interesting was that
Anonymous (the 4chan Anonymous "group") was present in all of those, sometimes
doing important things, for example in the same IRC channel they organized
live feeds of spanish protests, medical help in Tunisia (a couple of "Anons"
with actual medical training in Tunisia roamed around in makeshift ambulances
helping injured protesters) and internet infrastructure in Egypt (in Egypt
after the government shutdown the internet, "Anons" drove around in vans with
satellite and various forms of local connections to provide data links so
people could upload photos and videos of the protests).

Occupy Wall Street was a sort of natural consequence, lots of US people got
involved in the overseas protests, and it does not surprise me they decided to
try the same in US.

The thing is, that in US the cause they could fight for was completely
unrelated, in Europe the problem was the stupid austerity programs and the
debt problems, in the muslim world it started as protests against corruption
(the first protester, a Tunisian that set fire to himself, was upset that the
Tunisian police could stroll on the market and take whatever they wanted
without paying, that Tunisian was a shopkeeper).

US has much less obvious corruption than Tunisia (ie: no cops stealing food
from food trucks), and although US has crazy debts, the dollar being reserve
currency allow the US to pretend the debt problem does not exist, so Occupy
had to protest confusing stuff.

~~~
iskander
>Occupy had to protest confusing stuff.

I agree that a lot of the details of the financial system fly over society's
collective heads, but I think the impunity of white-collar bad actors was a
very concrete non-confusing source of outrage.

~~~
rhino369
It's a very power populist message. But it's hard to channel that into reform.
Holding banks responsible for the crash just wasn't possible. Creating
regulation for the future was possible, but it's wonkish and doesn't lend
itself to crowd pleasing measures.

------
speeder
By the way, one magazine like that still exists.

CIA, using Ford Foundation, co-founded the Brazillian publisher "Abril", their
flagship magazine is called "Veja" (it translates to "See"), it is a sort of
centrist magazine (its views resemble the US democratic party, in Brazil this
is right of most parties, so the hardcore brazillian left consider "Veja"
extreme right-wing, but actual right-wingers consider the magazine as left).

It is interesting that although they do spouse many positions that the
brazillian right wing consider left, the magazine usually is supportive of US,
the few times it said something against the US is when the US pulled some
obviously evil stunt (ie: something that even a stupid and ignorant person can
perceive as evil).

I had a hobby of buying "Veja" and "Carta Capital" (It translates to "Capital
Letter"), the CC magazine is clearly leftist, usually supporting the obviously
marxist and communist parties, also CC magazine is very critical of US, it is
not uncommon to see Veja and CC make reports on the same thing, with
completely different conclusions, or see Veja and CC taking stealth jabs at
each other (example: insulting someone that has a position the other has,
without naming the other directly).

~~~
rogerthis
"CIA, using Ford Foundation, co-founded the Brazillian publisher "Abril"

Source?

------
cafard
Czeslaw Milosz wrote that it was very clear that there was American government
money behind the Congress for Cultural Freedom--one didn't need inside
information to figure it out.

------
abdias
These are not the only magazines CIA funded. They where very active in the
(radical) feminist movement and funded among other "Ms." and Gloria Steinem,
who also was sent to Moscow for Socialist meet-ups, payed by the same.

Also this movement is rooted in socialism (to primarily break down the family
union, as we can see today). No one can say feminism is not influential in the
world today.

Sources:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties)
->

[http://www.namebase.org/steinem.html](http://www.namebase.org/steinem.html)
[http://www.namebase.org/foia/festival.html](http://www.namebase.org/foia/festival.html)

And in an interview:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HRUEqyZ7p8)

[https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-
fam...](https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/communism-family.htm)

------
SZJX
It's obviously not any news that CIA and similar agencies sponsor disruptive
activities all over the world as long as they see fit to their own interest.
So-called "democracy" and "freedom" etc. are just all convenient excuses,
pretext of war. Maybe the only interesting thing here is the assertion that
apparently leftists don't only fight capitalists, they also fight totalitarian
regimes which have long abandoned their leftist roots. This might further
clarifies things a bit.

------
jlindsay
Anyone read Eric Schmidt "The New Digital Age", Eric talks about cyberwar,
Luddites, and geo politics as it relates to tech and data collection for the
government, just replace the word the future with the present.

------
sloppycee
Communism uses suppression as a means to control the population.

I've never considered the converse, using 'promotion' to control the
population.

~~~
nickbauman
Dictatorships use suppression. Communism is a style of collective government.
The USSR was never communist, the government merely used the lexicon of
communism to suit its needs.

~~~
lexcorvus
_The USSR was never communist_

By this definition, has there ever been a communist country?

~~~
sago
It's a no-true-scotsman fallacy at heart.

Pretty common though: North Korea is a democratic state (according to its
name), but not real democracy. National Socialism wasn't really socialist. The
UK isn't a real monarchy.

It's a language game compelled by the guilt-by-association level of political
sophistication of our culture. When the debate is rarely more sophisticated
than 'that's socialist, like Hitler!!!!1!', it's no wonder that the response
has to be 'that wasn't _true_ socialism'.

~~~
skissane
The UK is no longer an absolute monarchy, and has not been for many centuries,
but the UK is a real constitutional monarchy. Australia, Canada and New
Zealand are real constitutional monarchies too, in personal union with the UK.

~~~
Qwertious
There may be a monarch, but not one with any power.

~~~
skissane
The monarch has real genuine powers, and real discretion in how to exercise
them, in the case of a constitutional crisis. Constitutional crises are rare,
but they do happen. Consider a case from Australia - the dismissal of the
Whitlam government in 1975 by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr. That is an
example of a Vice Regal official exercising real, discretionary power. If the
same situation had happened in the UK instead of Australia, the discretion
would have resided with the Queen personally, as opposed to with her (largely
indepedently acting) representative. Even in Australia, it is plausible the
Queen could become involved in a 1975-style situation. If Whitlam had
suspected Kerr was going to sack him, he could have tried to sack Kerr first.
If there was a race to sack each other between the PM and the Governor-
General, the Queen would have to personally decide how to react. e.g. if the
PM advises the Queen to sack the GG, and immediately after that advice but
before the Queen acts on it, the GG sacks the PM, should the Queen act on the
request of the just sacked PM to sack the GG, or refuse? What if the GG
advises the Queen to not sack him/her after all, or immediately appoints a new
PM who conveys the same advice? Ultimately, whatever she did in such a
scenario would be her personal decision, and it is unlikely that any court
(whether in Australia or the UK) would entertain overturning it.

------
kungfooguru
Hm, wonder if samclemens reads Marxmail.... Louis sent this out a couple hours
before you posted it here so thought it might be the case :)

------
serve_yay
So is it just socialist publications, then? No publications of other
ideological bents deserving of similar scrutiny? Fantastic.

------
nickbauman
The Soviet Union was a dictatorship. Democratic socialists are natural foes of
dictatorships the world over.

~~~
xlm1717
Democratic socialists are quite capable of forming dictatorships themselves.
See: Venezula under Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega.

~~~
the_af
That's a very liberal (no pun intended) use of the term "dictatorship". I
think we should be careful to reserve it for countries which are actually
_dictatorships_ , not just countries whose policies or methods of government
we disagree with or dislike. Venezuela and Nicaragua were not dictatorships
under any realistic definition of the word; they had democratically elected
governments within the rule of law, with finite terms and with clear means of
political participation.

The problem with "dictatorship" is that it's become a curse word. There is a
similar problem with "fascism": it has become a way to insult people or
governments, whether their are actually fascist (unlikely) or not (more
likely).

~~~
xlm1717
We can use one definition of the word, that offered on the Wikipedia page for
Dictatorship:

"is a form of government where political authority is monopolized by a person
or political entity, and exercised through various mechanisms to ensure the
entity's power remains strong."

Both Chavez and Ortega regularly intimidated opposition media and relied
heavily on propaganda to maintain popular support. Both abolished term limits
in their respective countries to remain Presidents for Life. Chavez personally
selected his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who narrowly beat Henrique Capriles,
Chavez's main opposition, in the 2013 presidential elections, elections that
Capriles protested as fraudulent. When Ortega couldn't get the Supreme Court
to support his unlimited term limits, he replaced dissenting Justices with
sympathetic ones.

If these aren't all the signs of a dictatorship, I don't know what is.

~~~
the_af
I don't think that particular snippet from Wikipedia is a complete and
accurate description of a dictatorship. It leaves key aspects out, as
Wikipedia goes on to describe. A dictatorship is also a totalitarian form of
government which seeks absolute power and control over every citizen's private
life, as well as the removal of political participation and dissent, which
wasn't precisely the case in either country we're discussing.

Sure, removing term limits and replacing dissenting judges may be signs of an
unhealthy democracy, but they still don't qualify as a dictatorship.

Note that in particular, when referring to Latin America, populist governments
with strong individualist leaders are invariably called dictatorships by their
opponents, whether accurate or not. I happen to think it's incorrect, and born
out of frustration by non-populist opponents from reaching the population and
winning general elections. I do think there are serious criticisms to be made
for this kind of governments; it's just that accusing them of being
dictatorships isn't one... instead, it's lazy.

It's also very common for media conglomerates in many Latin American
countries, such as Venezuela, to claim to be "impartial observers", while
actually being powerful political actors with vested interests, as well as
money and support for politicians in the opposition. This places them in a
particularly convenient situation: they can influence people by telling them
every day that their country is going to the dogs, while at the same time,
every time they're rebuked or criticized by the government they can claim it's
"an attack on the free and independent press".

------
stefantalpalaru
Quote from "Tempo presente", the Italian magazine in the list (first number,
opening text):

> [...] sono incerti e problematici i confini del nostro mondo morale; incerte
> le norme del comportamento individuale; incerti il significato e i limiti
> dell'azione politica quale oggi la si pratica o la si propugna; incerto
> soprattutto il valore delle idee e delle ideologie correnti.

> [...] uncertain and problematic are the confines of our moral world;
> uncertain the norms of individual behavior; uncertain the meaning and limits
> of the political action practiced or defended today; uncertain most of all
> the value of current ideas and ideologies.

source:
[http://www.bibliotecaginobianco.it/flip/TEP/01/0100/#/3/zoom...](http://www.bibliotecaginobianco.it/flip/TEP/01/0100/#/3/zoomed)

------
notNow
The US financed Bin Laden and the Afghani Mujaheddin to counterbalance the
Soviets in Central Asia in the 80s despite the clear signs of Islamic
terrorism gathering pace in the late 70s destabilizing the region and the
middle east as well.

So all bets are off with these people.

------
obrero
George Orwell wrote in 1984 about how much effort was put into propagandizing
to the professional-managerial class by the state. He should know, he was an
informant against the left for the Foreign Office via Celia Kirwan.

Just go to the front page of the New York Review of Books (
[http://www.nybooks.com](http://www.nybooks.com) ). I know I just had to scan
the front page to find some article condemning Arab nationalism and of course
one is there, "The Mystery of ISIS" by an anonymous author. It contains
pictures of people about to be executed, and a picture of someone pointing a
gun at the camera, so you can guess what the text is. What it doesn't talk
about is how the US in the past supported religious fanatics in the Middle
East against the real US enemy - secular, left-leaning pan-Arab nationalists.
Just as the US does today. The US supports Saudi Arabia, where women can't
drive, yet bombed Libya, just a few years after Qadaffi had given in to the US
and UK after years of Nasserite posturing. Now Islamic fundamentalists sprout
there. In Iraq, we had another Nasserite, pan-Arab secular nationalist in a
party with socialist roots - Saddam Hussein was overthrown and now we have
ISIS in Iraq. More recently the pan-Arab secular nationalist in a party with
secular roots in Syria has the US and Europe working to undermine his power.
This just happened. So now ISIS controls much of Syria, and just blew up an
ancient pagan temple. It's quite clear with all its work to undermine Bashar
al-Assad that this is what the US was working to have happen. We can go more
into the distant past as well - the secular nationalist parliament of
Mossadegh being replaced by a dictatorship initially backed by the mullahs by
the US/UK in the 1950s, then the persecution and execution of the secular left
- eventually the mullahs changed their mind and now Iran is run by them and
devoid of the secular liberals that the CIA sent lists around to be executed.

I'm surprised the New York Review of Books doesn't have a nostalgic front-
cover piece bashing the Warsaw Pact. Well there were just two on HN's front
page the other day. It's great - while the US government is tapping its own
citizens and the whole world, extraditing and torturing nationalists who
oppose foreign intervention in their home countries, ringing the world with
military bases - a US soldier just murdered a Filipino prostitute who he
learned was a transvestite, spying on foreign corporations and stealing their
industrial secrets, sending drones to willy-nilly bomb villages in Pakistan
and Afghanistan and so on, everyone can focus on the errors Lenin commited a
century ago, or how some ISIS militants blew up an ancient pagan temple in
Syria (who the US helped back by undermining al-Assad's government - in fact
investigative reporters have found the US has been actively backing jihadists
in Iraq even in recent years).

~~~
blumkvist
Your comment history consists of bashing the US and more bashing the US.

~~~
Synaesthesia
Not really and there's nothing wrong with criticizing aspects of the
government, backed up by fact.

