Why the CIA Cares About Marxism

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/15/why-the-cia-cares-about-marxism/
Date Written:  2017-06-15
Publisher:  Counter Punch
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21192

Abundant evidence of course exists of the CIA's complex cultural interventions into French intellectual affairs -- but it is critical to recognise that it was the political shortcomings of communist organizations themselves (i.e., Stalinists) that had the determinant impact on the obscurantist trajectory of left-wing academic ideas.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

In a widely read essay for the Los Angeles Review of Books entitled "The CIA reads French theory: on the intellectual labor of dismantling the cultural left" (February 27, 2017), Gabriel Rockhill spins an intriguing yarn about the CIA and their interest in keeping abreast of French political theory throughout the Cold War. "According to the spy agency itself," Rockhill observed, "post-Marxist French theory directly contributed to the CIA's cultural program of coaxing the left toward the right, while discrediting anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism…" Here the professor was making particular reference to a recently declassified CIA report, authored in 1985, that focuses on the intellectual milieu around Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan.