The Feminist Was a Spy(uscpublicdiplomacy.org)
25 pointsby mooreds2 hours ago9 comments
  • rayiner2 hours ago
    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?
    • readthenotes128 minutes ago
      It reads like it was written by the CIA, mentioning only recent failures, not world changing operations back in Steniems day
  • nonsensical_2 hours ago
    Hmm. Feminism as a CIA psyop. They’ve done more audacious things, I suppose.
    • swed42028 minutes ago
      Anything to distract from class politics. It seems to have worked.

      (certain strains of feminism do acknowledge the relevance of class variables, but the mainstream ones avoid it like the plague)

    • neutronicus2 hours ago
      Feminism has always been bundled up in the idea of American cultural superiority that justifies pursuing hegemony (although the term used is usually "women's rights").
      • dgellowan hour ago
        Feminism exists outside of the US
        • neutronicusan hour ago
          Sure. I thought briefly about using the phrase "American Feminism".

          But, regardless, to be more nuanced: Feminism gets rhetorically roped into the case for Western cultural hegemony, which in turn gets used as a justification for US military adventurism.

          • dgellowan hour ago
            Modern feminism is generally anti-colonialist and intersectional, which goes against that specific notion
          • red-iron-pine30 minutes ago
            those goalposts have wheels, huh?
  • k310an hour ago
    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-...

  • throwfaraway1352 hours ago
    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.

    • dgellow2 hours ago
      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?
  • han-tyumi2 hours ago
    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.

    • roenxi2 hours ago
      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.

      • rayineran hour ago
        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.
    • ch4s32 hours ago
      > 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.

      • esafak2 hours ago
        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.
        • tancop2 hours ago
          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.
  • dstnn2 hours ago
    Lol this is going to go over well
    • krapp2 hours ago
      A thread on HN about the CIA and feminism? I'm grabbing some popcorn, this is going to be entertaining.
      • red-iron-pine29 minutes ago
        post the psy-op cat meme plz
      • dgellow2 hours ago
        Hopefully the flame war detector will be triggered quickly
      • 2OEH8eoCRo02 hours ago
        Let the battle between the cynics and foreign trolls commence!
  • api2 hours ago
    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.

    • 6P58r3MXJSLi2 hours ago
      > 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...

      • an hour ago
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    • tdeck2 hours ago
      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.
    • 21asdffdsa122 hours ago
      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!

    • wry_discontent2 hours ago
      Yes, I think it's a big deal if you worked for a big evil organization on purpose.
    • Arodex2 hours ago
      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.
      • apian hour ago
        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.

        • Arodex42 minutes ago
          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...

    • gedy2 hours ago
      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.
  • lurk22 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • dgellow2 hours ago
      Had an abortion*
      • 2 hours ago
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    • dgellow2 hours ago
      Wait, wtf do you mean by tribe? That reads as blatant antisemitism
      • margalabargala2 hours ago
        You know what they mean. If it reads a certain way, maybe it is that way.

        This person is referring to having an abortion as "killing their unborn child", they clearly aren't interested in non-inflammatory language.

  • bell-cot2 hours ago
    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,_...