In 1967, Steinem revealed in an interview with The New York Times that she worked full time from 1958 until 1962 at the Independent Research Service, which was largely financed by the CIA. In May 1975, Redstockings, a radical feminist group, published a report put together for the Independent Research Service by Steinem and others on the Vienna Youth Festival and its attendees. Redstockings raised the question of whether Steinem had continuing ties with the CIA, which Steinem denied. Steinem defended her relationship to the CIA, saying: “In my experience the agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Steinem also stated that she considered the CIA allies in promoting U.S. government policy against communism during the early Cold War.
“In my experience the [CIA] was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
…1958 to 1962…
1958, Iraqi military coup,
Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation which originated within the Department of Defense of the US government in 1962.
In 1959, U.S. Special Operations Forces (Military and CIA) began to train some Laotian soldiers in unconventional warfare techniques as early as the fall of 1959 under the code name “Erawan”. Under this code name, General Vang Pao, who served the royal Lao family, recruited and trained his Hmong and Iu-Mien soldiers. The Hmong and Iu-Mien were targeted as allies after President John F. Kennedy, who refused to send more American soldiers to battle in Southeast Asia, took office. Instead, he called the CIA to use its tribal forces in Laos and “make every possible effort to launch guerrilla operations in North Vietnam with its Asian recruits.”
On October 14, 1962, a Lockheed U-2 flown by Major Richard Heyser photographed Soviet medium-range missile sites under construction in Cuba [beginning American aggression termed ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’).
Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961,
Project MKUltra was a CIA human experimentation program (1953–1973),
surebuddy.png
She’s right, they were liberals!
Forgot Tibetan “freedom fighters”
“In my experience the [CIA] was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.”
Neo: Morpheus… The Oracle…she told me…
Morpheus: She told you exactly what you needed to hear. Sooner or later you’re going to learn, just as I did… there’s a difference between knowing the path… And walking the path.
They told her exactly what they wanted her to hear to push their agenda of sowing division and divorcing female justice from social justice.
Another disgusting CIA GHOUL gone
Good work Hexbear, the money has been wired to your account.
Libs are going to give her the RBG treatment aren’t they
For sure, I’ve already seen her transphobic history be called “taking something out of context” because she gave a lukewarm apology 40 years later.
I knew she was a CIA operative, but what did she do for them? How did she serve state interests? Genuine question
She was a leader in the second wave feminist movement which said that “formal” political power was not enough for feminism and that feminism needed to focus on real substantive issues like pay disparity and how many woman CEOs there were. She essentially deradicalized feminism in the West and made it about whether women were allowed to be girl bosses
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She worked with the CIA to push anti communist and anti USSR rhetoric. She also had quite impactful anti trans beliefs. Im sure theres more but thats what i know of her.
Gloria Steinem serves as an Honorary Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its predecessor, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. A position she has held since the 1980s.
Huh interesting tidbit I learned today
Steinem was recruited by CIA officers to lead the IRS, which sent American students to Soviet-backed World Youth Festivals in Vienna and Helsinki to spread anti-communist red scare propaganda. She was also tasked with demonizing class-based politics and Marxism.
She was an important culture manufacturer in the west.
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rip bozo
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Steinem defended her relationship to the CIA, saying: “In my experience the agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Steinem also stated that she considered the CIA allies in promoting U.S. government policy against communism during the early Cold War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Steinem#CIA_ties_and_leader_of_Independent_Research_Service
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i can’t really say that i think crab rave is an inappropriate response to the death of someone who literally worked for the CIA. i think dismissing this sort of thing as just “soft power” “nonviolent” activities is an error too. she played a significant role in neutering the radicalism of the women’s movement in the US, away from class analysis and towards girl boss feminism. that is meaningful harm. and more generally the intellectual struggle and intellectual class war is important, more than a lot of folks give it credit for.
In one of the anti-Gloria Steinem articles that is floating around today there is the quote, “Socialist feminists and radical feminists…like Barbara Ehrenreich…argued consistently that gender liberation without economic liberation was a half-measure…”
Barbara Ehrenreich wrote for Ms. Magazine. She credits her breakthrough as a journalist to a cover story in Ms Magazine, and wrote for them through the late seventies and eighties. She had a column in Ms Magazine where she did write about economic issues, among other things.
Stuff like this is sort of what I’m responding to. You can’t go on and on about the inadequacy of Gloria Steinem and then in your listing of “better” feminists you cite a woman who credits Ms Magazine with her success and notoriety. And not even in a small one off way, she was associated with the magazine pretty closely at both her and the magazine’s height.
And then I’m also responding to the double standard we give certain cultural figures who, despite their extremely egregious mistakes, we essentially elevate to the position of class hero, while others, who are in the end much closer to our positions, we relentlessly attack. Which is maybe deserved, but when seen in the light of our treatment of those much more deserving of such criticism, comes off as insincere.
As I say above and in my original comment, there was a lot to Gloria Steinem and Ms Magazine we’d agree with. While she’s probably been forever tainted by the legacy of liberal feminism, there are economic writings in Ms Magazine. There is anti-imperialism. Steinem was not goose stepping to war in 2003 nor was she in 1991. Ms Magazine articles were making the same points in 2002 regarding the cynical use of women’s treatment by the Taliban as motive for war that we were making on this site in 2021. It’s not all we need more female drone operators. Further, liberal feminism leaves a bad taste in our mouth because we’ve been subject to years and years of epic girlboss feminism, but back in the 70s a huge part of the liberal feminist project was having women not live as essentially wards of their husbands and hey maybe women could get a credit card and own property without their husband’s signature. Those are goals not completely out of step with our own and not the complete den of reaction most of us imagine when we hear “liberal feminism,” even if we wish it could’ve been gone about another way. I mean most of the substantive critiques of Steinem are merely critiques of white feminism and of second wave feminism. The same could be said of Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Frieidan, are we to throw every second wave feminist away because the movement was insufficient? They added something important to the conversation, even if that it enough. The CIA and Gloria Steinem did not create second wave feminism and the cia and Gloria Steinem were not the sole forces pushing it.
So that’s a lot of writing but I hope my point comes across. You write that she was instrumental in neutering radicalism but I disagree with this framing. She wasn’t cynically working against the feminist movement, she was a liberal feminist and far from the only one and there was plenty in her career that was useful and we can single out for praise, and most of what we can criticize is a consequence of liberalism rather than any cynical anti-feminism. Including I’d argue the cia stuff.
Non-violence and soft power is just imperialism.
https://nonsite.org/change-agent-gene-sharps-neoliberal-nonviolence-part-one/
You just reposted a critique that the OP addressed in their comment, I’m not really sure what the point of this is.
OP didn’t really address it in his comment. He identified that critique, but the upshot of the comment appears to come at the end of the prior paragraph:
our actual criticism seems to come down to mere insufficiency
The paragraph about the CIA is pretty meandering, but it appears to say that GS should not be criticized for directly working with the CIA to undermine leftist feminism because DP was a liberal and supported the US?
My own take on OP’s post is similar to what imogen says below. Dolly Parton was a country music singer from East TN, so she was coming out of a world where most figures are outspoken right-wing reactionaries. So having one of the most famous people in that world support LGBT+ and other working class people to some is extremely radical and brave. Like the only accepting relative in a queer and/or leftist person’s family. Gloria Steinham was ostensibly “of” the left, but worked with directly with the CIA to undermine left-wing movements and splinter the feminist movement from the workers movement and feminism is still working to overcome that devastating shift.
Fair points!
She was a sheepdog, through and through. She was elevated by the CIA because she made sure to never mention intersectionality, how gender issues would never be resolved without addressing the issues pertaining to class and race.
I also think much of her work is getting rolled back, in my opinion, the fall of the USSR plays a part in why so many of women’s rights are being relinquished, the rights were never seized, only granted temporarily by the state, allowing for these rollbacks to occur now that there isn’t a reason to keep up the facade.
I didn’t know that about Dolly Parton though, that’s a shame to hear.
the fall of the USSR plays a part
absolutely check out this essay for similar arcs https://redsails.org/concessions
I mean cmon. Kimberle Crenshaw doesn’t coin intersectionality until 1989. Meanwhile Steinem works closely with Flo Kennedy back in the 70s. This is the woman who represents Assata Shakur and H Rap Brown as defense attorney and is closely associated with the Black Power movement. The two of them, among others, end up founding the National Women’s Political Caucus together. Steinem was extremely imperfect on race but to act as if she suppressed it’s discussion is absurd.
You mean the liberals didn’t yet invent this particular term to co-opt the concept from the revolutionaries such as Claudia Jones.
i don’t really have much skin in this one but it seems like a pretty important distinction that one was a country music singer and one was a thought leader and vaunted intellectual producer
The best way to avoid criticism is to never say anything of note
accepting critique is a pillar of marxism – keep that in mind if anyone tries to accuse you of splintering-the-leftTM
