The Feminist Was a Spy | Hacker News Reader

The Feminist Was a Spy

uscpublicdiplomacy.org

32 pointsmooreds50 comments

This is the kind of bizarre article you see in an era where people reflexively support anything having to do with the federal bureaucracy. Even the 1960s CIA that was overthrowing democratically elected leaders in other countries is now “liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Where did this come from? Politically homeless socially liberal Reagan republicans?

It reads like it was written by the CIA, mentioning only recent failures, not world changing operations back in Steniems day

Was modern art a weapon of the CIA? [0]

> Still, whatever the truth of the extent of the CIA’s financial involvement with Abstract Expressionism, Anfam believes that it was “the best thing the institution ever paid for”. He smiles. “I’d much rather they spent money on Abstract Expressionism than toppling left-wing dictators.”

I had a similar view of my work that involved SDI "Star Wars". Better spent on my paycheck than on bombs. Don't forget, the gorgeous mirror in the Vera Rubin Telescope was one of two donated from another three-letter agency's dumpster.

I could tell you, but then you'd have to be shredded.

Buddhists like to "turn poison into medicine". So should we all.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-...

Yes, yes, the good ol' "liberal, non-violent, and honorable" CIA of the 50s and 60s. So different from the one we have now.

Is this the CIA that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran after he nationalized their oil industry? Or is it the one that installed a dictatorship in Guatemala to stop land reform and tend to the whims of the United Fruit Company?

Maybe it's the organization that murdered the first elected leader of Congo, to keep cheap copper, colbat and uranium flowing? Certainly it can't be the agency that illegally spied on American citizens who fought for Civil Rights or protested against the Vietnam War.

So much for soft power.

> Is this the CIA that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran

Mosaddegh Was not democratically elected, he was appointed by the Shah after the recommendation by the Majlis which itself was largely appointed. Later Mosaddegh rigged a real election and tried to give himself emergency power to dictate law. The Shah and his generals with the help of the US and Britain removed Mosaddegh. Yes the British wanted to get involved because of oil nationalization but Mosaddegh was trying to become a dictator, and alienated a lot of the population.

Majlis means parliament, and with the monarch Shah in control, that makes it a constitutional monarchy. To place a putschist general on par with that is disingenuous; it is a democratic retreat.

To be fair Iran back then wasn't a system like the UK or Sweden where the king's power is limited to signing laws. It worked more like Gulf states today with a much more personal form of government, the Shah could freely appoint ministers and dissolve parliament when he wanted. And his secret police was trained by the CIA.

The British monarch can do that too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_prerogative_in_the_Unite...

It wasn’t a constitutional monarchy at the time, there were reformers pushing in that direction but the constitution put very few limits on the Shah. The Majlis wasn’t popularly elected then either.

It interesting because the people at the CIA probably could be fairly described as "liberal, non-violent, and honorable". That sort of thing is heavily into banality of evil territory - lovely people, just a bit thoughtless about the effects they were having on huge tracts of the world.

With those types the best you can hope for is at least they act rationally and effectively. It gets really sad when they do tremendous damage for reasons that make little sense, even in context.

It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.

>detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions

Yes, WASP are attracted to universal moral principles. A major WASP institution (namely, a religious denomination) is literally named "Universalism".

It is a shame but there are almost no true grassroots political organizations, most of them are payed, bought or employed by someone.

A very good example of this is that we don't see any major feminist rallies against how the government is handling the Epstein files, whose victims where predominately young girls and women.

Virtually every single feminist organization has spoken against Epstein, his best friend Trump, and the people around them. And in support of their victims. Where are you getting your information from?

there were some, but considering how monumental it was many people including me consider it a lackluster effort[1]

[1] https://theprint.in/opinion/pov/silence-epstein-files-global...

It's almost like there's someone, who perhaps even got elected on the back of getting the files released and who exerts power over media outlets, that doesn't want this to be a big story.

> that doesn't want this to be a big story

That's a bipartisan sentiment as far as politicians are concerned. They pass it around like a hot potato and give it brief lip service only when it suits them.

People make a ridiculous deal out of someone at any point doing any work with the CIA, or a company having IQT on their cap table, or anything like that.

Yeah, right, as soon as you get involved you instantly meet with the smoking man from the X-Files and see the dead aliens and become part of some kind of grand conspiracy. After that every single thing you say or do is part of some giant perfectly organized CIA plot. Please.

Most of what these three letter agencies do is boring.

It’s a lot like guilt by association: “this person did business with this person therefore they are totally the same on everything and part of some big agenda.” False.

I don’t think this means anything at all.

Sure, but it is really interesting to think that the 50s arts and 60s youth movements as top-down "soft power" countermeasures to the USSR and communist revolutions, and that it's not so spontaneous as it's typically thought of.

Something similar was happening with CIA promotion of abstract expressionism in art:

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/did-you-know/la-cia-y-e...

> It’s a lot like guilt by association

What would you think of someone who works for KGB (now FSB) and propagandizes the values of USSR (or modern Russia)?

secondly: CIA job is exactly promote the image of a "liberal, nonviolent and honorable” agency, while killing thousands people to overthrown elected governments just because uncle Sam did not like them...

Yes, I think it's a big deal if you worked for a big evil organization on purpose.

Most of what the 3 letter agencies do is also fraud- some drunk station chief phoning in some changes as "I made that happen!".

The CIA is a pillar to prop up stuck cultures excuses for why they get nothing good done - when your own ideology has no explanation power and thus no real help to offer, except calls for endless uprisings and civil wars. It also keeps a whole "nonacademic" wing of academia propped up. For when your theories have no predictive power and reality merciless digresses- its all a conspiracy by the 3 letters.

Cultural Inability to Advance is everywhere!

Most of the work is probably boring and not consequential on its own. But I think that's sepaerate from whether it's reasonable to encourage people to draw an ethical line. We probably wouldn't feel comfortable with someone who knowingly did work for the KKK, even if that work was just making photocopies, picking up office supplies, and keeping track of membership dues.

Then you don't say stuff like “In my experience The Agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable”. It is not "guilt by association" anymore, it is pure complicity.

I don't even know much about her. I'm just sick of lazy conspiracism, which has totally taken over the discourse now because people aren't getting enough experience in the real world and living their life behind screens. Reality is not a TV show or a social media conspiracy theory.

I think she was probably an American liberal who worked with some people at the CIA who were nice at least to her and who also wrote about feminism.

And yes, the CIA has also done terrible things. It's a huge sprawling many-headed bureaucracy and she probably had contact with an entirely different part of it than the one running around fucking up Latin America.

Or hey, maybe since Gloria Steinem said something good about the CIA therefore all feminism and all 60s social movements were all 100% CIA psyops and everything she wrote was dictated to her through her brain implant. Could be for all I know.

This article says exactly the opposite: everything was completely coherent and known within the CIA. The information gathered on student leaders and members by the supposedly "liberal, nonviolent and honorable" side was never kept away from the "total assholes and monsters" who could sell them away to their dictator friends.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/a-friend-of-th...

Lol this is going to go over well

A thread on HN about the CIA and feminism? I'm grabbing some popcorn, this is going to be entertaining.

Hopefully the flame war detector will be triggered quickly

Let the battle between the cynics and foreign trolls commence!

post the psy-op cat meme plz

If you want clicky headlines or simplistic denunciations, then saying that everyone ever associated with the CIA was a "spy" is quite useful.

Otherwise, it's kinda like saying that everyone ever employed by Ford Motor Co. was a mechanical engineer, and bears responsibility for exploding Pintos.*

(And bear in mind that James Bond is about as realistic a depiction of "spy" as Bugs Bunny is a depiction of "rabbit".)

A serious article on the activities Steinem was involved in: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/23/a-friend-of-th...

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_...

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