8 ms·
When the CIA turned writers into operatives
- coldfoundry 2y agohttps://archive.is/eDgvC https://archive.is/eDgvC
- temporarely 2y agoNew Yorker neglects to mention if editors and publishers were involved. The word "publish" occurs 4 times, "editor" nil. Two of the CIA authors wrote for New Yorker. Who was the editor at the time? Meta inquiry would then wonder if this very article by New Yorker is yet another CIA article, to "manage perception". What is the perception? 'Cold War antics' of a 'bygone era'. Or is CIA still manipulating journals and content? New Yorker is silent on this topic.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoHow many major news outlets are covering the latest scandal involving Neil Gaiman? Somebody's still managing perception. The question is: who? And why?
- jimbob45 2y agohttps://www.avclub.com/neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault-1851576240 https://www.avclub.com/neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault... The allegations were that he sometimes had rough sex during consensual relationships. That’s hardly front-page material.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoIt's much more than that, which you wouldn't know, because nobody's covering it. Which is my point. In a time when the major news outlets love to publish anything even hinting at salacious, this one gets a pass. Why? more info here: https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/07/03/exclusive-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault/ https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/07/03/exclusive-neil-gaim...
- temporarely 2y agoFalse dissent and manipulating and taking control of dissent is the goal not covering up scandals. Spook intervention in social mind space is strategic not tactical in nature. The goal is the ability to control and steer collective conversation. To take control of dissent, place its leaders, and pen its 'thoughts'.
- robxorb 2y agoThis self-contradicts. Covering up a scandal could well be strategic, and serve to control and steer collective conversation.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoThe headline literally says two accusations of NON CONSENSUAL acts.
- HideousKojima 2y agoAs someone who personally despises Gaiman's works and personal politics: the allegations are extremely weak, and severely undermined by the alleged victims' text messages to him the morning after alleged assaults.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoThe veracity of the allegations are immaterial to the conversation. Allegations have been made by two women. The press love this stuff. But nobody's covering it. Why?
- nicce 2y agoI see tons or articles with low effort search. Anyway, allegations like these as extremly common if there is any party with a lot of money. Let’s wait the actual juridical process if that happens.
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoYeah? Care to provide some links? Keep in mind we're talking about the mainstream media, not blogs.
- nicce 2y agoFirst couple links from top news site in UK https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/neil-gaiman-assault-allegations-sexual-abuse/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/neil-gaiman-a... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/03/neil-gaiman-denies-sexual-assault-of-two-young-women/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/03/neil-gaiman-deni...
- lylejantzi3rd 2y agoThat's one. Any others? You said "tons." Go back to the #metoo coverage from 2018. How many mainstream media outlets covered those accusations?
- batch12 2y agoThey probably don't see money in it as most people don't know who he is.
- gyudin 2y agoEverything CIA touches turns into shit x_x
- ta8645 2y agoSeems to be the nature of secret governmental organizations. There is of course some need for secrecy, but at the level and to the extent that it's at now, it would be more surprising to find out it wasn't being misused. We should really not be allowing our government to operate with such secrecy. It seems inevitable that government organizations, operating in secret, will be used against the people they're ostensibly created to protect.
- 082349872349872 2y agoGiven that it's been ~75 years since George Orwell and Sonia Brownell married, do we have any idea yet whether she started working with the Information Research Department before, or after, their marriage?
- vinnyvichy 2y agohttps://amp.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/21/books.artsandhumanities https://amp.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/21/books.artsandhuma... Let's pin the suspicions on Celia More: https://www.hoover.org/research/celias-office https://www.hoover.org/research/celias-office MM-P might be the guy you are looking for. True love of Sonia, crush of Simone, disturbingly normal >His 1947 book, Humanism and Terror, has been widely understood as defense of the Soviet farce trials. >the (now-lost) thesis La Notion de multiple intelligible chez Plotin ("Plotinus's Notion of the Intelligible Many"), https://old.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/1bopjmi/crosscultural_japanesevietnamese_katanadha/ https://old.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/1bopjmi/crosscultur...
- adolph 2y agoSee also: Stupidity: My Reading List for a 12-Week Course (and a Final Exam) By Ted Gioia https://www.honest-broker.com/p/stupidity-a-reading-list https://www.honest-broker.com/p/stupidity-a-reading-list Here’s Tuchman from “The March of Folly:” Misgovernment is of four kinds, often in combination. They are: 1) tyranny or oppression, of which history provides so many well known examples that they do not need citing; 2) excessive ambition, such as Athens' attempted conquest of Sicily in the Peloponnesian War, Philip II's of England via the Armada, Germany's twice-attempted rule of Europe by a self-conceived master race, Japan's bid for an empire of Asia; 3) incompetence or decadence, as in the case of the late Roman empire, the last Romanovs and the last imperial dynasty of China; and finally 4) folly or perversity. This book is concerned with the last in a specific manifestation; that is, the pursuit of policy contrary to the self-interest of the constituency or state involved. Self-interest is whatever conduces to the welfare or advantage of the body being governed; folly is a policy that in these terms is counter-productive.
- cpr 2y agoSee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird. It's certainly going on today, especially in various three-letter agencies trying to control the narrative and keep the truth from public view -- see the Twitter Files by Taibbi and others.
- sdsd 2y agoWhich ideas "become a thing" also feels very controlled to me. I feel like NGOs kinda form a global para-empire that the US uses to form and control counterelites. Idk really but that's my completely ignorant conspiracy statement lol
- ryanmerket 2y agoThe only thing true in life is lies and hashes. And the Twitter Files lacked hashes.
- forgot-im-old 2y agoElon has his own "Musk Files" that involve the CIA too, https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dgyujd/comment/l8tgf79/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1dgyujd/comment/l8...
- Waterluvian 2y agoThis all just reads like conspiracy theorists finding patterns in the clouds. The fact that the source is an LLM makes it even more silly.
- greesil 2y agoThe russkies were doing the same. Read Thomas Rid's Active Measures. Choice quote from KGB colonel on publishing in western media: "If we didn't have the free press we would have had to invent it"
- fakedang 2y agoThe russkies ARE doing the same. Ftfy.
- LtWorf 2y agoAnd the usians too.
- paganel 2y agoDo you happen to know the name of some of those writers that are sponsored by the Russians? So I can read them, of course, I’m tired of the Western-supported writers.
- greesil 2y agoExamples can be found in Thomas Rid's book I mentioned above. IIRC it was usually originating out of West Germany organized by East German agents
- paganel 2y agoThanks! Thought for a while that that book only dealt with Cold War-era propaganda (saw KGB in your comment), but if it includes newspaper writers/columnists who are in the Russians’ payroll right now then all the better, as I said, I’m tired of the Applebaums of this world.
- greesil 2y agoNo it's all old news I'm afraid.
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- shrubble 2y agoAny idea to think it is not going on right now?
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoIt never stopped
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- jmakov 2y ago[flagged]
- serial_dev 2y agoI'm of the opinion is that even most of the enemies are made up by the agencies, both in terms of creating, enabling, supporting and amplifying them, and in making you worried about them.
- jwie 2y agoOur Man in Havana is a very good book about the topic. Secrets are a dark illiquid market where there’s high demand for things that don’t exist. So naturally there’s a lot of supply for that information. The fact that is almost all bogus is irrelevant.
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- jt2190 2y agoThis article is a short overview and review of the podcast series mini-series "Not all propaganda is art" The podcast's self-description is: > “Not All Propaganda is Art” tells the story of three writers who got caught up in the Cultural Cold War between the years of 1956 and 1960: New Yorker writer and “little magazine” champion Dwight Macdonald, British theater critic and “Angry Young Man” Kenneth Tynan, and legendary Native Son novelist Richard Wright, who at this time was living in exile in France in protest of American racism. All three collaborated with and were targeted by American, British, and French security agencies in Cold War propaganda battles over contested intellectual ideas like the critique of mass culture and politically engaged art. https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/ https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/
- backtoyoujim 2y agoRichard Wright wrote "Native Son" to which introduced me to James Baldwin via his essay "Notes Of A Native Son".
- WeylandYutani 2y agoThe US won the cold war in that famous kitchen when it became clear the USSR cannot make consumer goods. A mistake that the Chinese made certain not to replicate. Too much importance is made on free press, elections, freedom of expression. I was involved on a trade mission to Vietnam and nobody mentioned pride month.
- kingkawn 2y ago[flagged]
- ein0p 2y agoThat's not why the USSR fell. It fell because of the oil crisis that crashed the price of oil, and with it, the export revenues of the USSR. That, and geriatric leaders who "ran the country without regaining consciousness". That latter part might remind you of something.
- failuser 2y agoOil export just prolonged the agony. Soviets could not reform without touching the institutions and could not survive without keeping the institutions intact. Gorbachev was not geriatric, but he was not a right caliber for that job, Soviet system did not produce those.
- cpursley 2y agoWatch the first 2 mins of this: > Leonid Brezhnev New Year's Address (1979) [Subtitled] https://youtu.be/E66oM2iAMwM?si=W6OeT2GxdfUt-nzI https://youtu.be/E66oM2iAMwM?si=W6OeT2GxdfUt-nzI
- wakawaka28 2y ago[flagged]
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- motohagiography 2y agoAs a creative person, finding out how much of that whole era was an operation is demoralizing. In culture it was a time when there was a there there. Young men could reasonably aspire to growing up to become artists and writers, in a society where ideas and discourse had coherent meaning and the politics of the nation had at least some accountability to reason. Reading that it was just another spy hustle makes me want to stop writing. However, these stories also fit into the narrative that we have no culture, it was all fake, and therefore there is nothing worth preserving or protecting, only dismantling and dissolving. It's hackneyed. Another demoralizing narrative churned out by a partisan brunch chatter factory shouldn't bring us down. Really, the CIA and the western intelligence community had one job. I like how the west thinks it won the cold war when all of its institutions are openly occupied by the very ideologues they were formed against. Sure, CIA backed culture industries, and Hollywood is an organ of the State Department, but in spite of these stories, the sort of people our society pays to do dirty jobs are not our protagonists, and they are not the story imo.
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- stareatgoats 2y ago> all of its institutions are openly occupied by the very ideologues they were formed against. Examples?
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- motohagiography 2y agoanywhere there is a rainbow flag really, I don't know that anyone could argue against intersectionality and post-colonialism as being examples of the marxist movements that the CIA fought the cold war against. it's not even critical to say it's all very explicitly marxist, right down to "white," being defined negatively as whatever is not "red," and revolutionary, or "of-color" today. it's maoism with american characteristics. what appears to have changed judging by the number of officials mugging for cable news shows is the intelligence community apparently sees itself as the elite in a post-national technocracy, and they are happily dismantling the confining limits of their host nations. the words for most of these sentiments are officially suppressed, but everybody knows. it's why they're afraid of memes. knowing what great artists, comedians, and writers are capable of, I'm optimistic and not entirely demoralized to read that some pseudo-intellectual sellouts sold out to some sellouts and are only remembered in the new yorker for that.
- walterbell 2y agoModern science can adjust narratives based on human brain responses, e.g. papers from public research started a decade ago could inform LLM feedback, https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2012/04/department-of-defense-neuroscience-bioethics-brains-law/ https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2012/04/departm... > FY2012 budget states a plan to “initiate investigations into the relationship between… neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, emotion-cognition interactions, and narrative structures.”
- fuzztester 2y agoA very interesting novel I read, some years ago, is Fall from Grace, by Larry Collins (the co-author of other bestsellers with Dominique Lapierre). A review by Ken Follett, another bestselling author: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/16/books/on-the-altar-of-overlord.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/16/books/on-the-altar-of-ove...
- MilnerRoute 2y agoReminds me of this... William F. Buckley didn't just support the cold war — he actually participated in early CIA actions. In 1951 he became a deep cover CIA agent stationed in Mexico, reporting directly (and only) to E. Howard Hunt (who would later play a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion). Two years before his death, 79-year-old Buckley remembered a strange aftermath to his CIA work more than half a century before: In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? Buckley's honest answer? "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President."* https://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2008/02/28/the-collected-controversies-of-william-f-buckley/ https://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2008/02/28/the-collected-contro...