![[tmbchr]™](/journal/popocculture-blog-logo.jpg){kind=logo}
Cultural Warfare, CIA-Style
On taking office, President Eisenhower supposedly proclaimed:
Our aim in the Cold War is not conquering of territory or subjugation by force. Our aim is more subtle, more pervasive, more complete. We are trying to get the world, by peaceful means, to believe the truth. That truth is that Americans want a world at peace, a world in which all people shall have opportunity for maximum individual development. The means we shall employ to spread this truth are often called “psychological.” Don’t be afraid of that term just because it’s a five-dollar, five-syllable word. “Psychological warfare” is the struggle for the minds and wills of men.
The American government undertook an ambitious effort to “spread the truth” and win the hearts and minds of the world away from the threat of Communism. One prong of this many-armed attack was supporting the nascent Abstract Expressionist movement.
Simultaneously, the US did not hesitate to sink huge sums of unaccounted funds into the CIA’s campaign to “culturally” fight communism. This culminated in the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was rooted into place by 1950. The general idea was to parade art (writing, visual arts, music) that was as antithetical as possible to Stalinist dictums about what art should be. Art was to represent “freedom,” a nebulous concept without a context. The idea was that this pro-American freedom was a freedom of the individual, with the emphasis on every-man-for-himself. No political doctrine was going to tell these artists what to do. But basically, what the Congress for Cultural Freedom sponsored, was precisely that art which was banned in the Soviet Union.
The Rockefeller-owned MOMA trumpeted the virtues of Abstract Expressionism, while Nelson Rockefeller purchased some 2,500 paintings to decorate his Chase Manhattan Banks. Meanwhile the Marshall Plan was instituted to “help” the Allies repay war debts, but it also meant that a certain amount of American products were allowed to be foisted on them. One of these products was Abstract Expressionism. The thinking was that if we could flood Europe with the grandeur and freedom of American culture, then the intellectuals of countries on the fence about Communism would be won over to our side. The CIA meanwhile exerted it’s Operation Mockingbird influence with the media to further promote their agenda, the prime example of which is Jackson Pollack’s famous spread in Life magazine, owned by Henry Luce - a Mockingbird-CIA asset. Meanwhile, Eisenhower himself defended the Abstract Expressionists:
“As long as artists are at liberty to feel with high personal intensity, as long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be a healthy controversy and progress in art….How different it is in tyranny, when artists are made the slaves and tools of the state; when artists become chief propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and genius are destroyed.”
Ironic, of course, since these painters were themselves being utilized as propagandists. The whole thing seems to fit together after a certain fashion with some of Timothy Leary’s alleged statements about why he chose to work with the government covertly. I’ve often wondered: if the CIA was involved in the distribution of LSD, what purpose would it serve? Promoting the freedom-loving aesthetic and spiritual and cultural tolerance of the United States seems like a possible motive. That is, until it got away from their control (remember, Leary’s research was sponspored by Harvard until he started teaching anti-establishment ethics). After that LSD was made illegal (1966) and within the next 3-5 years, the counter-culture was effectively dismantled through people like Manson, Leary & others. This is actually starting to make sense.
For more info on the government involvement with the Abstract Expressionists, check out Annabell Shark’s article MoMA, The Bomb and the Abstract Expressionists. There’s also a really interesting book out by Frances Stonor Saunders called The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. And here’s an article on that book, and another one. And thanks to Cory for the tip on that Shark article.
July 10th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
[…] Busters) In any event, it’s starting to seem like there’s a pattern with the Rockefellers and the CIA funding the “counter-culture” in the name of […]
July 10th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
This is pretty remarkable stuff. Given my rabid cynicsm these days I’m hesitant to ascribe any semblance of decency or naivety to the motives of Rockefeller and Eisenhower, but maybe they were so inured by their own beliefs about American freedom that they thought that all “evil” (i.e. the Soviet Union) could be destroyed by encouraging free expression. Spreading non-conformity as a form of covert warfare? nuts.
Somehow i get the feeling that the powerful probably wouldn’t make that mistake again today.
July 10th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I know, I’m pretty overwhelmed by it as well. I really do wonder if they actually believed all this or what? The more I find out about it, the more far-reaching it seems. The next stage I want to follow up on is where exactly this policy of “promote free expression” changed so drastically. I assume it was in the mix-60’s as mentioned above.
Looks like it was 1960 or 61 when Eisenhower warned of the rise of the military industrial complex. (Timeline of the sixties) Maybe his mind changed. Anyway that timeline’s pretty interesting to see it all laid out like that.
July 10th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
I think in this case, what the Rockefellers believed is and was irrelevant. They were wealthy and they got that way by exploiting the living shit out of people and by being innovative about it. And i’m sure it looked splendid from the top, too! Anything that threatened the life and ancestry that they had carved out for themselves undoubtedly looked EVIL to them and needed to be squashed.
They were shaping a workforce, building a new american mythology … whatever it was, they were using people to achieve some alien, outward goal of efficiency. We are the energy source - but just as petroleum serves many purposes and needs to be refined differently depending on the application, so do we.
I take back what I said about how what the Rockefellers believed is irrelevant. Lets just not forget that Colonel Mustard is DEAD. Who cares whether they used the candlestick!
July 11th, 2005 at 3:05 am
id just like to point out that Henry Luce is also a member of Skull & Bones, and also founded Time & Fortune magazines.
and there is a good amount of evidence that Communism wasnt exactly seen as a evil as much as it was a staged evil in itself.. and from looking at what we now have in terms of global politics, it seems Communism took the dive right on cue.
dont underestimate the Rockefellers…. thye put alot of thought into what they do… especially with their money..
one
human?
July 11th, 2005 at 3:10 am
and btw, this is not just history.
its very much going on right now….
a little different style.. a little bit better propaganda… same darkness.
July 11th, 2005 at 3:27 am
really excellent stuff lately tim. just one quibble:
that’s not how i’d put it. as i see it, the counter-culture was created. it was political opposition that was dismantled.
July 11th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
I agree, but I’ve been holding off on incorporating that, because it’s hard enough to understand this on it’s own.
Absolutely, none of these projects ended, they just went into a new phase. I’m hoping to understand something of the why and how they operated in the past to uncover them now.
Yeah, I think I meant the same thing. Like the credibility of the groups were destroyed, not the groups
July 11th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I’m constantly amazed at what a prolific researcher you are.
Isn’t it interesting that representational art derived from the power of visualization (imagination) is not taken seriously by the art elite, and are generally considered “low-brow”. This is what they’re saying “You don’t have the right to project your idea of what reality is onto our world, that’s for us”. This is essentially dominion in the magical realm. How about the timing? The Influx of Surrealists fleeing the war in Europe was beginning to exert a powerful influence on American artists. This had to be eradicated immediately. This line is from Antonin Artaud’s Address to the Pope (I’m sure this will resonate profoundly with this Gnostic coterie); “We don’t give a damn for your canons, index, sin, confessional, clergy, we are thinking of another war- war on you, Pope, dog.”
I like the term “rabbit hole”, but don’t you know it’s the abyss?
c -A- ry.
July 12th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
[…] he other side though! Recently I found out that the Rockefellers had a significant hand in promoting the Abstract Expressionist movement in the 50’s, somehow connected […]
July 13th, 2005 at 11:38 am
[…] idn’t also have a positive effect on millions of people? If the government was using Abstract Expressionism as a propaganda tool, does that mean they aren’t stil […]
April 2nd, 2008 at 11:28 am
[…] This whole thing reminds me of that book claiming that Abstract Expressionism became popular because the CIA funded the art movement to promote the intellectual freedoms enjoyed by US citizens amongst European intellectuals. I have no idea if that’s “true” or not, but it sounds totally cool. […]