>It is cop-baiting when you use it as an adjective in a subject header, as
>opposed to brining it up in a general discussion of the history of Cold War
>liberalism.
I don't think it's irrelevant to wonder about the ideological and employment history of someone who's had a divisive and conservatizing influence on American feminism. Did Steinem know who was behind the CCF and the NSA?
>Identifying Steinem as primarily a "CIA feminist" is about equivalent to
>McCarthy identifying every former left activist as a "known Communist" and
>arguing that was the only important identifier worth using.
In part it was a joke. In part. I was following former Economist editor Geoffrey Crowther's advice to journalists: "simplify & exaggerate."
>Key word here is "speculated"-- exactly the reason this kind of rhetoric
>used in a subject header as an adjective is cop-baiting. The reality is
>that the CIA quietly funded a whole range of liberal programs in the 50s and
>60s, so a lot of folks from the period can easily be tarred with this kind
>of smear-by-association.
And some of them deserve it. Did Irving Kristol know who was funding Encounter? Did Irving Howe know that he had a CIA asset - whose heiress wife was writing checks to keep his boring magazine afloat - writing articles about Vietnam in the late 1950s and early 1960s? I think we should be told.
>Just as in the 30s, various Communist groups funded or indirectly controlled
>a whole range of liberal groups. Did that justify McCarthy calling every
>member of those front groups a "Communist"?
There's an unpleasant tendency to react to McCarthyism by denying the existence and positive virtues of Communists altogether. Sure the CP has lots to be embarrassed about, but it also did lots of good things over the years - union and tenant organizing, civil rights work, civil liberties work. Denying that only contributes to the demonization of Commies.
>No question the CIA was trying to control a range of liberal groups in the
>50s; ditto for the Communists; ditto for other groups (Catholics, John
>Birchie types, etc.). And many of the people taking support from one or
>the other groups (or sometimes support from multiple groups) were not
>controlled by anyone, but no doubt saw themselves as playing their own
>political games with other peoples' resources.
No doubt. Outwitting the intelligence service of the world's leading imperialist power is a pretty risky game.
>Given the fact that so many lefties are so nasty and so unrelentingly
>libelous in their attacks on people they don't like, I am not surprised that
>Steinem refuses to say anything about the matter.
This is curious reasoning. Say nothing, which only encourages the worst suspicions of the tongue-waggers.
>As noted, there are plenty of things Steinem can be criticized on
>substantively for her political work, but I again wonder at the joy of some
>leftists in slagging one of the handful of top feminists willing to publicly
>identify herself as a socialist.
When did she do that? She always seemed bourgeois to me, even when she wasn't dancing with Mort Zuckerman.
Doug