Books, Arts & Manners: Fighting The Good Fight

The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (Free Press, 350 pp., $22.95)

Writing in The Nation in 1967, Christopher Lasch presented what became the generally accepted judgment on the Congress for Cultural Freedom. According to Lasch, the Congress published works that served “as rationalizations of American world power,” held meetings that preached “the immorality of neutralism,” and worked with liberals whose views were “indistinguishable from those of the Right.” The American branch of the Congress was, Lasch wrote, “a coalition of liberals and reactionaries who shared a conspiratorial view of Communism.” These intellectuals may have believed in “cultural freedom,” but, like their Soviet counterparts, they were not free men. Indeed, the American intellectuals were almost pathetic, since they thought they were acting and thinking independently, while in reality they were “servants . . . of the secret police.” Having once served the Communists, they now served the CIA. In both cases, they served a lie.

About the Author

Ronald Radosh

Mr. Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a contributing opinion columnist at the Daily Beast, is a co-author of Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War and the author of Commies: A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left.

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The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (Free Press, 350 pp., $22.95)

Writing in The Nation in 1967, Christopher Lasch presented what became the generally accepted judgment on the Congress for Cultural Freedom. According to Lasch, the Congress published works that served “as rationalizations of American world power,” held meetings that preached “the immorality of neutralism,” and worked with liberals whose views were “indistinguishable from those of the Right.” The American branch of the Congress was, Lasch wrote, “a coalition of liberals and reactionaries who shared a conspiratorial view of Communism.” These intellectuals may have believed in “cultural freedom,” but, like their Soviet counterparts, they were not free men. Indeed, the American intellectuals were almost pathetic, since they thought they were acting and thinking independently, while in reality they were “servants . . . of the secret police.” Having once served the Communists, they now served the CIA. In both cases, they served a lie.

About the Author

Ronald Radosh

Mr. Radosh, an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and a contributing opinion columnist at the Daily Beast, is a co-author of Spain Betrayed: The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War and the author of Commies: A Journey through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left.