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Association for Cultural Freedom

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Contents The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1967, it was revealed that the United
Featured content States Central Intelligence Agency was instrumental in the establishment of the group, and it was subsequently renamed the International
Current events Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries and also received significant
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funding from the Ford Foundation.[citation needed]
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Contents
1 Creation of the CCF
Go   Search 2 Activities
3 Involvement of the CIA
interaction
4 Legacy
About Wikipedia
5 CCF/IACF-funded publications
Community portal
6 Literature
Recent changes
7 References
Contact Wikipedia
Donate to Wikipedia 8 External links
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Creation of the CCF [edit]

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Permanent link The Congress was founded at the Titania Palace in West Berlin on 26 June 1950 to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy was less
Cite this page compatible with culture than communism. It may have been started in response to a March, 1949 peace conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
in New York City at which many prominent U.S. leftists and pacifists urged for peace with Stalin's Soviet Union. Some of the leading lights
languages
attending the Titania Palace conference included Franz Borkenau, Karl Jaspers, John Dewey, Ignazio Silone, James Burnham, Hugh Trevor-
Deutsch
Roper, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Bertrand Russell, Ernst Reuter, Raymond Aron, Alfred Ayer, Benedetto Croce, Jacques Maritain, Arthur Koestler,
Français
James T. Farrell, Richard Löwenthal, Robert Montgomery, Melvin J. Lasky, Tennessee Williams and Sidney Hook. There were conservatives
Bahasa Indonesia
Italiano
among the participants, but anti-Stalinist left-wingers were more numerous.

Activities [edit]

The Congress managed to obtain enough funding to permit it to operate offices in thirty-five countries[citation needed], maintain a large staff, sponsor
events internationally, and produce numerous publications. In the early 1960s, the CCF mounted a campaign against the Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda, an ardent communist. The campaign intensified when it appeared that Neruda was a candidate for the Nobel Prize in 1964.
The Congress promoted Modern Art, particularly Abstract Expressionism and Atonal music. One theory is that its policy was to promote types of
art that were opposed in the Soviet Union.[1]

Involvement of the CIA [edit]

In 1967, the magazine Ramparts and the Saturday Evening Post reported on the CIA's funding of a number of anti-communist cultural
organizations aimed at winning the support of supposedly Soviet-sympathizing liberals worldwide. These reports were lent credence by a
statement made by a former CIA covert operations director admitting to CIA financing and operation of the CCF. Today, the official website of the
CIA [dead link] states that "[t]he Congress for Cultural Freedom is widely considered one of the CIA's more daring and effective Cold War covert
operations."
In May 1967 Thomas Braden, head of the CFC's parent body the International Organizations Division, responded to the rampart article by
publishing an article entitled, I'm Glad the CIA is Immoral , in the Saturday Evening Post, where he defended the activities of the International
Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden admitted that for more than 10 years, the CIA had subsidized Encounter through the CFC, which it
also funded, and that one of its staff was a CIA agent.[1]
Theories about the Australian arm of the IACF have abounded since 1975, when then Australian Governor-General John Kerr, an IACF member
and, according to William Blum, as cited by John Pilger, a member of the executive board of the Australian branch, dismissed the government of
then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

Greenberg freely admits that the CCF was funded through CIA fronts, and singles out for praise the role of Professor Sidney Hook[citation needed],
who founded the U.S. predecessor to the CCF, Americans for Intellectual Freedom. Greenberg also notes that at the founding conference of the
CCF in Berlin, the honorary chairmen included John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Benedetto Croce, Karl Jaspers and Jacques Maritain.

Legacy [edit]

Today, records of the International Association for Cultural Freedom and its predecessor the Congress for Cultural Freedom are stored at the
Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago's Library.

CCF/IACF-funded publications [edit]

Some of the Congress publications include:

Quadrant - a political publication of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom
Encounter (1953-90)- published in the United Kingdom for international distribution
Solidarity - a cultural, intellectual and literary monthly magazine in the Philippines
 Preuves - a cultural, intellectual and literary monthly magazine in France
Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura (1953–1963), published in Paris, edited by Julián Gorkin, assisted by Ignacio Iglesias
and Luis Mercier Verga - a cultural quarterly magazine intended for distribution in Latin America that reached 100 issues.[2]
Cadernos brasileiros (1959–1970) - a quarterly (until 1963), later bi-monthly, literary magazine published in Brazil[3]
Examen (1958–1962) - a cultural magazine published in Mexico [4].

Literature [edit]

Peter Coleman, The liberal conspiracy. The congress for cultural freedom and the struggle for the mind of postwar Europe, New York 1989
[sound survey]
Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive? Der Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen, München 1998 [comprising 
academic study on the origins, in German].
Hannemann, Matthias , Kalter Kulturkrieg in Norwegen?: Zum Wirken des "Kongreß für kulturelle Freiheit" in Skandinavien, in: 
NordeuropaForum (2/1999), S. 15-41 [on the regional structure of the CCF´s work and the commitment of Haakon Lie and Willy Brandt]
Saunders, F. S. Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War, 1999, Granta, ISBN 1862070296
Saunders, F. S. USA: The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, 2000, The New Press, ISBN 156584596X) [Same
book as the preceding, under a different title.]
Wellens, Ian (2002). Music on the Frontline: Nicolas Nabokov's Struggle against Communism and Middlebrow Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate.
ISBN 0-7546-0635-X

References [edit]

1. ^ Thomas Braden
2. ^ Ruiz Galvete, Marta: Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura: anticomunismo y guerra fría en América Latina en "El
Argonauta español ", Numéro 3, 2006 - http://argonauta.imageson.org/document75.html - retrieved 2009/10/19.
3. ^ Kristine Vanden Berghe: Intelectuales y anticomunismo: la revista "Cuadernos brasileiros" (1959-1970) Leuven University Press, Leuven,
1997 ISBN 90-6186-803-3.
4. ^ Ocampo, Aurora M. (ed.) Diccionario de escritores mexicanos, Siglo XX, UNAM, Mexico, 2000, (Volume V, p. XVIII)

External links [edit]

The Cultural Cold War

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v38i5a10p.htm
http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=950

Categories: Political organizations | Central Intelligence Agency | Cold War | Organizations established in 1950

This page was last modified on 15 April 2010 at 19:22.

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