US CULTURAL PROPAGANDA IN WESTERN EUROPE DURING THE COLD WARTHE BATTLE FOR MEN’S MIND

CULTURAL PROPAGANDA

Edward Bernays (1891-1995)The best defense against propaganda: more propaganda.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

AMERICAN CULTURAL PROPAGANDA IN THE COLD WAR

The Smith-Mundt Act (1949) Fulbright Scholarship

Truman Doctrine CIA Congress of Cultural Freedom International Organizations Division

Case Study: Paris Review Case Study: MoMA

Post-Cold War activities Current activities

THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT

US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948authorizes the U.S. State Department to communicate to audiences outside of the borders of

the United States through broadcasting, face-to-face contacts, exchanges (including educational, cultural, and technical), online activities, the publishing of books, magazines,

and other media of communication and engagement Goal: permanent global engagement

THE US STATE DEPARTMENT

ten of the twelve committee members were against anything the State Department favored because of its "Communist infiltration and pro-Russian policy.” (1946) The FBI was concerned over their ability to manage exchange programs as wellThe first iteration of the bill was eventually blocked by the Senate.

„TRUTH CAN BE A POWERFUL WEAPON”

The principle purpose of the legislation: engage in a global struggle for minds and wills Six principles declared by the Congress – still serves as the foundation for US overseas

information and cultural programs at the Department of State

„TRUTH CAN BE A POWERFUL WEAPON”

Six principles declared by the Congress – still serves as the foundation for US overseas information and cultural programs at the Department of State tell the truth explain the motives of the United States bolster morale and extend hope give a true and convincing picture of American life, methods, and ideals combat misrepresentation and distortion counter and inoculate against propaganda from the Soviet Union and communist organizations

across Europe

WHAT DOES THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT COVER?

Broadcasting Board of Governors Voice of America Alhurra Radio Farda Radio Free Asia Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Radio Martí and TV Martí Radio Sawa

RESTRICTIONS TO THE SMITH-MUNDT ACT

1. The prohibition on domestic dissemination of materials intended for foreign audiences by the State Department

2. The information activities should only be conducted if needed to supplement international information dissemination of private agencies

3. The prohibition of the State Department from having monopoly in any "medium of information"

FULBRIGHT PROGRAM (1945)

a bill to use the proceeds from selling surplus U.S. government war property to fund international exchange between the U.S. and other countries

To promote peace and understanding through educational exchange Bernays: „The three main elements of public relations are practically as old as society:

informing people, persuading people, or integrating people with people.”

FULBRIGHT-HAYES ACT (1961)

The purpose of this chapter is to enable the Government of the United States to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange; to strengthen the ties which unite us with other nations by demonstrating the educational and cultural interests, developments, and achievements of the people of the United States and other nations, and the contributions being made toward a peaceful and more fruitful life for people throughout the world; to promote international cooperation for educational and cultural advancement; and thus to assist in the development of friendly, sympathetic, and peaceful relations between the United States and the other countries of the world.

TRUMAN DOCTRINE

Truman: „it must be the policy of the United States to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” (1947)

NATIONAL SECURITY ACT (1947)

America’s first peacetime intelligence organization Coordinate military and diplomatic intelligence Authorized to carry out unspecified „services of common concern” and „such other

functions and duties” NSC-4A appendix NSC-10/2 Propaganda Assets Inventory

CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM

„Give me a hundred million dollars and a thousand dedicated people, and I will guarantee to generate such a wave of democratic unrest among the masses--yes, even among the soldiers--of Stalin's own empire, that all his problems for a long period of time to come will be internal. I can find the people.” - Sidney Hook, 1949

PRELUDE

1949, Waldorf-Astoria, NYC: Stalinist Peace Conference

INTERNATIONAL ORGANISATIONS DIVISION

1950 animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm, sponsored American jazz artists, opera recitals, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's international touring programme

„The Boston Symphony Orchestra won more acclaim for the United States in Paris than John Foster Dulles or Eisenhower ever could”

Agents in the film industry, in publishing houses, even as travel writers

TOM BRADEN, IOD’S FIRST DIRECTOR

"We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."

AMERICAN ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Similarity between American Cold War rhetoric and the Abstract-Expressionist artists existentialist-individualistic credo

PRELUDE: „ADVANCING AMERICAN ART”

PRELUDE II: MCCARTHYST WITCH HUNT

9 February, 1950: list of 205 people in the State Department who were known members of the American Communist Party

chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate

THE DILEMMA

„It was recognised that Abstract Expression- ism was the kind of art that made Socialist Realism look even more stylised and more rigid and confined than it was” – Donald Jameson

MOME

MoMA GovernmentNelson Rockefeller Director from 1939, again

from 19461940: co-ordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs

John Hay Whitney Chairman of Board OSS during the 2nd WWRené D’Harnoncourt 1944: Vice-president of

foreign activities1949: director

1943: Nelson’s OoIAA

Porter A. McCray 1950: International Program Director

OoIAA

Thomas Braden Executive secretary IoD (1951-54)

"The New American Painting", visited every big European city in 1958-59 "Modern Art in the United States" (1955) "Masterpieces of the Twentieth Century" (1952).

MORALE

How did Abstract Expressionism end up on the walls of banks?

CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM

1950, 26 June, Berlin, Hotel Titania 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, Sidney Hook

35 offices, magazine publishing

CONGRESS FOR CULTURAL FREEDOM: ACTIVITIES

“Proposal for the American Review,” Melvin Lasky argued for the creation of a magazine to “support the general objectives of U.S. policy in Germany and Europe by illustrating the background of ideas, spiritual activity, literary and intellectual achievement from which the American democracy takes its inspiration.”

Germany’s Der Monat. France’s Preuves UK’s Encounter Japan’s Jiyu All, funded by CFC Encounter finally launched with an initial grant of $40,000, which came via Julius

Fleischman.

PARIS REVIEW

Founder: Peter Matthiessen – recruited to CIA straight from Yale Requests funding from Fleischman highly profitable art of selling interviews for reprints in Congress-affiliated magazines Issue on Pasternak’s Nobel prize Darkness at Noon

THE END

Late 1960s: NYT articles

POST-SOVIET BLOCK

USAID Britain’s Know-How fund ->

Kazakhstan’s „Crossroads”

THE PRESENT

USAID was kicked out of Russia in 2012 Still fairly active in Afghanistan