Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The CIA’s 60-Year History of Fake News: How the Deep State Corrupted Many American Writers

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

The CIA’s 60-Year History of Fake News: How the Deep State Corrupted Many American Writers

Click here to access a 32:38m video and transcript of an interview by Robert Scheer with Joel Whitney the author of a new book entitled Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World’s Best Writers.

This is a particularly timely book because it illustrates how the CIA and other organs of the capitalist deep state intentionally practiced fake news operations over three decades following the end of WWII. Not that there wasn't fake news perpetrated by the capitalist ruling class before then, but it wasn't so intentionally and systematically practiced. The book also shows how easily highly educated and literate people of the upper middle class can be so easily induced with money to participate in programs which are intended to spread propaganda or fake news.

What the book doesn't deal with are the systematic attempts to issue fake news since this period. I've read several books by authors that claim that such systematic methods are no longer used because they are unnecessary: media corporations have been so thoroughly cleansed of genuine journalists who are dedicated to reporting reality, and the existing staff so thoroughly indoctrinated in the values and views of the Empire's capitalism that they have no problem with fake news.