Conspiracy In America (was Re: CIA & Nobel Prize)

[Mike Weaver]

Davemarc:

>Thanks, slothrop666, for a reminder of just how simplistic polemics can be.
>That review is so removed from reality that it may in itself qualify as
>Abstract Expressionism. 

Sorry to disagree Dave,  but that review is not at all far removed from
reality.  This is a subject I have kept an eye on for 25 years now, ever
since I was given a college project to do on it.  The main error I noticed
is capitalising of Democratic Left in the review (and the book presumably).
 There was no such named tendency.  It was the so-called Socialist and
Social-Democratic parties which are being referred to. 

One of the main tasks of the CIA in the post war period was to generate a
soft left (anti-soviet) buffer in Europe.  The social democratic parties
and related trade unions in Germany, France, and Italy were all recipients
of U.S. financial largesse.  The Atlantlicist tendency in the British
Labour movement also was well supported and remained entangled with groups
like the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderburg Conference right through
the Social Democratic Party breakaway 20 years back.  Tony Blair and allies
ascendancy over the other tendencies in the British Labour Party is a
possible culmination of that support.  His championing of the American way
at the last party conference fits in well with that line of thought.

>But wait a minute...weren't some of the roots of "AE" established under
>Communism or by Communist types themselves? 

Abstract Expressionism may well have grown out of communist roots. The
early 20's in Russia, before Stalinist orthodoxy was imposed, saw much
artistic and cultural experimentation.  In that time and place
individuality and free expression were not seen as anti-communist. If the
cold warriers used the AE movement as an antithesis of soviet artistic
expression it will not be because it developed that way but because it
could be fitted into the required (anti-soviet) frame and that way of
seeing it then talked up.  
	Now what was that polemic you were referring to?

Cheers 
Mike