TraductionTotalitarianism according to the CIA sponsored western intelligentsia (4)
Before refuting one by one the huge literature related to totalitarianism shaped, supported and funded by the American CIA and the British IRD, as ideological and political weapon directed against not only the Soviet Union and international Communism but also and in the last resort against any revolutionary movements over the world, it will be useful to investigate the starting point of this very well imaginative and chimeric story invented out of nothing by American and British’s propaganda agencies in the aftermath of the Second World War. The founding fathers of totalitarianism’s story were indisputably by the CIA and the IRD created in the aftermath of the Second World War within the Framework of American and British governments struggle against their old Ally during the war, the Soviet Union and their willingness to contain both the communism and nationalist movements emerging from their fight against their old colonizers. The totalitarianism’s story sponsored by the CIA in the aftermath of the Second World War was elaborated through three successive steps. First, the making up of the idea of totalitarianism such as conceived by their strategists specialized in the psychological warfare benefiting from two world wars experiences. That was the first step. The Second step was the recruitment of an anti-communist intelligentsia in the United States and especially in Europe where the European intelligentsia being already inveigling by the idea of communism must be converted and whose mission was to denigrate the socialist achievement in the Soviet Union and to fabricate the black legend of Stalinism by spreading according to Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflex Locke’s associate ideas, consisting through an intense and continued psychological war of creating an associating idea comparing Stalin to Hitler and Mussolini and putting in the same basket the Communist regime in the Soviet Union the Nazi regime in Germany and fascist regime in Italy. The third step consists of financial support and the funding of myriad of networks and institutions enlisted by the CIA in its war again communism.
- Casting of Totalitarianism’s idea. It is noteworthy to mention the key role played by the British propaganda agency, Information Research Department ( IRD), setting up in February 1948 by Clement Attlee’s Government, which was in fact despite its innocuous title, “a secret Ministry of Cold War” ( Frances Stonor Saunders, who paid the piper, p. 59) and whose mission was to denigrate the Soviet experiment and ” to produce and distribute and circulate un attributable propaganda” (Ibid.p 59) The means implemented by IRD strategists consist of making up and compiling “factual” reports “for distribution amongst members of the British intelligentsia who then expected to recycle these facts in their own work” (Ibid) In this anti-Soviet and anti-communist campaign, it was very important according to Stonor saunder to hide the provider of these fabricated facts in order “to achieve the widest possible circulation for IRD material whilst protecting the existence of an officially sanctioned and secretly funded anti-communist propaganda campaign about which the public knew nothing” . As plainly claimed by the Ralph Murray, IRD’s first chief, the facts voluntarily fabricated by his propaganda department should be used as basic material at the disposal of the anti-communist recruits “engaged in the fabrication of propaganda directed against the Soviet Union” (F . Stonor Saunders, who paid the piper, p. 59). In short words, totalitarianism made CIA and IRD was born not from epistemological query about what is really this new study case which is totalitarianism but from a vast propaganda campaign waged by the governments of the United States and Britain against their old Ally during the Second World War, the Soviet Union, with the sole aim, turning aside the Western intelligentsia from communism and Marxism.
- Recruitment of supporters. The second step concerns the recruitment and enlistment of anti-communist intelligentsia and the setting up of permanent and established institutions devoted to fight communism and the Soviet regime in Russia. I have already mention the name of William Henry Chamberlain and the formation of a new scholarship branch, the Kremlinology by Charles Bohlen. At these two names, we must add a third name who played a key role in the spread of idea of totalitarianism among American and European intelligentsia, the Hungarian-born renegade Arthur Koestler. The common characteristic of these three men: all together had lived in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution onwards. That is why they became privileged target of the CIA and the IRD in their psychological warfare against communism and its intelligentsia in Western Europe. British’s IRD recruited its first agent, the Hungarian-born, Arthur Koestler, whose role was to recruit other anti-communist warriors coming from the left-wing politics. IRD’s propaganda campaign began with the publication in 1947 of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Moon”, depicting the Soviet union as a terror regime and as vast camp of concentration. In 1948, the CIA supported and funded a lecture tour in the United States where he met high ranking chiefs in State Department and the CIA strategists in the Psychological warfare.
- Funding groups and organizations committed to spread Totalitarianism’s idea. After the creation of the American Intelligence agency (CIA), a new department National Security directive, NSC-68, was drafted in March 1950, by the new director of the Policy planning Staff, Paul Nitze who had replaced Kennan. This directive, NSC-68 aimed at spreading the “the superiority of the idea of freedom” and the “truth (which( also needs propaganda” (Frances Stonor Saunders, who paid the paiper, p. 97). For this purpose, the budgetary provisions planned by NSC-68 fixed the amount of $34 million to be spent on Psychological warfare in 1950 and was to be quadrupled during the coming years. This CIA’s money was to served to fund the psychological warfare against the Soviet Union and Communism through organizations such as the Congress for Cultural freedom and recruitment of anti-communist warriors especially among the Non-Communist Left in Western Europe. It was in this ideological context that took shape the idea of comparing two irreducible political and ideological system, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and to put in the same basket the imperialist and racist doctrines of Nazism and Fascism with the principles of Soviet communism based on the abolition of exploitation of man by other men and the solidarity of the USSR with the colonized and oppressed peoples by western imperialism.
