Joshua Scheer
Ben Norton examines the little-discussed history of CIA influence over the American left—and the role played by one of the most celebrated feminist icons of the modern era, Gloria Steinem. Steinem’s work with a CIA-funded organization during the Cold War, Norton argues, was part of a broader effort to cultivate a “compatible left”: liberal voices that could promote American power while presenting the United States as a force for democracy, human rights and progress.
But the story doesn’t end with Steinem. Norton connects the Cold War propaganda apparatus to CIA interventions in Iran, Guatemala, Italy and Indonesia, the enormous human toll of U.S. post-9/11 wars, and the cultural institutions and intellectuals allegedly enlisted to fight the ideological battle against communism.
He then brings that history into the present, arguing that the same political language can be heard in today’s Democratic Party—from Hillary Clinton to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—particularly in rhetoric about “democracy vs. authoritarianism,” U.S. intervention abroad and the supposed moral distinction between American power and its rivals.
The central question is provocative: Has the machinery of Cold War propaganda really disappeared—or has it simply learned how to speak the language of modern liberalism?
Highlights
- Gloria Steinem and the CIA: Steinem acknowledged working with the CIA-funded Independent Research Service during the Cold War.
- The “compatible left”: Norton argues that the CIA sought to cultivate center-left figures who opposed communism without challenging U.S. imperial power.
- CIA coups and intervention: The analysis examines U.S. involvement in the overthrow of governments in Iran and Guatemala, as well as CIA interference in Italy’s 1948 election. – Indonesia: Norton examines U.S. support for the Indonesian military amid the mass killings of 1965–66.
- The cultural Cold War: The analysis explores the CIA-backed Congress for Cultural Freedom and its connections to artists, writers and intellectuals.
- From Steinem to today: Norton argues that Cold War narratives about democracy, authoritarianism and U.S. power continue to influence contemporary liberal politics.
Ben Norton / Geopolitical Economy Report
EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript has been cleaned for readability while maintaining the speaker’s original words, meaning, arguments, and overall sequence. Timestamps have been removed, punctuation and paragraphing have been lightly edited, and obvious transcription/spelling errors in names and terms have been corrected.
Today I’m going to be explaining one of the ways in which US intelligence agencies manipulate public opinion in order to support U.S. wars and interventions abroad. And this scandal involves one of the most prominent political activists in modern US history. Her name was Gloria Steinem. She was a major feminist leader and she just passed away this September. And the reason that I’m talking about Gloria Steinem today is that many people have heard of her and they know that she was a feminist icon. But what many people do not know is that she was a CIA agent. She worked for the US Central Intelligence Agency for years. And later in this analysis today, I’ll look at the evidence detailing how Steinem was used by the U.S. in order to manufacture consent for the U.S. Empire’s wars of aggression for its imperial crimes and especially as a vehicle for anti-communist propaganda. Steinem worked for the CIA at the height of the first cold war and she was a proud part of the U.S. Empire’s global propaganda narrative when the US tried to portray itself as a progressive beacon of liberal values that was defending democracy in scare quotes and human rights and fighting against the big bad boogeymen of the Soviet Union fighting against communism. This is why the CIA hired Steinem because she was a very effective propagandist
Chapter 2: Hillary Clinton, warmonger
and Steinem is being honored by many prominent U.S. government officials especially from the Democratic party. Steinem in particular was a close friend of Hillary Clinton the former presidential candidate and the secretary of state under President Barack Obama. And although Hillary Clinton loves to use feminist rhetoric, she is a notorious war hawk and she’s frankly a war criminal up there with the likes of George W. Bush. When the Bush administration launched an illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Clinton strongly supported it. More than a million Iraqis died in this war of aggression. Moreover, when Clinton was the Secretary of State under Obama back in 2011, the US waged a regime change war to overthrow the government of Libya. And this is what Hillary Clinton said live on TV after U.S.-backed NATO forces killed the longtime Libyan leader Muhammad Gaddafi. Unconfirmed. We came, we saw, he died. [laughter] Did it have anything to do with your visit? No. Oh, I’m sure it did.
Chapter 3: US-NATO war brought slavery to Libya
By the way, after Obama and Clinton waged war in Libya in 2011 with the support of other major Western allies like Canada and France and the UK, immediately after they overthrew the Libyan government, Libya became a failed state with an ongoing civil war we still see happening today. And Libya also became the global center of human trafficking and slavery. There are literal open-air slave markets where African refugees are bought and sold as cattle slaves in Libya today thanks to being liberated in scare quotes by the US western governments and NATO which overthrew the Libyan government in 2011.
Chapter 4: Imperialist ‘feminism’
So, this is what the so-called feminism of people like Hillary Clinton or Gloria Steinem represents. Today, I’m going to be explaining how they embody a certain kind of imperialist, warmongering, so-called feminism, which women of color in the global south often call white feminism, or you could simply call bourgeois liberal imperialist feminism, where they use the issue of women’s oppression, which is very real all around the world. It’s a very important cause, but they exploit it in order to support imperialism and war. And this is precisely why Steinem worked for the CIA. This is why the CIA used liberal imperialist feminists like Steinem in order to manufacture consent for the crimes of the U.S. empire all around the world. And by the way, I should make it
Chapter 5: Steinem’s work for the CIA
very clear here that these are not just allegations. It has been admitted publicly for decades that Gloria Steinem worked for the CIA. It was first disclosed back in 1967 in an article in the New York Times about how the CIA was funding American student activists and sending them around the world to try to give the US a better reputation to compete with the Soviet Union during the first cold war. This report revealed that Steinem was the leader of a group of student activists funded by the CIA and they were sent to the World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and to Helsinki, Finland in 1962. And Gloria Steinem admitted that she was working for the CIA and that the trips were funded by the CIA through a CIA front organization called the Independent Research Service, which by the way is very funny. The CIA loves to fund organizations that call themselves independent when obviously they’re not. And an important detail in this New York Times article is that Steinem was working for the CIA. She admitted that she knew that she was working for the CIA proudly, but many of the other student activists on this trip did not know that they were being funded by the CIA. So, Steinem was misleading these other student activists and using them as tools, as pawns in the Cold War as a part of an anti-communist propaganda operation. What the CIA was trying to do here was to shape a new generation of what it called the
Chapter 6: CIA’s ‘compatible left’
compatible left that is compatible with US imperialism because obviously right-wing groups in the US all support U.S. wars and imperialism and capitalism. So, the CIA was focused on trying to neutralize and co-opt left-wing groups in the US, turning them anti-communist and pro-imperialist to manufacture consent for U.S. wars and interventions abroad. So in this article in the New York Times, Gloria Steinem admitted that she was part of this CIA operation that was quote urging young persons who espoused flexible but non-communist foreign policy views to attend. And they added quote its most important work was to convince youths from Asia, Africa, and Latin America that some Americans understood their aspirations for national self-determination. Miss Steinem said end quote. So it was part of a disinformation operation to deceive people in the global south to believe that the US supported their independent struggles while the US was supporting right-wing military dictatorships and carrying out coups to overthrow left-wing independent governments and opposing the national liberation struggles in the global south. All of this was about creating a so-called compatible left that would not oppose imperialism because of course the real left, the revolutionary left has always opposed imperialism. You cannot actually be a leftist if you’re not an anti-imperialist. So the CIA is trying to create this fake left. And Gloria Steinem was a major figure in this CIA operation to develop a pro-imperialist compatible left as the CIA put it. Here’s a video clip in which Steinem admitted on a TV interview that she proudly worked for the CIA.
Chapter 7: (CLIP) Steinem admits to CIA work
Gloria, at the festival, you worked for the Independent Research Service. That’s right. Well, exactly when did your own association with the CIA start and in what fashion? Did they come to you or did you go to them? In 1958 when I came home from from India I discussed with student leaders past and present u many of them active with the national student association this kind of small foundation to encourage Americans to go. It was at that point that the student leaders said to me that they had in the past received funds for international programs from the CIA and that they felt that this was important and could also be partly funded by the CIA. You mean to say it was easier for you to work for the CIA than a private organization? That’s right. And and the the reason I think that comes as a surprise is it did to me at the time. I mean, I had the conventional liberals view of the CIA as a right-wing incendiary group, and I was amazed to discover that this was far from the case, that they were enlightened, liberal, nonpartisan activists of the sort who characterized the Kennedy administration, for instance. Now, if you listen to that propaganda there from the CIA agent
Chapter 8: CIA coup in Iran
Steinem, you hear her say that the CIA is full of enlightened liberal-minded people who love human rights and all of that propagandistic nonsense. This is totally ridiculous if you know anything about the basic history of the CIA. Like for instance, just a few years before Steinem did that interview on TV back in 1953, the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh because he nationalized the oil in his country and the U.S. and British oil corporations wanted to control Iran’s oil. So the CIA put in power a dictator, a literal monarch, the Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was a US puppet who governed with an iron fist, brutalizing the people of Iran. So this is the real face of the CIA. It overthrew Iran’s democratically elected nationalist anti-colonial government and restored the monarchy because the Shah was, of course, a pro-western puppet. And then do you know what the CIA did the next year in 1954?
Chapter 9: CIA coup in Guatemala
Gloria Steinem insisted that the CIA is full of these enlightened liberals. Well, those enlightened liberals acting as foot soldiers for the U.S. Empire overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz, in another CIA orchestrated coup. And the reason that the CIA did this is because the Guatemalan president Árbenz was a left-wing nationalist. He was not a communist, by the way. He was a left-wing nationalist. And he carried out land reform in Guatemala, breaking up the massive land holdings of the oligarchs and U.S. corporations like the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita. These U.S. corporations and these oligarchs in the country controlled all of the land. So he carried out land reform and he gave landless peasants in Guatemala some land that they could use in order to grow food. And US corporate executives were furious. So, U.S. corporations conspired with the CIA to overthrow Guatemala’s elected government and put in power a right-wing military regime that then caused a civil war and chaos and suffering and mass casualties in Guatemala for decades. I mean, there
Chapter 10: CIA meddling in foreign elections
are countless examples of this in recent history. You don’t need to be an expert on the history of the CIA to know this. This is basic history. And even mainstream US media outlets have admitted that the CIA has long intervened in foreign elections. In fact, the first ever CIA covert operation was in 1948,
Chapter 11: CIA interfered in Italy’s 1948 elections
one year after the National Security Act of 1947 established the CIA. A year later, the CIA rigged the election in Italy. It was the first ever democratic election in Italy since the beginning of the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. So after World War II ended in 1948, Italy had elections. The CIA rigged those elections because the Communist Party and the Socialists in Italy were so popular. They formed an alliance because they were the ones who fought against fascism. The right-wing groups and the Catholic Church all collaborated with the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini. The communists led the opposition to fascism. So obviously they were very popular after World War II. So the CIA rigged the election. They also worked with the Catholic Church, bribing Catholic officials in order to excommunicate Italian communists. and they stole the election on behalf of right-wing groups who of course were allies of the U.S. in the first cold war. That was the first ever covert operation carried out by the CIA. And ever since then, the CIA has been one of the main
Chapter 12: U.S. empire opposes real democracy
opponents of democracy on Earth, of real democracy. The U.S. empire loves to talk about democracy in scare quotes, by which they mean capitalist regimes in which billionaire oligarchs and large corporations control the political system, in which they buy and sell elections and decide who the elected politicians will be. That’s the US definition of democracy. And this is precisely why the CIA recruited these center-left pro-imperialist anti-communist activists like Gloria Steinem because they are convenient propaganda mouthpieces that try to convince people around the world that the U.S. empire is actually progressive. It supports human rights. It supports democracy. Meanwhile, while Steinem was working for the CIA in the 1960s, it was
Chapter 13: U.S.-backed atrocities in Indonesia
overseeing some of the worst atrocities in modern history. So, for instance, in 1965, the CIA backed a military coup in Indonesia, which overthrew the democratically elected leader of Indonesia at the time, Sukarno, who was the first ever president of Indonesia. He led Indonesia in its independent struggle against Dutch colonialism. And he was a left-wing nationalist. He was not a communist, but he was allied with the communists. And this infuriated the U.S. empire. So the CIA backed a coup against Sukarno. And in 1965 and 1966, the Indonesian military, led by far-right extremist generals, carried out one of the worst campaigns of mass killings in modern history. They killed between 1 and three million people, including pretty much anyone who was associated with the Communist Party, because Indonesia had one of the world’s largest communist parties at the time, and the US feared there would be a revolution. So, the Indonesian military, backed by the CIA, backed by the U.S. embassy, exterminated anyone associated with the Communist Party, they carried out mass killings of labor organizers, of other left-wing activists, of ethnic Chinese in Indonesia because they assumed that all Chinese people in Indonesia were communists. They also killed secular activists because the people leading these mass killings were religious extremists, which is of course one of many examples in modern US history of the CIA backing far-right religious extremists like it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s when the CIA backed the so-called mujahedin that later became al-Qaeda and the Taliban. These were major US allies in the first cold war against the Soviet Union and against the socialist government in Afghanistan that was backed by the Soviet Union. But anyway, when we go back to the issue of Indonesia, these mass killings in 1965 and 1966, the killing of more than 1 million people, probably 3 million people, the U.S. government supported this, all of it. In fact, not only did the CIA back the operation, but the U.S. embassy was literally giving a list of communists and left-wing activists to the Indonesian generals, telling them, “You need to eliminate all of the leftists in Indonesia so U.S. corporations can take over Indonesia and its large oil and gold reserves.” By the way, the CIA itself admitted in an internal report that was later declassified. It wrote that the mass killings, the genocide in Indonesia in 1965 and 1966 constituted quote one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century. End quote. Of course, they didn’t add the fact that they supported that mass atrocity that is up there at the level of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. These were the horrific crimes against humanity that were carried out by the US
Chapter 14: Imperialist feminists for war
government and specifically by the CIA when Gloria Steinem was working for the spy agency and telling everyone actually the CIA is so progressive. The CIA supports human rights and feminism and democracy and all of that nonsense. Again, this is precisely why Steinem is now being praised so viciferously by prominent U.S. government officials like Hillary Clinton, one of the worst war criminals in modern history. We came, we saw, he died. [laughter] Because Steinem and Clinton are part of this movement of liberal imperialist white feminism, as global south feminists call it, who do not care about women in the global south. They don’t care about Palestinian women being killed by U.S.-backed Israeli forces. They don’t care about the Iranian women being bombed by the U.S. military. Hillary Clinton didn’t care about the women in Iraq and Afghanistan who were killed in these U.S. wars that she claimed, by the way, were about liberating women, which is totally cynical and nonsensical. It’s not just men who die in war. In fact, the cost of war project at Brown
Chapter 15: U.S. wars cause millions of deaths
University, an elite Ivy League university in the US, the scholars there calculated that the wars the U.S. government waged following September 11th in 2001 following 9/11, those wars caused 4.5 to 4.7 million deaths. Nearly 5 million deaths over two decades. and 38 million people were displaced in the U.S. Empire’s post 911 wars. I really need to emphasize here that the U.S. Empire is responsible for the worst atrocities in modern history since Nazi Germany. You know, people on the internet love to compare everything to Nazi Germany. Everyone’s Hitler. They call it Godwins law. Well, if you want an actual comparison of a political regime that is responsible for nearly as much death as Nazi Germany, a close second place is the U.S. Empire. The CIA has invaded dozens of countries. 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the US War of aggression in Vietnam. Millions of Koreans died in the US war in Korea. And then you have the U.S. wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Libya and Yemen and Iran today. The list goes on and on and on. US interventions in Latin America. And this isn’t even mentioning the dozens of coups deta carried out by the CIA. Here I’m looking at a map of U.S. military and CIA
Chapter 16: US interventions
interventions all around the world. And this data is more than 20 years old. It’s from the very important research carried out by the journalist and historian William Bloom back in 2004 and 2005. Since then, the CIA and the U.S. military have carried out dozens and dozens more interventions all around the world. So again, given this reality, this is why the CIA spends so much time and energy and effort trying to recruit these liberal spokespeople, these propagandists like Gloria Steinem who try to brainwash everyone and convince everyone that actually the U.S. empire is a force for progress and human rights and democracy. Because of course it
Chapter 17: Congress for Cultural Freedom
wasn’t just Steinem who was recruited by the CIA. This was part of a much larger operation that was spelled out in a very important book called The Cultural Cold War by Francis Stonor Saunders. This book is based on detailed archival research into something called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This was an organization that was created and funded by the CIA during the first cold war in order to spread propaganda around the world and in the U.S. to convince everyone that the US was actually a force for progress and that the Soviet Union, the socialist countries were all evil. Now, some people may have heard of the Congress for Cultural Freedom because of its support for famous artists. So the CIA funded a lot of modern art including painters like Jackson Pollock who is known for his splatter paint work. But it wasn’t just him. There were many other major artists and musicians and filmmakers and writers who were funded by the CIA during the first cold war. But what is less known is that the CIA not only funded artists, it also funded a lot of writers and intellectuals, including center-left liberal intellectuals who were anti-communist. One of the most famous
Chapter 18: Propaganda on ‘totalitarianism’
examples was Hannah Arendt, who popularized the idea of totalitarianism in scare quotes, which by the way amounts to whitewashing fascism. She promoted this absurd, ridiculous idea that Soviet communism and Nazi fascism and Italian fascism were all basically the same. They were so-called totalitarianism.
Chapter 19: Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany
Now, this is completely ridiculous and it’s an insult to people’s intelligence. You have to be ignorant of history to believe this. The Soviet Union literally defeated Nazi Germany. More than 26 million Soviets died in World War II compared to just 400,000 Americans and 400,000 Brits. The Soviet Red Army liberated Berlin. The Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz and many of the Nazi death camps, the extermination camps. This is why even Winston Churchill who was an ineterate anti-communist and a colonialist and a racist who supported the British colonization of India and oversaw a mass famine in Bengal in India. But he was forced to admit despite the fact that he was extremely anti-communist. He said in 1944, quote, “It is the Russian armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army.” End quote. And then he added, quote, I have always believed and I still believe that it is the Red Army that has torn the guts out of the filthy Nazis. End quote. That’s an objective historical fact. But the reason that the CIA supported these center-left anti-communist intellectuals like Hanar Rent and of course later Gloria Steinem is because they were trying to convince people, brainwash people into believing that communism and fascism were supposedly the same even though they were mortal enemies. Even though the U.S. and many western countries had originally supported fascism, Church Hill originally supported Mussolini and Hitler before later turning against them because they saw fascism as a convenient ally against communism. So the CIA funded and supported these center-left intellectuals who tried to convince
Chapter 20: CIA supported Hannah Arendt
everyone that actually western liberalism was the greatest system ever created and it represented democracy and human rights and equality. Even though by the way people like Hana opposed the Vietnamese national liberation struggle. She opposed the Cuban revolution against a U.S.-backed fascist dictator. She opposed all of the national liberation struggles in the global south, calling them totalitarian and Stalinist. Today, people would use the word tanky. And by the way, Hannah Arendt also opposed desegregation in the US. She was very racist against black Americans. And this again is why the CIA funded Hannah Arendt’s work. I’m reading here from the book Cultural Cold War by Francis Stonor Saunders. She noted that many center-left liberal intellectuals, anti-communist intellectuals in the US. Quote, “Whether they knew it or not, scores of Western intellectuals were now roped to the CIA by an umbilical cord of gold. Many intellectuals were unable to resist a ride on the gravy train. When visiting intellectuals came to New York, they were invited to great parties. There was very expensive food all around and servants.” End quote. She talks about for instance a luxurious mansion in northern Italy called Villa Cerbolini and it was bequeathed to the Rockefeller Foundation by a princess. By the way, the Rockefeller Foundation was another vehicle for CIA funds. It was a CIA cutout. Still is today. And this book pointed out that the Rockefeller Foundation using CIA money made this mansion in northern Italy available to the prominent members of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was the CIA front. She noted, quote, “Acccommodation was free, as were all travel expenses, meals, and the use of the tennis court and swimming pool.” Writing on the villa’s elegant stationery, Hana Arent told Mary McCarthy, quote, “You feel as though you are suddenly lodge in a kind of Versailles. The place has 53 servants.” End quote. So while Hana rent was writing her books about how evil the Soviet Union was and demonizing the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, Vietnamese people who were sacrificing their life to free themselves from Western colonialism, she was demonizing them as Stalinists and authoritarians and totalitarians. Meanwhile, while she was writing her book, the CIA was paying for her to fly to Northern Italy, to a mansion, to swim in a swimming pool, to write an elegant stationery while she was being served by 53 servants. This is the real history of the Cold War that you’re not taught about in school. This is why the CIA supported these
Chapter 21: CIA funded anti-communist intellectuals
center-left activists like Hanar Rent and Gloria Steinem. This is also, by the way, why the CIA supported post-modernist anti-communist pro-imperialist intellectuals, especially French postmodernist intellectuals like Michel Foucault, as was documented in the very important research done by the scholar Gabriel Rockhill. In fact, I highly recommend a very important book that was recently published by Gabriel Rockhill called Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism as part of the intellectual world war. In this book, Rockhill shows in devastating detail how the U.S. government, especially the CIA, supported anti-communist Western so-called left-wing intellectuals because they were useful propagandists in the First Cold War. A good example of this is Herbert Marcuse who published a book called Soviet Marxism, a critical analysis which was very influential in the 1960s because Marcuse identified as a western Marxist even though he opposed actually existing socialism. Even though he opposed the national liberation struggles in the global south, he demonized global south Marxists and revolutionaries as so-called Stalinists and authoritarians and totalitarians. By the way, his book on Soviet Marxism was funded by the predecessor of the CIA, the OSS, which later became the CIA in 1947. Marcuse worked for the predecessor to the CIA. they funded his research on Soviet Marxism because they knew he was anti-Soviet and that he would be a useful propaganda voice in the first cold war because he had this credibility on the western left. And there are many other examples of these western anti-communist left-wing intellectuals who were supported by the US people like Theodor Adorno. These are the people who are very popular in western academia precisely because they were anti-communist. They opposed every actually existing socialist government because they opposed the Soviet Union. They opposed China. They opposed the Vietnamese revolution and the Cuban revolution. Instead, their focus was on Western students. that the real revolutionary agent is not Vietnamese people fighting against Western colonialism or Cubans overthrowing a US puppet dictatorship. No, no, no, no. According to these CIA funded Western so-called leftist intellectuals, the real revolutionary agent are American student activists at Ivy League universities. And by the way, they share this rhetoric with the U.S. government,
Chapter 22: ‘Democracy vs autocracy’ narrative
especially with the Democratic Party and with Joe Biden, who carried out a genocide in Gaza. And yet Biden claimed that there was a struggle in the world between democracy and autocracy. And he demonized China in particular as a representation of supposed autocracy while he carried out a colonialist genocide against the Palestinian people. They don’t get human rights according to U.S. so-called democracy. The people of the global south are denied representation and a voice and the right to live according to U.S. so-called democracy. But we also hear the same rhetoric today from some center-left democratic politicians like for instance Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez AOC who gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference this year which is basically a meeting of NATO and she echoed Biden’s cold war style rhetoric claiming that there’s a struggle in the world today between democracy and so-called authoritarianism and she lumped Vladimir Putin in with Donald Trump. Now, anyone who follows our reporting here knows that I’m extremely critical of Trump and he is another war criminal just like Biden who’s carrying out a war of aggression in Iran and supporting a genocide against the Palestinian people and he invaded Venezuela and he’s trying to suffocate the people of Cuba with a barbaric criminal blockade trying to overthrow the Cuban government. I am not in any way a defender of Trump, but this is ridiculous. This rhetoric we hear from Democrats like AOC trying to lump Trump in together with the enemies of the U.S. empire like Russia. What AOC is doing here is simply repeating the same kind of cold war propaganda that the CIA promoted spread by people like Gloria Steinem and Hannah Arendt who tried to convince us that the U.S. empire is a force for democracy. And when the Democrats come back to power, and they will, when Trump’s term eventually ends, whoever the new Democratic president is, they’re going to use this same rhetoric, trying to convince us that actually Trump was an anomaly. And like Biden tried to do, they’re going to try to convince us that the U.S. Empire is a force for democracy and human rights, while the U.S. Empire is carrying out genocide and invading countries around the world and overthrowing foreign governments everywhere. When you listen
Chapter 23: AOC’s liberal imperialism
to rhetoric from people like AOC today, it’s not surprising to hear that it’s identical to the rhetoric of people like Gloria Steinem. This is why AOC goes out and says, “I support Iranians taking to the street manufacturing consent for the US war of aggression against Iran by calling for overthrowing the Iranian government. This is why AOC praised neoconservative wararm mongers like John McCain, a Republican neoconservative senator. When he died in 2018, AOC said that John McCain represented quote an unparalleled example of human decency end quote. This was an insane mouth foaming warmonger who supported the US war of aggression in Iraq that killed more than a million people, who supported the US war against Libya and Syria and Afghanistan and called for waging war in many other countries. He joked about bombing Iran, singing the song Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran to the melody of a Beach Boys song. This is the unrepentant warmonger praised by AOC who are being told represents the future of the Democratic Party and a more progressive voice for the U.S. Empire. That is why I think it’s so
Chapter 24: U.S. empire’s true face
important to understand who Gloria Steinem was because this is not just about her. I wanted to make this as a video to explain to people how the CIA, how the U.S. empire exploits certain people, centerleft liberal voices to try to brainwash people around the world and in the US itself to convince us that the U.S. empire is actually a progressive force for human rights and democracy and women’s rights and whatever the slogan is today. But in reality, they’re simply trying to put a pleasantl looking mask on the fascistic, brutal, murderous face of the U.S. empire. These center-left voices, they understand that Donald Trump represents the true ugly face of the U.S. empire. So they want to convince the entire world that Trump is simply an anomaly when in reality Trump is the real face of the U.S. empire. And this is why the CIA has gone to so much effort trying to recruit people like Gloria Steinem and their predecessors because again this did not end with Gloria Steinem who just passed away. There’s an entire new generation of Steinums today and you should understand the role that they play, the political they role in trying to whitewash the U.S. empire which is still carrying out endless crimes around the world in Iran and Cuba and Palestine. The list goes on and on. If you want to understand what is truly happening in the world, you should definitely subscribe to our work here at
Chapter 25: Outro
Geopolitical Economy Report. I am Ben Norton. I’m the editor-inchief. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Please like this. Please share it. I will see you all next time. Sync to video time
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