[HN Gopher] Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)
Author : areoform
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-06-01 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
| shams93 wrote:
| As someone who blew 500k on an MFA I wish they would bring this
| back lmfao.
| samstave wrote:
| Please expand on this backstory?
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| I worked with shams93, their medium was Papier-mache using
| 100$ bills.
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 500k?? Did your tuition include cocaine?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Journalism school is $250K and only lasts 2 years. You have
| to filter out the plebs.
| ftxbro wrote:
| your personal information about to get added to the creepy
| backrooms of algolia https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights
| isoprophlex wrote:
| What the hell am I looking at?! I never knew this existed!
| What else don't i know?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| groby_b wrote:
| You took 8+ years to get an MFA?
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Nothing to see here folks. Just Matrix things.
| underlipton wrote:
| Speaking out of my ass: my understanding was that certain
| branches of abstract expressionism were so, essentially, but it's
| difficult to apply the suspicion to ALL of modern/postmodern art,
| considering that so much of it was developed or influenced by
| artistic movements outside the temporal and geographic purview of
| the CIA (particularly pre-WWII European (post)modern art and its
| influences in Asian and African forms). Also, it wouldn't be the
| first time influential entities boosted controversial media in a
| successful bid for a sort of cultural engineering. (I know what
| you're probably thinking, and no, I'm actually referring to,
| "Woodrow Wilson screening 'Birth of a Nation' at the White
| House.")
|
| (I'm purposely conflating modern and postmodern art because I
| imagine that many who see the term "modern art" make that
| mistake, and because Pollock et al. kind of bridge the two in
| eschewing representation while still using traditional media.)
| arthurcolle wrote:
| It's pretty funny this article was published on April 1st
| elif wrote:
| seems like a genius way to legitimately funnel dark funding.
|
| you can literally invent million dollar excuses for value
| transfers to arbitrary individuals.
| DANmode wrote:
| See also: art in embassies program
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Yep there's a whole industry around this too, you can watch
| these high end art auctions live where all the people in the
| room "bidding" are just representing the real bidders by proxy.
| It can get dark pretty quickly though if you start imagining
| what may actually be buying.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This is the case for pretty much all auctions though. Not
| everyone has the ability to be physically present in the
| auction room.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Wait, you mean that scene in Men In Black 3 wasn't a joke?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MbvNXZL5f0
| [deleted]
| eql5 wrote:
| yes
| pessimizer wrote:
| This went along with tons of money to left-wing
| anticommunist/antisoviet writers and scholars (financing a bunch
| of elite literary journals that no one read, but looked good
| enough on resumes to get people into the NYRB, Guardian, etc..)
| If you're on the left, but not a Leninist, don't fall for the
| flattery of institutions. There are people spending the integrity
| of naive idealists in order to advance military and strategic
| goals.
| rr808 wrote:
| If you haven't read about MKUltra its worth a read too. Looks
| like the CIA helped to make LSD popular in the 60s
| https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-que...
| adamrezich wrote:
| still not sure if it was related but in elementary school in
| the 90s I was put in a "gifted" program which involved, on at
| least one occasion, wearing headphones in a dimly-lit room and
| being tested with Zener cards. I've dug into local records and
| still to this day don't conclusively know what that was all
| about.
| throw74775 wrote:
| > I've dug into local records and still to this day don't
| conclusively know what that was all about.
|
| Do you have episodes of unexplainable lost-time? Maybe try
| setting up a surveillance camera at home so you can see when
| they activate you.
| willismichael wrote:
| There's no way that would work. Any security camera that
| you can set up is already back-doored.
| smegger001 wrote:
| only if its networked.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I've always wanted to pull out some Zener cards in the middle
| of a programming interview.
|
| If a candidate is psychic, wouldn't that be good to know?
| meindnoch wrote:
| Actually... It can be a good trait for a candidate to call
| out obvious bullshit - for which a Zener-test is the
| perfect meta-test!
| saalweachter wrote:
| It also gives candidates a good story even if they don't
| get hired.
| the_sleaze9 wrote:
| Amateur level.
|
| You need to testing for Larges, not Mediums.
| tomcam wrote:
| Same. I'd forgotten about it. For me this happened around
| 1970.
| nemo1618 wrote:
| I've seen these programs discussed on 4chan and reddit -- try
| "GATE conspiracy"
| adamrezich wrote:
| I've seen those threads too, years after I made the
| connection myself (by playing The World Ends With You and
| seeing the Zener card symbols on the top screen, before I
| knew what they were).
|
| some of the things listed there apply to my experience, and
| others don't. the whole thing leaves me with more questions
| than answers.
| meindnoch wrote:
| That was the first test. Those who responded went on to the
| next level, which is goat staring.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Were you in NYC by chance?
| adamrezich wrote:
| nope--SD. but the phenomenon has been reported all over the
| country, as I've come to find out.
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Something the post-Boomer generations have been talking about
| more and more: the fact that the "tune in, turn on" movement
| wasn't coming from inside the house, so to speak. The old
| leftists still get very defensive of their drug overuse, in
| spite of the fact that their "counterculture" had set back
| effective policy by generations. They had ceded the field to
| reactionaries and identitarians (both allies of capital, of
| course), the effects of which we're dealing with to this day.
|
| The American security state - Pinkerton, etc - was created to
| deal with labor, and it was nearly-constantly trying to end-run
| around democratic oversight using whatever means it could:
| poisoning students with military-grade chemicals, allying with
| Luciano, squamming loins with notorious non-state actors
| (including actual Nazis), hiring _squadrons_ of prostitutes,
| and on occasion - maybe, possibly - making some US citizens go
| away more permanently. Without even mentioning its adventures
| in the Americas at large. It 's the height of schadenfreude
| we're living through a golden age of conspiracism without
| eyeballs on the horribly, horribly real historical
| conspiracies, who was behind them, and who continues to be.
| diydsp wrote:
| > squamming loins
|
| ?!?! I looked it up, but there are too many definitions...
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Squam Is that
| a synonym for "knocking boots" ?!
| diablerouge wrote:
| My guess is that OP did indeed mean "knocking boots" as a
| reference to Operation Paperclip, where the US government
| granted amnesty to a bunch of Nazi scientists in return for
| pivoting their research to US national security purposes.
|
| edit: source
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| when I was growing up "knocking boots" meant have sex?
| (there was a whole rap song with that title). Which is
| what I assumed "squamming loins" was some british english
| version of.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| It's a metaphor in the same sense as "strange
| bedfellows."
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Whoops. I had thought it to be merely some unfortunate
| onomatopoeia. It's awesome that the word has so many actual
| meanings, if informal ones. But yes, "a thing involving
| 'mutual loins' that sounds like 'squam'"
| swayvil wrote:
| And now everybody's on antidepressants.
|
| Yes yes, it's a good thing according to good medical
| authority. But still, it's crassly dystopian too. Maybe we
| can thank "old leftist drug overuse" for normalizing us over
| that hump.
| kagevf wrote:
| > "tune in, turn on"
|
| "Turn on, tune in, drop out"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_on,_tune_in,_drop_out
|
| Just noting this because I wasn't sure if this what was being
| referenced, so I looked it up . . .
| heystefan wrote:
| I don't know a lot about Pinkertons, is there a good book or
| a documentary to find out more?
|
| (Or any other "real conspiracies" for that matter.)
| lazide wrote:
| The Wikipedia article is a decent read [https://en.wikipedi
| a.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)]
| BashiBazouk wrote:
| That was well covered in Tom Wolfe's _The Electric Kool-Aid
| Acid Test_. At least the "make LSD popular" part.
| Lammy wrote:
| Now do Rock music https://www.amazon.com/Weird-Scenes-Inside-
| Canyon-Laurel/dp/...
| bluefishinit wrote:
| This is a great place to start:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
|
| tldr: Jim Morrison's dad started the Vietnam War when he
| falsely claimed he was attacked off the coast of Vietnam by the
| North Vietnamese.
| intalentive wrote:
| Now do feminism
|
| https://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/blog/feminist-was-spy
| readyplayernull wrote:
| And The X-Files was a long ad.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKTFfT4sMhQ
|
| > There's this guy from the CIA and he's creeping around Laurel
| Canyon
| underlipton wrote:
| Makes me look at things like Disco Demolition Night in a new
| light.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| What makes me suspicious is that disco never "died" in europe
| in the same way it did in the States...
|
| (up until recently, covers of "I Will Survive" --one of
| which, sadly no longer available on YouTube, was even in
| drag-- were featured annually in russian state-channel
| [Rossiia1] New Year's programming)
| GoofballJones wrote:
| Disco didn't die in the states at all. It kept on going. As
| a mainstream genre, maybe, for a while. But it evolved into
| the various house and techno and the myriad of sub-genres
| that are still flourishing to this day.
| mikrl wrote:
| That event always seemed so weird to me. I'm not the biggest
| fan of disco (some of the old and new stuff is danceable) but
| isn't blowing up a crate of records similar in spirit to book
| burning?
| underlipton wrote:
| Or, if you consider recorded art - its creator's thoughts
| and feelings being shuttled into the future - as akin to
| that creator living on in perpetuity, perhaps it's also
| similar in spirit to the assassination of a "subversive."
|
| Wait a minute.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The spirit was the thing was that: 1. explosions are fun,
| 2. this rock jock hated disco, 3. his fans and other people
| will pay money to go to a baseball game and see this at a
| time when not many people were going. It was more of a
| publicity stunt, than anything politically charged.
|
| Something in the spirit of book burning today is more like
| banning books in public places, like schools or libraries,
| under penalty of prison.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is one of my favorite rabbit holes to go down, it's nuts.
| Fervicus wrote:
| Now do news media:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Cooper#Early_career
| debacle wrote:
| What?
| quakeguy wrote:
| The book the OP links to does make a good case of the same
| influence being used by the CIA as the OOP link makes with
| modern art... if that makes sense.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| We can see what our governments are encouraging towards other
| countries quite easily and openly today. For example in the UK
| you can see organisations like the British Council (The United
| Kingdom's international organisation for cultural relations and
| educational opportunities):
| https://www.britishcouncil.org/arts/news
|
| and towards China in particular:
| https://chinanow.britishcouncil.cn/
|
| Some on the left (and right I imagine) say these are an example
| of neo-colonialist neo-liberalist ideas and that does seem as
| conspiracyish as this article but if you imagine in 50 years time
| a politics article looking at the arts right now, then an
| archived series of these projects from our governments
| international arts organisations might well be included!
| api wrote:
| The government threw money at the arts in the mid-20th-century to
| show up the USSR and people are reading too much into it. If
| classicism had been the thing in the middle of the 20th century
| they would have funded that instead.
|
| Is the popularity of reactive programming a Facebook psy-op? They
| certainly popularized it via React, but does that mean there was
| some deep agenda inside Facebook to popularize reactive
| programming to accomplish some mysterious occult goal? Or was it
| just that Facebook is big, happened to employ some good devs who
| liked reactive programming, and dumped a lot of money into it?
|
| When big companies and governments throw money around they
| distort the market and whatever happens to be in the right place
| at the right time to grab that cash tends to get favored. That's
| usually all there is to it unless you can find concrete evidence
| that (for example) someone with authority in the CIA wanted to
| promote _that specific type of art_ to achieve a specific
| societal outcome.
| ak_111 wrote:
| The React analogy doesn't work, React is used because
| developers find it more productive to use. On the other hand
| people's initial reaction to much modern art is "what the hell?
| you call this art?" so it is interesting to explore why it
| became very expensive and popular with elites despite the
| popular reaction.
|
| Put another way, react would have probably gained a huge
| following without FB's marketing (imagine if it was just a few
| hackers launching it as an open source project). Can we say
| that much modern art would have gained much fame if it wasn't
| for certain critics promoting them or if they gained favourable
| attention from elites?
| groby_b wrote:
| > On the other hand people's initial reaction to much modern
| art is "what the hell? you call this art?"
|
| There's a lot of people who look at React and think "What the
| hell? You call this useable?" as well. The point of spending
| money on popularizing something is usually to popularize it
| with a specific crowd.
|
| And if you are close to the art crowd, modern art is a) a
| stupid moniker, because it covers 1860-now, and b) a pretty
| logical evolution of what was before. You don't have to like
| it to understand what it's trying to do. The "what the hell"
| crowd is not the crowd targeted by the marketing.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't think it is much to do with some nefarious plan to
| defeat social realism so much as they funded talented artists
| and talented artists happened to be bored with old forms/find
| them irrelevant and they wanted to experiment with something
| new.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| They funded splashy but tame talented artists with no
| political leanings, and destroyed or starved artists who
| were more overtly political.
|
| There was a lot more happening in art than AbEx. But only
| AbEx received official approval as an acceptable political
| metaphor for bold individualism.
|
| Approval included canonisation by museums and galleries and
| think pieces by art critics.
|
| https://www.artforum.com/print/197406/abstract-
| expressionism...
| jimbob45 wrote:
| And also HTMX, Angular, or Vue could take over and erase
| React tomorrow and no one here would be especially surprised.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It's not a mysterious occult goal. The web is now broken with
| JavaScript disabled, and Facebook has cemented a place in your
| browser to run their tracking code. It's pretty hard to believe
| that that was an intended consequence.
| hnuser847 wrote:
| React was released back in 2012/2013. The web was already
| broken without JavaScript back then, and had been for quite
| some time. Remember jQuery? And FB placing tracking codes in
| cookies has nothing to do with React.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| > The government threw money at the arts in the mid-20th-
| century to show up the USSR and people are reading too much
| into it. If classicism had been the thing in the middle of the
| 20th century they would have funded that instead.
|
| I'm not so sure. Call it a conspiracy theory, but there is at
| least some evidence that modern art is a fantastic tool for
| money laundering. Now, this is also true of classical art and
| patents, but imagine if you are trying to send money with a
| stupid cover story. Make a piece of modern art in 15 minutes,
| have other person send $50,000 to "purchase" it...
| krapp wrote:
| I don't think the CIA needs to clandestinely fund an entire
| art movement as a cover for money laundering, though. That
| seems a bit outlandish.
|
| I'm as paranoid as the next guy but in this case I think the
| premise that the CIA funded artistic expression as a form of
| propaganda in its own right makes the most sense.
| briantakita wrote:
| > I don't think the CIA needs to clandestinely fund an
| entire art movement as a cover for money laundering,
| though. That seems a bit outlandish.
|
| Besides...the CIA makes more money running illegal drugs.
| api wrote:
| Any high priced asset that's easy to move with few questions
| asked is a great tool for money laundering. One of the
| largest tools is real estate, which may be one reason you see
| a lot of unoccupied houses and condos in certain expensive
| cities.
|
| The art doesn't have to be modern to work this way. It just
| has to be fungible art with an inflated price tag on it. Any
| style will do.
|
| Other popular money laundering vehicles include:
| "investments" in totally hollow shell companies, fake
| customers to shell or cutout businesses (like the car wash in
| Breaking Bad), manipulating penny stocks (you basically run a
| pump and dump against yourself using dirty money to pump and
| extracting clean money on the other side), cryptocurrency and
| related things, other big assets like airplanes and boats,
| etc.
| reillyse wrote:
| Real estate is traditionally quite difficult to move,
| that's actually one of its core selling points.
| neilv wrote:
| Like NFTs, it could be money laundering, pumping, or both?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Is this where I put Betteridge's law?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
| .
|
| Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any
| headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the
| word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British
| technology journalist who wrote about it in 2009, although the
| principle is much older.
|
| "If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. Is This
| the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have
| We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the
| question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace?
| (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end
| means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is
| tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an
| attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into
| a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a
| busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark
| means 'don't bother reading this bit'."
| tonymillion wrote:
| I came into the comments thinking about Betteridges law and
| hoping to see it near the top and I wasn't disappointed.
|
| Pretty much any article posted to HN with a "?" At the end
| that's not a AskHN prefix should get that response.
| samstave wrote:
| ASK HN: Should I post an ephemeral of ideas as platitude
| questions to ASK HN?
| pookha wrote:
| Government wasn't just throwing money at art...Could be the
| other way around. Back then what was stopping the CIA from
| covertly laundering money through art? They've cleaned money
| with worse.
| tgv wrote:
| It's not just that modern art started well before the CIA
| existed, but the article also conveniently forgets to mention
| how modern art subverted communism.
|
| It even can't explain how "Jackson Pollock's gestural style
| [...] drew an effective counterpoint to Nazi [...] oppression,"
| because by the time Pollock got anywhere near famous, WWII was
| over. Perhaps that sentence doesn't even mean anything. It's
| just fancy words, because a counterpoint is not an opposition,
| but a harmonically fitting independent voice. Style over
| substance, as usual.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| If it is generally agreed that soviets, fascists, nazis used
| modern art to pursue their ends (new objectivity etc) I find
| it implausible that US intelligence wouldn't respond in kind.
| Of course that doesn't mean that the manner of response
| detailed by this article is accurate.
| emodendroket wrote:
| The conspiratorial view is that people were numbed by
| meaningless abstract art when they could have been engaging
| with didactic social realist works that would have convinced
| them to become communist. Hard to falsify but I'm not sure
| how credible it is.
| itronitron wrote:
| The fact that you're calling it reactive programming, instead
| of MVC, shows that Facebook's psyop was at least partially
| successful.
| lmm wrote:
| WTF? It's very different from MVC.
| ralusek wrote:
| I refuse to believe that Alegria/Corporate Memphis/Globohomo art
| isn't a psyop to demoralize populations with how hideous it is.
| lmm wrote:
| Even if we knew it was, would anything change? People have
| built their careers on this stuff. Ten or twenty years ago I
| laughed at some things that are now just mainstream and normal
| - people do this stuff, they hire other people who do this
| stuff, one day you wake up and it's industry best practice and
| you have to fall in line.
|
| When I first watched the movie Cube I thought the idea that
| people would build a deathtrap and then put people in it
| because they thought the incomprehensible bureaucracy they
| worked for wanted that was ludicrous. Now I realise that's the
| real horror of the film.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Back in the days of the John Birch Society people made the same
| claim except it was the KGB instead.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| They could have been unwittingly cooperating with each other.
| yoyopa wrote:
| modern art began well before the CIA
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| There's a book on this called The Cultural Cold War[1]. I tried
| reading it but (embarrassingly) I don't know enough about
| artistic and literary figures in the mid-20th century to follow
| along with all the names it drops. Seemed interesting, though.
|
| [1] https://thenewpress.com/books/cultural-cold-war
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Also
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Who-Paid-Piper-Cultural-Cold/dp/18620...
|
| by the same author. Makes it very clear that both sides were
| despotic in their own ways. The USSR used brute force and
| intimidation. The methods used in the US were more subtle and
| covert, but just as ideologically - as opposed to creatively -
| directed.
| diimdeep wrote:
| Hollywood? Most recent one
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_(2023_film)
| ackbar03 wrote:
| So Andy wharhol shot jfk?
| klyrs wrote:
| Worse... Duchamp was a shill for Eljer Co.
| tpm wrote:
| Modern Art was not a CIA Psy-Op, because modern art is older than
| the CIA. Modern art started around the 1870s and was in full
| swing at the start of the 20th century. The CIA was founded in
| 1947.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| A theory I like is that "modern art" was triggered by
| photography making a lot of painters unemployed around the
| 1870s.
|
| So some unemployed painters tried their luck painting pictures
| a camera couldn't make.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| I wonder what this generation's modern art response to AI art
| will be.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nobody is accusing them of coming up with the styles. They just
| found the emptiest artistic movements with the least to say and
| flooded them with money and positive criticism.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I know they are trying to create a catchy headline but just to be
| 100% clear, Modernism as a movement predates the existence of the
| CIA by > 50 years. Modernism in music, literature, art and
| architecture appears around the end of the 19th century and the
| beginning of the 20th. It went through many iterations by the mid
| 20th century and the birth of the CIA out of the wartime OSS in
| 1947.
| [deleted]
| pfffr wrote:
| My thoughts, too, went to Luigi Russolo and early experimental
| electronic music, and experimental films of the 1920s.
| Obviously any counterculture can still be co-opted into the
| mainstream. See what is happening now with various civil rights
| movements being worked into corporate images (and the ensuing
| conservative backlash).
|
| What happens when Adorno & Horkheimer become mainstream pop
| icons?
| intalentive wrote:
| 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms
| of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to
| "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings,
| substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
|
| 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan
| is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
|
| From 45 Communist Goals, published 1958 in "The Naked Communist"
| and read into the Congressional Record in 1963. Worth checking
| out, much of it came to pass.
|
| https://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/exhibitions/anti-comm/a...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| 32. "Support any socialist movement to give centralized control
| over any part of the culture--education, social agencies,
| welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc."
| alephnerd wrote:
| It was published by the "Patriotic American Youth" - the youth
| wing of the precursor of the John Birch Society and affiliated
| with the (white) Citizens Council Movement, which was formed
| following Brown v Board of Education.
|
| https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/white-citize...
|
| https://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/exhibitions/anti-comm/a...
|
| https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/patriotic-americ...
|
| https://usmspecialcollections.omeka.net/exhibits/show/antico...
| intalentive wrote:
| Yeah, it's fascinating how frequently the paranoid wingnuts
| of the past turned out to be right. Then you have people like
| Aldous Huxley and things like the Jaffe memo, painting
| basically the same picture but from an "inside" perspective.
| alephnerd wrote:
| These wingnuts you mentioned weren't democrats or
| republicans - they supported George Wallace and his
| "American Independent Party".
|
| I for one like having the ability to vote without paying a
| poll tax or taking a poll exam and drinking from any damn
| water fountain I wish, which are rights Segregationist
| White Supremacist orgs like PAY, the John Birch Society,
| and the Citizen Councils wanted only for White Protestant
| Anglo-Saxon Americans.
|
| The fact you were able to pull up a primary document
| published by a movement from an era that is largely not
| taught in depth about is honestly very suspect, unless you
| are studying for a BA in American History, which I honestly
| doubt.
| intalentive wrote:
| That they were horrible people is irrelevant to the
| question: were they right about the "Communist goals"?
| That so many of the items in this list came to pass,
| either completely or in part, is prima facie evidence for
| 1) the existence of long term social planning in the
| West, or 2) the ability of the Birchers to correctly
| extrapolate from current trends to future events.
| krapp wrote:
| I mean, this isn't a list of "communist goals," this is a
| list of what is claimed, by American right-wingers and
| the American government during a time of vehement anti-
| communist sentiment - to be "communist goals," but it
| reads like a right-wing American screed. The first two
| items imply opposition to atomic war is a communist plot.
| It quotes without sources. It makes claims that it
| doesn't back up.
|
| I see no particular reason to take this at face value.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| The Birchers (and fellow travellers) were, according to
| _Dr. Strangelove_ , also convinced that water
| fluoridation is a commie plot, so -\\_(tsu)_/-?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Your comment seriously gives an impression of having been
| written by the CIA.
|
| >They weren't democrats or republicans
|
| You know, if you think the whole world is either
| republican or democrat and anything not coming from those
| affiliations is suspect, then you have limited your world
| view pretty drastically.
|
| > The fact you were able to pull up a primary document
| published by a movement from an era that is largely not
| taught in depth about is honestly very suspect, unless
| you are studying for a BA in American History, which I
| honestly doubt.
|
| This as well. You're on a "hacker" forum, it is nothing
| unusual that people here are interested in fringe topics
| and find interesting sources outside the mainstream.
| Trying to pry into the identity of another poster to
| determine if he or she has the right to say certain
| things is beyond creepy. Have you considered a career at
| the CIA or other equivalent? From your comment you seem
| like a good fit.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| It's a summary of an FBI agent's report "Naked Communism".
| I'm thankful they were motivated to amplify the FBI's
| findings because the goals are heinous. And if we all agree
| the goals are heinous then I don't see anything left to
| contend with. If we can't agree they are heinous then I guess
| the communist agenda is alive and well.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| As much as our government interferes with other countries,
| makes you wonder how often our country is interfered.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who
| defected to the United States in the early 70s who has some
| choice words to say on this subject, words which turned out
| to be more than prophetic. It is worth watching the whole
| interview, about 1 hour 20 minutes in which he laid out the
| four stages of ideological subversion" created by radical
| Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw
| hansjorg wrote:
| That the provenance proudly includes "read into the
| Congressional Record" (Wikipedia also mentions this) is almost
| all you need to know about this.
|
| The rest can be gleaned from the Wikipedia page on the author:
|
| > W. Cleon Skousen ... was an American conservative author with
| the John Birch Society and a faith-based conspiracy theorist
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Was this then a Conspiracy to discredit another Conspiracy?
| intalentive wrote:
| The predictive power of the Birchers suggests they were onto
| something.
| ddalex wrote:
| Wow. Check out no: 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in
| preference to engage in atomic war.
|
| I guess they had no clue how the American Psyche works. Japan
| sinks 6 vessels, U.S. drops the sun on Japan. Not once, but
| twice, for good measure. You'd think Russia would watch and
| learn. They haven't learned anything, even today.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Was modern art a KGB psy-op covered up by the CIA?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| No
| hkt wrote:
| Regardless of what you think of this, there is a related idea
| worth considering: hegemony. Whether it is organic or confected,
| the idea that powerful groups within societies create and export
| ideas to other groups in society in a way that cements their own
| power or breaks a competing group's.. isn't new, and is fairly
| clearly the case whether we look at art, or tech, or media
| ownership.
| thatcat wrote:
| Brad Troemel covered this pretty well on patreon, here's the
| preview https://www.instagram.com/p/CVfvbpwAoMZ/
| dang wrote:
| Discussed (a bit) at the time (of the article):
|
| _Was Modern Art Really a CIA Psy-Op?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23525366 - June 2020 (7
| comments)
|
| Pretty sure there have been other threads, including on the Peter
| Matthiessen (Paris Review) connection - anybody want to find
| them?
|
| Edit: there's this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10963429
| - and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10964477 linking to
| https://www.salon.com/2012/05/27/exclusive_the_paris_review_....
|
| Edit 2 - found some more:
|
| _During Cold War, CIA used 'Doctor Zhivago' as a tool to
| undermine Soviet Union_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7991903 - July 2014 (30
| comments)
|
| _Abstract Expressionism was (in part) a covert CIA operation_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891222 - Nov 2010 (1
| comment)
|
| Others?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| ^ this guy moderates
|
| Did you ever posted how exactly do you find a similar posts
| despite them having a very different URIs?
| dang wrote:
| Yup - lots of links here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668525
| [deleted]
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I'm genuinely surprised that the article neglected to mention the
| intriguing story of Rockefeller Plaza and the artist Diego
| Rivera.
|
| Rockefeller, in his ambition to elevate the visual allure of the
| lobby in the newly-constructed Rockefeller Center, enlisted
| Rivera to produce an imposing mural. The outcome was "Man At The
| Crossroads," an artwork of monumental scale and significance.
|
| Rivera's work is a meticulous tapestry, deftly weaving myriad
| aspects of the social and scientific zeitgeist of his era. Echoes
| of Communism, an influence in Rivera's other works, can also be
| discerned here. The centerpiece of the composition features a
| worker, seemingly the master of the machinery surrounding him.
| This focal figure is presented beneath a colossal fist clutching
| an orb, a representation of atomic recombination and cellular
| division in an ongoing act of biological and chemical genesis.
|
| Four propeller-like forms extend from the central figure towards
| the composition's corners, signifying light arcs emanating from
| large lenses that anchor the spatial edges. Rivera coined these
| as "elongated ellipses". They encapsulate cosmological and
| biological forces, such as erupting suns and cellular structures,
| symbolizing the revelations afforded by the telescope and the
| microscope.
|
| Interwoven between these arcs are vignettes of contemporary
| social life. To the left, affluent society women are depicted
| indulging in cards and cigarettes. In stark contrast, on the
| right, we find Lenin amidst a diverse assembly of workers.
| Juxtaposed scenes of militaristic force and a Russian May Day
| rally laden with red flags encapsulate Rivera's contrasting
| societal visions - a decadent, jobless society, dispassionately
| observing escalating conflict, and Lenin ushering in a socialist
| utopia.
|
| Classical statues tower behind the observers at the edges of the
| scene. The left bears an enraged Jupiter, his hand clutching a
| thunderbolt, severed by a lightning strike - an embodiment of the
| frontier of ethical evolution. Conversely, a headless seated
| Caesar on the right signifies the frontier of material
| development. These images were Rivera's symbolic defiance against
| superstition, advocating for the scientific mastery of nature and
| the overthrow of authoritarianism by the emancipated proletariat.
|
| The mural's overt Communist themes caused a stir among certain
| American observers. When Rivera stood his ground against removing
| Lenin's depiction, Rockefeller retaliated by having the mural
| plastered over. Erased.
|
| In the subsequent years, Rockefellers skill at erasing art made
| him a key figure in the CIA's initiative to suppress intellectual
| discourse within the art world. In pursuit of this endeavor, the
| agency orchestrated the flooding of galleries with abstract art,
| featuring indecipherable splashes of paint, thereby drowning out
| the voices of artists who dared to infuse their creations with
| thought-provoking messages
|
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_at_the_Crossroads
| exogen wrote:
| If you like this kind of question, I highly recommend the Wind of
| Change podcast, about whether The Scorpions song of the same name
| was written by the CIA. Super entertaining!
|
| https://crooked.com/podcast-series/wind-of-change/
| esafak wrote:
| If would be so cool if it is true! Well, is it?
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| In Linebarger's book _Psychological Warfare_ , he points out
| that asking propaganda men (in his defense, they probably
| were almost all men ca. 1947, and I suspect he may even have
| referred to specific men, eg Edward Bernays) about their work
| is highly unlikely to result in an unspun answer.
|
| (then again, consider Epimenides: Linebarger is also a
| propaganda man)
| aethanol wrote:
| guess you'll have to listen!
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| I feel about this the way I feel about most so called
| conspiracy theories. I'm certain intelligence agencies are
| involved something _similar_ to this. It would be really
| surprising if they didn 't avail themselves of this huge means
| of influence. They spend all day wondering about how to
| influence. But I'm more skeptical that the conspiracy theorist
| actually managed to catch the intelligence agency's activity in
| this particular case.
| tedunangst wrote:
| This is basically every sports fan theory that every game is
| rigged on the basis of a few point shaving scandals.
| oblak wrote:
| Every game is probably exaggerated but I've watched enough
| sports as a kid. Even back then it was clear to me that
| big, especially international, events are highly
| orchestrated. Yes, including outcomes.
|
| I've been watching F1 for several decades and some key
| races are jazzed up to the point that one must actively
| suspend their disbelief. Not to mention Bernie Ecclestone
| straight up saying who's going to be champion and who isn't
| ever going to be one. It's all fake, dude. Unless you
| really believe some countries are
| thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat much better at sports (and
| everything else) because they're just that awesome in every
| respect.
| smallnix wrote:
| I think you got the analogy wrong. It's rather that
| probably some games are actually rigged but the fans are
| not complaining about exactly these.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Patronage, fine art, and propaganda have always been intertwined.
| It is so fundamental to the subject that it's in the textbooks.
| This article could be pulled from the course text for intro to
| modern art.
| tootie wrote:
| That's a wildly overstated headline. Modern art goes back to the
| early 19th century and there were artists and patrons across the
| world long before the CIA. It's entirely plausible that they saw
| the rise of modern art as a useful vehicle to propagandize but
| it's ridiculous to say the entire thing was an OP.
| cookieperson wrote:
| This. Sure all three letter agencies need avenues to shuffle
| large somes of grey and black market cash around, art is
| convenient for that... Music and movies too. An extra plus for
| hiding messaging and all that... But I wouldn't view these
| operators to be as all encompassing as stories like these make
| them out to be... The next step is crap like "Leonardo da Vinci
| was actually a cia spy recruited by the freemasons", and once
| you go that far you're one cardboard sign and a roll of tinfoil
| away from an institution.
| badrabbit wrote:
| People who spend money because they have to have a hard time
| understanding people who spend money because they're bored.
| seydor wrote:
| Do not be fooled by the article's date. It is another psyop
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ignore this guy's comment, it's obviously a psyop as well.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You're both wrong. I am here for the psyop.
|
| Shit. Strike that from the record. How do you delete
| comments?
| quakeguy wrote:
| You cannot delete anything once on the net, that was a
| psyop.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| You mean a psypo.
| jp42 wrote:
| I cannot confirm or deny whether this comment is psy-op.
| RajT88 wrote:
| No no, that claim was also a psyop.
|
| Unless the psyop was itself a psyop? Would they do that
| to their own people?
| krapp wrote:
| It's psyops all the way down.
| brudgers wrote:
| The article mentions the Advancing American Art program. You can
| read more about it here:
| https://brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/hcm/7/1/article-p971_...
| chasd00 wrote:
| heh if this was true imagine the poor agents tasked with carrying
| it out, god what an awful job. "you want me to do what?!? I
| thought i was going to be behind enemy lines with a tiny camera
| at a fancy party like in the movies.."
| andirk wrote:
| Or selling weapons to rebels to try to topple Socialist leaning
| countries in hopes of being able to then bogart their resources
| for private profit. Or yeah tiny spy cam in a tux.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| * * *
| golergka wrote:
| Occams razor: a much simpler explanation, not disproved by
| anything in this article, would be that CIA saw that sincere and
| powerful american and western art was already capturing hearts
| and minds for effectively, and decided to empower it, since this
| process aligned with its goals.
|
| And in general, american hegemony roughly aligned with interests
| of humanity as a whole, because with all it's downfalls and
| atrocities and ugliness, its still much better than the
| alternative.
| jayzoos wrote:
| [flagged]
| pessimizer wrote:
| More an explanation that requires one to be simple than a
| simple explanation.
| jayzoos wrote:
| > everyone else's imperialism is bad except mine!
|
| lmao you flagged me for this?
| ftxbro wrote:
| > "Soviet propaganda asserted that the United States was a
| "culturally barren" capitalist wasteland."
|
| but we invented taco tuesday and family guy
| samstave wrote:
| And then we empowered companies to sue eachother over the
| phrase "taco Tuesdays"
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/taco-tuesday-trademark-t...
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Don't forget Huey Lewis and the News, when Sports came out in
| '83, I think they really came into their own, commercially and
| artistically.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Agreed. The whole album has a clear, crisp sound, and a new
| sheen of consummate professionalism that really gives the
| songs a big boost. He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but
| I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical sense of humor.
| rgbgraph wrote:
| In '87, Huey released "Fore!", their most accomplished
| album. I think their undisputed masterpiece is "Hip To Be
| Square": a song so catchy, most people probably don't
| listen to the lyrics; but they should, because it's not
| just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance
| of trends -- it's also a personal statement about the band
| itself.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes! On _Huey Lewis and the News_ they seemed a little too
| willing to cash in on the late seventies /early eighties
| taste for New Wave, and the album - though it's still a
| smashing debut - seems a little too stark, too punk.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Their early work was a little too new wave for my taste.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| And Back to the Future, arguably the greatest movie/trilogy
| of all time and a distinctly American epic, which also
| featured several Huey Lewis and the News songs.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I never saw it, I was to busy playing tennis and dining at
| Dorsia.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I never saw American Psycho.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Boy am I glad that we are saying "was" now about that nonsense
| jimsimmons wrote:
| You think Van Gogh and Picasso are nonsense?
|
| Or even Mondrian
| dboreham wrote:
| Mondrian rules! In my youth I tiled the bathroom in my house
| in a Mondrian pattern. Mostly white, lowering the cost since
| white tiles were much cheaper than red yellow and blue.
| DirectorKrennic wrote:
| Yes and no. On one hand, my social class and upbringing
| almost command that I should find beauty in Van Gogh and
| Picasso's works. I defer to the masters on matters I do not
| understand, but it's not where my personal taste and love
| really lie.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I actually love experimental and avant garde works but one
| problem is it feels like a lot of it is a bit of a dead
| end. Like 4'33" was an interesting idea once but there's
| kind of nowhere you can take that. Once you get past the
| first presentation it's not interesting to do a slight
| variation. Or, you know, Jackson Pollack, neat, but not
| like I need to see 10 more guys flinging paint at a canvas.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Have you seen Picassos or (especially) Van Goghs in person?
| omnicognate wrote:
| What does Van Gogh have to do with the article? He lived
| in the wrong century.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I am unsure why he was brought up in this thread tbh, but
| it was many comments above mine
| toolz wrote:
| I have. I do a lot of traveling and inevitably people
| want to go to art installations and museums and I'm
| always fine with going. Anways, there's not a lot of
| legendary art pieces (that are in public places) I
| haven't seen in person. Not a single one of them really
| inspire me. I'd go so far as to say I don't really
| understand how art became such a huge market to begin
| with. I literally wouldn't pay $100 for anything other
| than sculptures.
|
| I wouldn't put most of the legendary pieces on my wall
| unless you paid me.
|
| edit: it always tickles me the negative reactions I get
| when people hear my opinion on art. Doesn't seem to
| matter how I phrase it, it's always offensive to someone
| that I can't see the undeniable beauty in popular art.
| Putting time and effort into something is a prerequisite
| for me to be in awe, but it does not automatically
| interest me. Many professional athletes put in far more
| time and effort into their craft to play a decorative
| game and I similarly don't care about their mastery of
| their strictly decorative achievements.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Fascinating! Well I hope you wind up with your own ideal
| number of pieces whether that be 0 or 1000 :)
| toolz wrote:
| I might already be there at 0, haha! I much prefer
| decorating my spaces with plants over art. I certainly
| wouldn't argue plants are objectively better than art,
| but for me the beauty of even the most common pothos far
| surpasses the majority of popular art.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I don't get houseplants. Inside they look stark,
| isolated, completely removed from their element. I love a
| good garden and outdoor flowers but houseplants seem
| ridiculous to me even excluding the ongoing maintenance
| and the inability to just leave home for a few weeks
| without having to setup someone to water. Why do I want
| to be physically tied down by my home decor? Or have the
| quality of my home decor dependant on the quality of my
| green thumb skills? Give me a Dali on the wall any day
| that invariably leads to a discussion on what a person
| sees in the scene.
| toolz wrote:
| I also enjoy playing with tech, which automated watering
| among other cool tech solutions to keeping up with indoor
| plants is fun for me. Always fun to hear about differing
| opinions and wonder about how we arrived at our opinions.
| I can't imagine ever caring what anyone saw in a dali.
| Having taken an elective art class in college I recall
| feeling quite uncomfortable having to listen to people
| who relished the opportunity to hear themselves speak on
| a subject that has no wrong answers.
|
| Personally I have a hard time valuing questions that have
| no wrong answer. Seems like a polite ritual at best and a
| waste of time at worst.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Art is a financial instrument. The value of art is how
| much a wealthy person will pay for it.
|
| That being said, there are lots of intense and pretty
| drawings and paintings that obviously took a lot of skill
| to create. No need to expect _inspiration_. A lot of the
| language around "art" is a reflection of the self-regard
| of the people who own it.
|
| > edit: it always tickles me the negative reactions I get
| when people hear my opinion on art.
|
| People want to fit in, it's a survival skill. Public
| negative opinions about Marvel movies will get you death
| threats and accusations of trying to destroy companies
| for the sake of other companies.
| toolz wrote:
| > People want to fit in, it's a survival skill.
|
| I think you're probably touching the root cause, but it
| still stands to question how exactly people feel they're
| more fitted by publicly disagreeing with an anonymous
| person on the internet. I guess it's just a learned
| action in meatspace that incidentally carries over to the
| internet where it has no benefit and only detriment?
| Human behavior is always interesting.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| I certainly do
| pxc wrote:
| Picasso was a communist and his art was representational. His
| form of 'modernism' has nothing to do with the kind of actual
| nonsense that the CIA wanted to push.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Absolutely, without exception.
| [deleted]
| zquzra wrote:
| Picasso painted Man in a Beret when he was 14 years old. His
| art became "nonsense" because realism was boring for him.
| lmm wrote:
| Lots of programmers get bored of writing simple line-of-
| business code and find ways to make it more interesting for
| themselves. It doesn't generally lead to a better end result
| though.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Modernism is ubiquitous. Likely your furniture, computers,
| cars, and home architecture are heavily modernist unless you
| explicitly seek out classical stuff.
|
| Modernism is obsessed with truth and optimization, evolving
| toward an apex. Computing technology as a whole is modernist.
| Apple hardware design is a glaring example of a modernist
| pursuit (especially under Ive).
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Oh boy, any one that thinks their particular art style is
| "truth" has an ego problem.
| operatingthetan wrote:
| You misunderstood what they said. "Modernism is obsessed
| with truth and optimization" does not equal "modernism is
| truth." They were also talking about it conceptually, not
| as "their" preferred art.
| krapp wrote:
| And the most modernist form of art now is AI generated art.
| Pure form and aesthetic, but no real meaning or intent, like
| a face in a mirror, something shaped like human meaning but
| utterly devoid of it, manufactured like so much else of our
| reality.
|
| Which, ironically, makes it legitimately art. It's art
| because it's _anti-art._
| shrimpx wrote:
| That's cool. The Dadaists and some Surrealists were doing
| stuff like that intentionally, trying to make art devoid of
| an artist, or of intent.
|
| Also the beat poets, who were trying to write intent-free
| stream of consciousness texts, kind of like a token-
| prediction engine. :)
| axioms_End wrote:
| The contra to this nonsense was state-controlled and heavily
| censored - as much as I like Polish school of poster, or
| overall "tidyness" of communal spaces in post-communist areas,
| it was (to say it mildly) stifling creativity.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Here are three things that well connected Old Money types like:
| collecting art, being on the boards of nonprofits, and serving in
| high-level government positions. Not surprising that a
| Rockefeller might do all three.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Nowadays there's bitcoin/etc, so art/collectibles as value
| store are taking it on the nose.
| xtian wrote:
| These are mere personal preferences. Any connection to a
| broader agenda is a conspiracy theory.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Was Modern Art a CIA Psy-Op?
|
| No, it's not. No more than other attempts, like assassinating
| Castro (man, that one is really a laughing stock if you read that
| one front to back) or their involvement in "war against drugs".
| Maybe they start it but had absolutely no control where it was
| going.
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