Congress for Cultural Freedom

The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was an anti-communist advocacy group founded in 1950. At its height, the CCF was active in thirty-five countries. Founding figures included anti-communist Sidney Hook, former communist Arthur Koestler, Melvin J. Lasky, and undercover CIA officer Michael Josselson. In 1966 it was revealed that the CIA was instrumental in the establishment and funding of the group.

Historian Frances Stonor Saunders writes (1999): "Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists, or critics in postwar Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise." A different slant on the origins and work of the Congress is offered by Peter Coleman in his Liberal Conspiracy (1989) where he talks about a struggle for the mind "of Postwar Europe" and the world at large.

The CCF was founded on 26 June 1950 at the Titania Palast theater in West Berlin, which had just endured months of Soviet blockade. The founding conference was titled "The Future of Freedom" and brought together over 100 prominent intellectuals, artists, and politicians from Europe and the Americas. The explicit goal was to counter the Soviet-sponsored "World Peace Council" and its narrative that Western culture was decadent and imperialist. The CCF declared itself an independent, non-communist left organization. In reality, it was a CIA front from day one. The CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) had been planning a "cultural offensive" since 1948.

Its stated purpose was to find ways to counter the view that liberal democracy was less compatible with culture than communism. In practical terms it aimed to challenge the post-war sympathies with the USSR of many Western intellectuals and fellow travellers, particularly among liberals and the non-Communist Left.

"Give me a hundred million dollars and a thousand dedicated people, and I will guarantee to generate such a wave of democratic unrest among the masses — yes, even among the soldiers — of Stalin's own empire, that all his problems for a long period of time to come will be internal. I can find the people." – Sidney Hook, 1949

Among the two most important CIA front organizations that funded the CCP was The Farfield Foundation and The Kaplan Fund.

While originally aimed at the Soviet Union, its cultural weaponry (specifically, French postmodernism, relativism, and the rejection of "grand narratives") was later repurposed to capture Global South and Indigenous autonomy movements.

The CCF used journals to spread its agenda. These included Encounter (UK), Preuves (France), Der Monat (West Germany), and Cuadernos (Latin America). There was also Aportes (Latin America), Black Orpheus (Nigeria), Cadernos Brasileiros (Brazil), Censorship (UK), China Report (India), The China Quarterly (United Kingdom), Cuadernos del Congreso por la Libertad de la Cultura (Paris, intended for distribution in Latin America), Encounter (UK), Examen (Mexico), Forvm (Austria), Hiwar (Lebanon), Informes de China (Argentina), Jiyu/Freedom (Japan), Kulturkontakt (Sweden), Minerva (UK), Mundo Nuevo (Latin America), Perspektiv (Denmark), Preuves (France), Quadrant (Australia), Quest (India), Sasanggye (South Korea), Science and Freedom, Social Science Review (Thailand), Solidarity (Philippines), Soviet Survey/Survey, Tempo Presente (Italy), and Transition Magazine (Uganda).

After being exposed in 1967, it rebranded to the International Foundation for Cultural Freedom.

The full archives can be read at the University of Chicago Library.

See also

• New Left
• CIA and the Cultural Cold War
• Non-Communist Left