MAX PARRY—Maupin emphasizes that the intelligentsia of the New Left were actively supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through its clandestine Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) program during the Cold War, which sought to subvert the sympathies of liberals and the non-communist left with the Soviet Union through the covert funding of prominent literary magazines, journals, international conferences, modern art exhibitions, and other cultural activities. The objective was to promote an intellectual consensus on the Western left that the Soviet Union was to be opposed as much as capitalism and it was indisputably successful.
KULTURKAMPF
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This MSNBC Clip Is Everything Ugly About Russia Smears
17 minutes readCAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Claiming that an evidence-free conspiratorial McCarthyite smear is true because the target of that smear did not prostrate themselves sufficiently to deny it is disgusting and shameful in and of itself. The burden of proof is always on the party making the claim, and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If an extraordinary claim is made with no evidence at all, the party making that claim should be promptly shamed and dismissed.
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The 72 Virgin Brides of Capitalist Martyrdom
10 minutes readJOHN R HALL—From their corporate cages all domesticated sentient beings await their turns to become martyrs to capitalism. Cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, and chickens moo, oink, bleat, gobble, and cackle their way to the meat grinders. Credit card zombified humanoids, distracted beyond all hope by shiny objects and virgins fondling credit cards, spend like drunken sailors, then toil like slaves, under the threatening whip of bankruptcy, hunger, and homelessness, calloused hands digging their own early earthly graves.
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Taibbi dissects Facebook’s dance with the devil—well sort of.
59 minutes readMATT TAIBBI—Obviously, no one has a constitutional right to a Facebook page or a Twitter account. As ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner points out, there’s no First Amendment issue here. “To the extent First Amendment rights figure in at all, they’re enjoyed by the companies, who get to decide what does and does not go on their platforms,” he says. But the fact that removals are probably legal does not mean they’re not worrisome. If a handful of companies are making coordinated decisions about content, especially in conjunction with official or quasi-official bodies, this has far-reaching implications for the press.
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ONLINE GOLD: What do Russians think these days about socialism, Stalin and similar subjects?
by shorty14 minutes readTranslated here are nuggets from a Facebook discussion among several Russian intellectuals, some of…