Association for Cultural Freedom
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The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. In 1967, it was revealed that the United States Central Intelligence Agency was instrumental in the establishment of the group, and it was subsequently renamed the International Association for Cultural Freedom (IACF). At its height, the CCF/IACF was active in some thirty-five countries and also received significant funding from the Ford Foundation.
Creation of the CCF
The Congress was founded at the Titania Palace in West Berlin in 26 June, 1950 to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy was less 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.Activities
The Congress managed to obtain enough funding to permit it to operate offices in thirty-five countries, maintain a large staff, sponsor events internationally, and produce numerous publications. In the early 1960s, the CCF mounted a campaign to discredit 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.CCF/IACF-funded publications
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
Involvement of the CIA
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 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.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. This move has been described by a few as a coup d'etat engineered from the United States, [link].
In December, 2005, the Washington Times published a commentary by Paul Greenberg[link], in which Greenberg praises the propaganda activity of the CCF and equates it with the recent activities of the Bush administration, where government money was used to purchase the services of Iraqi and American journalists and editors, in order to publish stories favorable to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Greenberg freely admits that the CCF was funded through CIA fronts, and singles out for praise the role of Professor Sidney Hook, 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
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.External links
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