The feminist was a spook: Gloria Steinem and the CIA (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The feminist was a spook: Gloria Steinem and the CIA (2015)

chicagotribune.com

17 pointsAndrewBissell18 comments

Worth a read for an alternative history of the counter culture: "Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & the Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream"

Thanks for the recommendation. I've read a little about this topic online, and while proponents often veer off into IMO very shaky territory, the basic plot line seems quite solid and backed up by evidence.

Edit: Looks like you work on htmx? If so, very cool project.

If you're interested in a podcast tackling this sort of material while trying to stay true to facts I highly recommend Subliminal Jihad. They even have an episode on Weird Scenes. https://www.patreon.com/subliminaljihad/posts

Thanks! I'll have a listen on my drive home.

Be warned, if you start with the very first episode it's a little scattered and difficult to follow as the hosts find their footing, but it really picks up from there.

> The world is in a dire period of greater global instability and conflict, with threats and challenges from Southeast Asia to Syria to borderless crime syndicates. In this environment, America needs more credible, analytic, insightful, accessible, high level and grassroots deep intelligence.

We need more CIA to solve all these problems the CIA keeps causing!

For a bit less rose-colored view of Steinem and what she was doing at The Agency: http://www.whale.to/b/how7.html

Ah yes, the root of all evil in the world, the CIA. Because there isn't a single other entity in the entire world that could possibly gain from a bad thing happening. So the CIA has to create all these problems so they can keep their funding or whatever. This is a very logical way to look at the world.

Never said the CIA causes "all" the problems in the world, that's your own little strawman, but only an utterly naive fool believes the CIA has an interest in combating "global instability and conflict."

Though at first the article seemed interesting and compelling, towards the end of the article, it started to unravel (see the comments about Black women at the very bottom of the page). So I clicked through the site, and realized that it lists feminism as a "poisonous ideology" along with global warming and multiculturalism, with links to the protocols of the elders of zion (a well-known antisemitic conspiracy theory).

And, though the article seems to be sympathetic to marxists, the site also somehow lists Marx as an "architect" of "poisonous ideology." It also has an insanely homophobic fake quote attributed to Marx [0].

So this site just seems like the work of a nutjob bigot and shouldn't be used as a source for anything.

[0] http://www.whale.to/c/karl_marx.html

As is often the case with this sort of information, one's choice is either to work to separate the wheat from the chaff (and take it all with a grain of salt), or to never encounter the "much of what it says about Steinem and the CIA that is true" in the first place.

Redstockings, a feminist group from the 70s which took a pretty hardline anti-Steinem and anti-CIA stance, put out a lot of good stuff but it's all buried in print sources and very hard to find. This interview is good though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdi_5cckbXA

There are plenty of reputable sources for radical ideas that don't spew antisemitism, antifeminism, racism, and homophobia. I find it impossible to take this seriously as a source for anything at all, it has lost all credibility for me. Like I said, not doubting the Steinem-CIA connection, but there's no point in reading about it on that website.

I think that's a fair perspective in this case, I was put off by much of what is on that site as well, although I would counter that the article from a Hoover Institute scholar that is the original link for this thread is its own brand of "worthless" which people will nevertheless read and refer to.

I did manage to find a Twitter thread with much of the Redstockings' takedown: https://twitter.com/earwulf/status/956306937729245184

Avoiding the genetic fallacy? This would involve a lot more thinking...

Seems hard and also potentially dangerous.

there's a difference: automatically negating ideas due to the proponent would be a fallacy. refusing to take a proponent as a reputable source when they espouse other ridiculous and dangerous things is just common sense

marx espoused ridiculous and dangerous things

i recommend reading him

nice deflection. have a good day

"FACT: Gloria Steinem is a CIA Agent and everything she has ever done throughout her adult life has been under the direction of the CIA."

please. this sentence is so obviously impossible (literally everything she did as an adult was as at the direction of the agency? everything??) it discredits the entire source. Also clicking around this website makes it obvious that this is crypto-fascist garbage: http://www.whale.to/b/feminism.html

hilarious detail: if you go all the way back to the homepage (http://www.whale.to/) you see this beautiful line:

> Last update 2017. Next update when donations add-up to a good laptop.

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