By Steve Bishop
The extent to which the United States has intervened in Central and South America over the years is well known to those involved in international solidarity work. The extent to which the US sees itself as having ‘interests’ beyond its shores will come as no surprise to many, given the range of interventions that US forces have been engaged in throughout the twentieth and early twenty first centuries.
Joel Whitney has chronicled the extent of US involvement in a wide range of scenarios through the device of looking at the stories of individuals involved, and their particular struggles with the US security services. However, it is not only the degree of interference in foreign ventures that Whitney highlights but the extent to which US citizens, who did not subscribe to the establishment version of the American Dream, were hounded and persecuted.
Starting immediately at the present day, Whitney outlines the systematic burying of stories by journalist Seymour Hersh, who first found fame exposing the role of US forces in Vietnam, in particular the My Lai massacre in which 500 civilians, mostly women and children, were murdered. The Hersh story revealing that Osama bin Laden was not tracked down by an intrepid CIA team, but was given up by a local informant walking into the local CIA station, was quickly buried. He revealed that Bin Laden had been under the noses of the CIA all of the time.
Reaching back, Whitney chronicles the victimisation of Paul Robeson, a well known victim of US persecution, and black American writer and civil rights activist Lorraine Hansberry.
The extent to which the CIA established front organisations in order to contain the work of radical writers and, if necessary, undermine their credibility is a theme which runs throughout the book. The American Society of African Culture was established to counter Black radicalism and anti-imperialism. The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), established by the CIA, played an especially invidious role in highlighting work that would not challenge the establishment. Through its publication Mundo Nuevo the CCF aimed to give opportunities to new writers from Latin America, who would not present a challenge, and thereby sanitise the image of Latin American literature.
The chapter Whitney devotes to journalist Frances Stonor Saunders, author of The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters is especially illuminating. The extent to which the CIA exercised editorial control over CCF publications is especially eye opening, warning editors away from criticism of US policy, especially foreign policy.
The anti-communist emphasis in the publications and magazines of the CCF was paramount with the reach of the CIA extending to the film industry and other publishing houses, where operatives could “get your book killed if it failed to celebrate the West.” There is nothing to suggest that such practices do not continue to be prevalent within the United States, or that their reach does not continue to extend across the Atlantic to the BBC, who called insertions included to mask their bias, “credibility items”.
The final sections of Whitney’s book cover Rigoberta Menchu, Jennifer Harbury and Manuel Zelaya, with a particular emphasis upon the fate of the Maya population in Guatemala and Honduras. As well as chronicling the extent to which these individuals struggled to have work published, or their experiences believed by the media, Whitney outlines the extent to which US involvement in Latin America is an ongoing issue.
Ironically, the massacres of civilians and the ongoing support for anti-democratic regimes in Guatemala and Honduras have contributed massively to the refugee crisis, which is such a major issue in US politics. The parallel with NATO interventions in Iraq, Syria and Libya with the refugee crisis in Europe are clear.
Whitney’s essays also include more high profile names such as Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Graham Greene and Diego Rivera though a somewhat omission is Pablo Neruda, surely an obvious candidate as a radical on the run in this company.
However, Whitney has provided an important insight into the way in which the US state has sought to influence the cultural agenda, shape the political landscape and sanitise the way in which the world views the United States. That Whitney’s book exists is testament to the fact that the US has not entirely succeeded in this quest. Nevertheless, guarding against the machinations of imperialism, and its continued efforts at cultural imperialism, are areas in which vigilance is still required.
Steve Bishop is a Liberation member
Flights – Radicals on the Run is published by Or Books.
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