The last 4T was in part an intelligence operation by the CIA

[pbrower2a]

(02-28-2021, 07:42 AM)Einzige Wrote: Per 'Who Paid The Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War' by Francis Stoner Saunders.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=w...qA_mjXDh3L

 It chronicles how the CIA, via the Congress for Cultural Freedom, lavishly funded academics, writers, art exhibitions, and journals(including dozens of socialist journals).This program began in 1951 and continued throughout the Cold War. It intentionally nurtured and fed a 'left' that was fixated on personal identity, rejected class struggle, stopped focusing on economic issues and moved the 'left's' focus to questions of racial and gender issues exclusively. In addition, it was also a left that was relentlessly hostile to the Soviet Union, Cuba, or anything that actually threatened capitalism and imperialism. Leftism in the West(and to a lesser degree in other places) stopped being a working class project aimed at actually taking power and became an individualist, petit bourgeois hobby aimed at fulfilling 'personal freedom' within capitalist consumer society.

Over time the Soviet Union and its satellites became the one thing that Marxist supporters never thought those countries would become: conservative. Communist regimes invariably became inflexible and conformist, as one would expect when the revolutionary fervor gives way to more practical considerations such as social cohesion and economic growth. In the case of the Soviet Union it would naturally adopt the same Russian character as the tsarist regime, and with that culture (if without the feudal hierarchy of tsarist rule) the Soviet Union would be even more nationalist in character than the current British or the ancient Roman empires. Marxism has economic growth as an objective of its interpretation of Socialism, and this has an obvious appeal in countries in which people get the harshness of early capitalism with few positive results for themselves. People want faster economic growth, the fruits of which are more justly distributed, and Communist Parties offer that where economic injustice and economic brutality are the norm. 

Obviously over time the Soviet Union and its satellites would become objectionable not only to the economic elites that they overthrew but also to leftists who believe in cultural pluralism, political competition, rule of law, non-violence, and a rejection of military-style regimentation. Stalin became a despot without even holding a position in the government; he was the Party boss, and as such he could order anything because the Communist Party was everything. He had powers similar to those of Hitler without being a President, Chancellor, Prime Minister, or reigning monarch. Obviously having the power of life and death over people gives one unimaginable power over anyone who might be compelled, if necessary, to die in a particularly hideous way. As with the Nazis that was frequently working someone to exhaustion on starvation rations, which is more effective than damnatio ad bestias in a Roman spectacle. After all, the lions might be too well fed, and might even have some pity upon the Christians. (Lions do their man-eating at night, ideally without a full moon to interfere).

After the Bolshevik Revolution led to the entrenchment of the Communist regime, the Soviet system started to become objectionable to many socialists who insisted upon democracy, consumer choice, rule of law, pacifism, cultural pluralism, academic freedom, or religious values. Yes, there is a religious Left that hold that God and His Prophets demand economic justice because such is personal justice, too. For an analogy, just think of what the arch -reactionary Sir Winston Churchill thought of Hitler. Or more recently, take note of how many conservatives despise Donald Trump for cronyism, corruption, despotism, demagoguery, immorality, and disdain for legal norms.

The CIA has known that there is an anti-Communist Left and willingly uses it for its objectives in foreign policy. If the optimum is a Pinochet-like right-winger who establishes a pure plutocracy amenable to the economic interests of American corporations and the Public be damned in that dictator's regime, that might not be possible, let alone wise. Such regimes often end up creating a hotbed for anti-American, Marxist insurrections, and it is only a matter of time before "American (corporate) interests abroad" be at risk of expropriation.        
  

Quote:The FBI in the 1950's and 60's were hardline, reactionary, racist Republican Neandrathals who believed in crude anti communism, reactionary cultural and social values and an opposition to even the mildest democratic reforms (including the Civil Rights movement). The CIA was far more culturally liberal, cosmopolitan and were of the mind that American capitalism had to present itself as the more open minded, "enlightened" option if it was to win 'hearts and minds' in the Cold War. The US had to expand civil rights and gender equality (or at least appear to) in order to stop the USSR from making an embarrassing propaganda weapon out of Jim Crow and other obvious forms of inegalitarianism in the 'world's greatest democracy'. The crude anti Communism of Hoover, McCarthy and the like was counter-productive for international propaganda purposes because many writers and intellectuals even in Europe, never mind the Third World, were sympathetic to socialism.

Much of the FBI was recruited from the South, from among police forces who saw any "uppity" Negro as a criminal, and who thought that a young black man who looked longingly upon a pretty white girl as a rapist waiting for the moment to defile 'precious White Womanhood', which to a racist is slightly worse than outright murder. Some of those were good cops except for their racism, which is about like saying that many drunk drivers are unobjectionable drivers except that they drink before driving. Eventually the FBI came under pressure to squelch KKK terrorism, and regionally-integrated FBI field offices started appearing in "Kukluxistan" to investigate bombings and disappearances. So Boston or Chicago-raised FBI agents go to Mississippi, start asking polite questions to innocent people or encourage those hurt by Klan activity to talk, and start piecing together some patterns. Then some people who have had a bit too much to drink at the local Klavern (basically a racist parody of a Knights of Columbus, except for being more exclusive and less admirable in membership) starts accusing the FBI as the "Federal Bureau of Integration"... the FBI's most powerful tool comes into play. 

J. Edgar Hoover once said that if he had a boy to raise, the most important thing that he would teach him is to tell the truth. In his experience all the criminals that he had ever met or heard of had one thing in common: they are all liars. Let's put it this way: if you did not commit the crime you have no cause to lie about not committing it. If you did not do the crime you have nothing to hide, although you might be able to incriminate someone... oh, my loser cousin was having money problems, and after that date he went on a spending spree. Your cousin might be asked the same question you heard, and because he looks much like you it is easy for you to be confused with him. He might struggle with that question. Find the lie, and find the perpetrator. The FBI never has to beat a confession out of someone, but the effect can be much the same except for the absence of a beating. 

Eventually the FBI gets to the scummy people who do serious crimes. The pretext is often the near-technicality of interstate flight to avoid prosecution. The State usually has a more serious charge such as murder, rape, arson, drug dealing, or robbery. The CIA does deal with some foreign rogues, but it also deals with some admirable people. The FBI hones its attention on out-and-out criminals, the scum of the land. Cross a state line to commit a crime? You just became an FBI target. That's how the FBI went after the Dillinger gang and others in the 1930's, and that is how it works today.