If you listened to the last episode of Citations Needed, you heard that the CIA funneled money into into cultural institutions like the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Paris Review to win the cultural war against communism. Much of this led to the emphasis on first-person writing and a focus on individual experience.

I don't know about you comrades, but I got Ds throughout secondary (high school) in English. I fucking hated 20th century lit. Are there any pretentious and overly individualistic writers that you blame on the CIA?

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
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    edit-2
    3 years ago

    hot take: the marxist fixation on the CIA as the source of all that one detests is an indication that the kind of so-called materialist analysis which only recognizes state power is not applicable to all areas of society. it's the dark reflection of the belief that people in the soviet union were only communists because they had been brainwashed by the gubmint.