Association for Cultural Freedom
Encyclopedia
The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist
advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1967, it was revealed (first by Ramparts
and later by mainstream news outlets) that the United States
Central Intelligence Agency
was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group (through organizations such as the Ford Foundation
), and it was subsequently renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries and also received significant funding from the Ford Foundation
.
on 26 June 1950 to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy
was less compatible with culture than communism
. It may have been started in response to a March 1949 peace conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
in New York City at which many prominent U.S. leftists and pacifists urged for peace with Joseph Stalin
's Soviet Union
. Some of the leading lights attending the Titania Palace conference included Franz Borkenau
, Karl Jaspers
, John Dewey
, Ignazio Silone
, James Burnham
, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
, Bertrand Russell
, Ernst Reuter
, Raymond Aron
, Alfred Ayer
, Benedetto Croce
, Jacques Maritain
, Arthur Koestler
, James T. Farrell
, Richard Löwenthal
, Robert Montgomery
, Melvin J. Lasky
, Tennessee Williams
and Sidney Hook
. There were conservatives among the participants, but anti-Stalinist left-wingers were more numerous. "Godfather of Neoconservatism" Irving Kristol
was also a member of the Congress.
an poet Pablo Neruda
, an ardent communist. The campaign intensified when it appeared that Neruda was a candidate for the Nobel Prize
in 1964.
and the Saturday Evening Post reported on the CIA's funding of a number of anti-communist cultural organizations aimed at winning the support of supposedly Soviet-sympathizing liberals worldwide. These reports were lent credence by a statement made by a former CIA covert operations director admitting to CIA financing and operation of the CCF. The CIA web site states that "[t]he Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations."
In May 1967 Thomas Braden
, head of the CFC's parent body the International Organizations Division, responded to the Ramparts article by publishing an article entitled, I'm Glad the CIA is "Immoral", in the Saturday Evening Post, where he defended the activities of the International Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden admitted that for more than 10 years, the CIA had subsidized Encounter
through the CFC, which it also funded, and that one of its staff was a CIA agent.
Theories about the Australia
n arm of the IACF have abounded since 1975, when then Australian Governor-General John Kerr, an IACF member and, according to William Blum
, as cited by John Pilger
, a member of the executive board of the Australian branch, dismissed the government of then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam
.
Greenberg freely admits that the CCF was funded through CIA fronts, and singles out for praise the role of Professor Sidney Hook
, who founded the U.S. predecessor to the CCF, Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Greenberg also notes that at the founding conference of the CCF in Berlin, the honorary chairmen included John Dewey
, Bertrand Russell
, Benedetto Croce
, Karl Jaspers
and Jacques Maritain
.
's Library.
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1967, it was revealed (first by Ramparts
Ramparts (magazine)
Ramparts was an American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 through 1975.-History:Founded by Edward M. Keating as a Catholic literary quarterly, the magazine became closely associated with the New Left after executive editor Warren Hinckle hired Robert Scheer as managing editor...
and later by mainstream news outlets) that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group (through organizations such as the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
), and it was subsequently renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries and also received significant funding from the Ford Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in Michigan and based in New York City created to fund programs that were chartered in 1936 by Edsel Ford and Henry Ford....
.
Creation
The Congress was founded at the Titania Palace in West BerlinWest Berlin
West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...
on 26 June 1950 to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
was less compatible with culture than communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. It may have been started in response to a March 1949 peace conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
The Waldorf-Astoria is a luxury hotel in New York. It has been housed in two historic landmark buildings in New York City. The first, designed by architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, was on the Fifth Avenue site of the Empire State Building. The present building at 301 Park Avenue in Manhattan is a...
in New York City at which many prominent U.S. leftists and pacifists urged for peace with Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Some of the leading lights attending the Titania Palace conference included Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau
Franz Borkenau was an Austrian writer. Borkenau was born in Vienna, Austria, the son of a civil servant. As a university student in Leipzig, his main interests were Marxism and psychoanalysis...
, Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
, John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone
Ignazio Silone was the pseudonym of Secondino Tranquilli, an Italian author and politician.-Early life and career:...
, James Burnham
James Burnham
James Burnham was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years he left Marxism and produced...
, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. was an American historian and social critic whose work explored the American liberalism of political leaders including Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Schlesinger served as special assistant and "court historian"...
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Ernst Reuter
Ernst Reuter
Ernst Rudolf Johannes Reuter was the German mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953, during the time of the Cold War.- Early years :...
, Raymond Aron
Raymond Aron
Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron was a French philosopher, sociologist, journalist and political scientist.He is best known for his 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, the title of which inverts Karl Marx's claim that religion was the opium of the people -- in contrast, Aron argued that in...
, Alfred Ayer
Alfred Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer was a British philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books Language, Truth, and Logic and The Problem of Knowledge ....
, Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
, Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
, Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...
, James T. Farrell
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...
, Richard Löwenthal
Richard Löwenthal
Richard Löwenthal was a Jewish German journalist and professor who wrote mostly on the problems of democracy, communism, and world politics.- Life :...
, Robert Montgomery
Robert Montgomery (actor)
Robert Montgomery was an American actor and director.- Early life :Montgomery was born Henry Montgomery, Jr. in Beacon, New York, then known as "Fishkill Landing", the son of Mary Weed and Henry Montgomery, Sr. His early childhood was one of privilege, since his father was president of the New...
, Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin J. Lasky
Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He was the older brother of the influential entertainment lawyer Floria Lasky and Joyce Lasky Reed, the President and founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation and former Director of European Affairs...
, Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
and Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
. There were conservatives among the participants, but anti-Stalinist left-wingers were more numerous. "Godfather of Neoconservatism" Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...
was also a member of the Congress.
Activities
The Congress managed to obtain enough funding to permit it to operate offices in thirty-five countries, maintain a large staff, sponsor events internationally, and produce numerous publications. In the early 1960s, the CCF mounted a campaign against the ChileChile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an poet Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, an ardent communist. The campaign intensified when it appeared that Neruda was a candidate for the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
in 1964.
Involvement of the CIA
In 1967, the magazine RampartsRamparts (magazine)
Ramparts was an American political and literary magazine, published from 1962 through 1975.-History:Founded by Edward M. Keating as a Catholic literary quarterly, the magazine became closely associated with the New Left after executive editor Warren Hinckle hired Robert Scheer as managing editor...
and the Saturday Evening Post reported on the CIA's funding of a number of anti-communist cultural organizations aimed at winning the support of supposedly Soviet-sympathizing liberals worldwide. These reports were lent credence by a statement made by a former CIA covert operations director admitting to CIA financing and operation of the CCF. The CIA web site states that "[t]he Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert operations."
In May 1967 Thomas Braden
Thomas Braden
Thomas Wardell Braden was an American journalist, best remembered as the author of Eight is Enough, which spawned a popular television program, and was co-host of the CNN show Crossfire...
, head of the CFC's parent body the International Organizations Division, responded to the Ramparts article by publishing an article entitled, I'm Glad the CIA is "Immoral", in the Saturday Evening Post, where he defended the activities of the International Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden admitted that for more than 10 years, the CIA had subsidized Encounter
Encounter (magazine)
Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
through the CFC, which it also funded, and that one of its staff was a CIA agent.
Theories about the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n arm of the IACF have abounded since 1975, when then Australian Governor-General John Kerr, an IACF member and, according to William Blum
William Blum
William Blum is an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy. He studied accounting in college. Later he had a low-level computer-related position at the United States Department of State in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign...
, as cited by John Pilger
John Pilger
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US....
, a member of the executive board of the Australian branch, dismissed the government of then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam
Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC , known as Gough Whitlam , served as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia. Whitlam led the Australian Labor Party to power at the 1972 election and retained government at the 1974 election, before being dismissed by Governor-General Sir John Kerr at the climax of the...
.
Greenberg freely admits that the CCF was funded through CIA fronts, and singles out for praise the role of Professor Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook was an American pragmatic philosopher known for his contributions to public debates.A student of John Dewey, Hook continued to examine the philosophy of history, of education, politics, and of ethics. After embracing Marxism in his youth, Hook was known for his criticisms of...
, who founded the U.S. predecessor to the CCF, Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Greenberg also notes that at the founding conference of the CCF in Berlin, the honorary chairmen included John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
, Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce
Benedetto Croce was an Italian idealist philosopher, and occasionally also politician. He wrote on numerous topics, including philosophy, history, methodology of history writing and aesthetics, and was a prominent liberal, although he opposed laissez-faire free trade...
, Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
Karl Theodor Jaspers was a German psychiatrist and philosopher who had a strong influence on modern theology, psychiatry and philosophy. After being trained in and practicing psychiatry, Jaspers turned to philosophical inquiry and attempted to discover an innovative philosophical system...
and Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...
.
Legacy
Today, records of the International Association for Cultural Freedom and its predecessor the Congress for Cultural Freedom are stored at the Special Collections Research Center of the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
's Library.
CCF/IACF-funded publications
Some of the Congress publications include:- QuadrantQuadrant (magazine)Quadrant is an Australian literary and cultural journal. The magazine takes a conservative position on political and social issues, describing itself as sceptical of 'unthinking Leftism, or political correctness, and its "smelly little orthodoxies"'. Quadrant reviews literature, as well as...
- a political publication of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom - EncounterEncounter (magazine)Encounter was a literary magazine, founded in 1953 by poet Stephen Spender and early neoconservative author Irving Kristol. The magazine ceased publication in 1991...
(1953–1990)- published in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
for international distribution - FORVMFORVMFORVM was an Austrian cultural and political magazine, published in Vienna from 1954 till 1995, founded by Friedrich Hansen-Loeve, Felix Hubalek, Alexander Lernet-Holenia und Friedrich Torberg with the financial and logistical support of the Congress for Cultural Freedom...
(1954-1995) - a political and cultural magazine in AustriaAustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, founded by Friederich TorbergFriedrich TorbergFriedrich Torberg is the pen-name of Friedrich Kantor, an Austrian writer.- Biography :...
and others - Solidarity - a cultural, intellectual and literary monthly magazine in the PhilippinesPhilippinesThe Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
- Preuves - a cultural, intellectual and literary monthly magazine in FranceFranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
- Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura (1953–1963), published in Paris, edited by Julián GorkinJulián GorkinJulián Gómez García-Ribera, better known as Julián Gorkin was a Spanish revolutionary socialist, and a central leader of the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification during the Spanish Civil War. He was also a writer of many books on political and cultural themes, as well as novels and some plays...
, assisted by Ignacio Iglesias and Luis Mercier Verga - a cultural quarterly magazine intended for distribution in Latin America that reached 100 issues. - Cadernos brasileiros (1959–1970) - a quarterly (until 1963), later bi-monthly, literary magazine published in Brazil
- Examen (1958–1962) - a cultural magazine published in Mexico.
Literature
- Peter Coleman, The liberal conspiracy. The congress for cultural freedom and the struggle for the mind of postwar Europe, New York 1989 [sound survey]
- Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive? Der Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen, München 1998 [comprising academic study on the origins, in German].
- Hannemann, Matthias , Kalter Kulturkrieg in Norwegen?: Zum Wirken des "Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit" in Skandinavien, in: NordeuropaForum (2/1999), p. 15-41 http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/nordeuropaforum/1999-2/hannemann-matthias-15/XML/ [on the regional structure of the CCF´s work and the commitment of Haakon Lie and Willy Brandt]
- Saunders, F. S.Frances Stonor SaundersFrances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders is a British journalist and historian.A few years after graduating with a first-class Honours degree in English from St Anne's College, Oxford, she embarked on a career as a television film-maker...
Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, 1999, Granta, ISBN 1862070296
- Saunders, F. S.Frances Stonor SaundersFrances Hélène Jeanne Stonor Saunders is a British journalist and historian.A few years after graduating with a first-class Honours degree in English from St Anne's College, Oxford, she embarked on a career as a television film-maker...
USA: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, 2000, The New Press, ISBN 156584596X) [Same book as the preceding, under a different title.]
- Wellens, Ian (2002). Music on the Frontline: Nicolas Nabokov's Struggle against Communism and Middlebrow Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-0635-X
External links
- The Cultural Cold War
- https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v38i5a10p.htm
- http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=950