Podcast appearances and mentions of joel whitney

Welcome to another gripping episode of Scheer Intelligence, where we delve deep into the stories that shape our understanding of freedom, power, and the human experience. I'm your host, Robert Scheer, and today, I'm joined by the insightful Joel Whitney. We will uncover the harrowing tale of Pramodia Ananta Toer, a celebrated Indonesian writer whose life was turned upside down by U.S. intervention during a turbulent chapter of history. His imprisonment for over a decade serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of geopolitical maneuvering, and his writing offers a profound reflection on resilience and the quest for freedom. Join us as we discuss the echoes of this past in our current political landscape and explore what it means to truly stand against oppression.

The Context of White Supremacy welcomes Racist Suspect Joel Whitney. Classified as a White Man, Whitney is a Brooklyn, NY writer whose work has been featured in The New York Times, The Daily Beast, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Boston Review to name a few. He's "a former features editor at Al Jazeera America and a founder and former editor-in-chief at Guernica." Gus originally hoped to speak with Whitney about his 2016 publication, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers. I'm not quite sure what my original motivation was for exploring this text - could have been Rev. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple or Soundtrack to a Coup d'État. Anyway, by the time we got our calendars synchronized, Mr. Whitney had written another book, Flights: Radicals on the Run. Most of the featured subjects who had to flee oppression are Victims of White Supremacy like: Minister Malcolm X, Paul Robeson, Dr. Angela Davis, and Leonard Peltier - who recently benefited from a commuted sentence from departing President Biden. During the broadcast, Mr. Whitney repeated the tacky refrain that White people are also "held back" by Racism. He could only list two trifling ways that the System of White Supremacy holds him down. Whitney also engaged in another suspicious and common practice amongst Racist Suspects: Citing the work of Ibram X. Kendi, a Victim of White Supremacy, to confuse non-white people about what it means to be classified as White. #LorraineHansberry #FarceOnWashington #TheCOWS16Years INVEST in The COWS – http://paypal.me/TheCOWS Cash App: https://cash.app/$TheCOWS CALL IN NUMBER: 605.313.5164 CODE: 564943#

Joel Whitney's book Finks is a seminal book about American intellectuals and American security agencies,  mainly because it illuminates the real story behind the CIA's involvement with the founding of a little magazine called The Paris Review  which hit the scene in the early 1950s at the height of the Cold War. In Joel Whitney's new book Flights,  he continues his historical excavations -  more stories about writers intellectuals and activists who found themselves in the cross hairs of American security agencies like the CIA and the FBI. Your host discusses both books with Joel Whitney and the discipline of secret history itself. 

Any threat to the status quo within the American empire has led to the censorship, jailing and escape of the dissidents brave enough to stand against it. One may think of Edward Snowden’s asylum in Russia or Julian Assange’s refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London as recent examples. However, the history of dissidents fleeing American persecution runs deep. Joining host Robert Scheer on this episode of the Scheer Intelligence podcast to discuss his new book, “Flights: Radicals on the Run,” is author and journalist Joel Whitney. The book exemplifies this missing history of dissent in America through accounts of people such as Angela Davis, Paul Robeson, Graham Greene and Malcolm X. Also included are the accounts of Lorraine Hansberry and her mentor, W.E.B. Du Bois. Whitney refers to De Bois’ time starting an anti-nuclear peace movement and subsequently being persecuted by the U.S. government. “[Du Bois’] reputation took severe damage, so when Hansberry knew him, he could barely afford to buy groceries,” Whitney told Scheer. “Flights” examines the stories of historic struggle of progressive thinkers and political activists who faced the onslaught of Cold War propaganda and McCarthyism, becoming refugees as a result of their political work. The book chronicles a counter-narrative of American history, where the bravest and most outspoken figures criticizing the system are crushed by it and their lives ruined. The book title, according to Whitney, refers to “flights that are political persecution in some form or another. In a way, you could think of it as 50 or 60 years of counter revolution, massive amounts of funding to chase people … across borders, out of print and, in some cases, unfortunately, into an early grave.” In the case of people like Graham Greene and his famous novel, “The Quiet American,” the blacklisting of himself and others for their exposure of American activities during the Vietnam War led to Americans “hav[ing] to wait about a decade or a little bit more to actually understand what carnage, what incredible, cynical violence the anti-communist Americans are overseeing in Vietnam as they're taking it over from the French.”

In this chilling episode, Chris sits down with Joel and Whitney, a couple with firsthand haunting experiences at the Bethel Cumberland Cemetery in Atoka, TN. They recount spine-tingling encounters and unexplained phenomena they've witnessed, painting a vivid picture of their eerie visits to this historic graveyard. Beyond their personal stories, we dive into the occult connections and mysterious history of Memphis, TN. Joel and Whitney share their insights into the city's darker side, exploring its ties to secret societies, ancient rituals, and supernatural lore. From haunted landmarks to cryptic symbols, we uncover the layers of mystique surrounding Memphis and its neighboring regions. Join us for a captivating discussion that blends personal experiences with historical intrigue, as we navigate the haunted paths and occult secrets of Tennessee. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, this episode promises to intrigue and spook in equal measure. For more haunting tales and mysterious explorations, be sure to tune in and follow our journey into the unknown. Visit www.camphermon.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/camphermon/support

Edwin Ackerman, who wrote a recent piece for NLR Sidecar, reviews the Mexican elections and the reasons for AMLO's immense popularity. Joel Whitney, author of the book Flights, talks about radical and revolutionaries' battles with the CIA.Behind the News, hosted by Doug Henwood, covers the worlds of economics and politics and their complex interactions, from the local to the global. Find the archive online: https://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/radio.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sociologist Edwin Ackerman on the Mexican elections, and the reasons for AMLO's immense popularity (Sidecar piece here) • Joel Whitney, author of Flights, on radical and revolutionaries' battles with the CIA The post Mexican elections and radicals on the run appeared first on KPFA.

Reading list:* Corey Robin's Facebook Page* Not Yet Falling Apart: Two thinkers on the left offer a guide to navigating the stormy seas of modernity, by moi* Straight Outta Chappaqua: How Westchester-bred lefty prof Corey Robin came to loathe Israel, defend Steven Salaita, and help cats, by Phoebe Maltz Bovy* Online Fracas for a Critic of the Right, by Jennifer Schuessler* Scholar Behind U. of Illinois Boycotts Is a Longtime Activist, by Marc ParryA few years ago, I got this text from a friend after my guest on this episode of the podcast, Corey Robin, said something nice about my book on Facebook: “When Corey Robin is praising you on Facebook, you've arrived, my friend.”He was being funny, but also just saying a true thing. Corey Robin is a big deal on the intellectual left in America, and for the better part of a decade, from about 2012 to 2019, his Facebook page was one of the most vital and interesting spaces on the American intellectual left. Back in 2017, I wrote this about Corey and his most influential book, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin:The Reactionary Mind has emerged as one of the more influential political works of the last decade. Robin himself has become, since the book's publication, one of the more aura-laden figures on the intellectual left. Paul Krugman cites him and the book periodically in his New York Times columns and on his blog. Robin's Facebook page, which he uses as a blog and discussion forum, has become one of the places to watch to understand where thinking on the left is. Another key node of the intellectual left is Crooked Timber, a group blog of left-wing academics to which Robin is a long-time contributor, and another is Jacobin, a socialist magazine that often re-publishes Robin's blog posts sans edits, like dispatches from the oracle.I've long been fascinated by Corey's Facebook page, in particular, because it was such a novel space. It couldn't exist prior to the internet, and if there were any other important writers who used the platform in that way, as a real venue for thoughtful and vigorous political discussion, I'm not familiar with them. It didn't replace or render obsolete the magazines, like The Nation and Dissent, that were the traditional places where the left talked to itself. It was just a different thing, an improvisational, unpredictable, rolling forum where you went to see what people of a certain bent were talking about, who the key players were, what the key debates were. And Corey himself, in this context, had a charismatic presence. To even get him to respond seriously to a comment you made on one of his posts was to get a little thrill. To be praised by Corey, in the main text of a post, was to feel like you were a made man. Over the past few weeks I've spent some time dipping into the archives of his page, and while there I compiled a list of notable names who showed up as commenters. My list included: Lauren Berlant, Matt Karp, Tim Lacy, Miriam Markowitz, Annette Gordon Reed,  Doug Henwood, Jeet Heer, Freddie Deboer, Raina Lipsitz, Elayne Tobin, Scott Lemieux, Paul Buhle, Jedediah Purdy, Jodi Dean, Alex Gourevitch, Tamsin Shaw, Rick Perlstein, Greg Grandin, Katha Pollitt, Joel Whitney, Liza Featherstone, Andrew Hartman, Rebecca Vilkomerson, Samuel Moyn, Tim Lacy, Yasmin Nair, Bhaskar Sunsara, Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, Gideon Lewis Kraus.This is just the people I recognized (or googled ) in my brief time skimming. The full list of eminent leftist Americans who populated Corey's page over the years would surely run to hundreds of names, which is to say that a significant portion, maybe even a majority, of the writers and intellectuals who comprised the intellectual left in those years was reading and participating in his page. How this came about, and what it meant, is one of the topics we cover in the podcast, which ended up being a kind of stock-taking of sorts of the very recent history of the American left. We also talk about Corey's involvement as an organizer with GESO, Yale's graduate student union, when he was getting his PhD in political science; his retrospective thoughts on why he over-estimated the strength of the American left in the mid-2010s; what he got right about Trump and Trumpism; and why Clarence Thomas may be corrupt, but is at least intellectually honest about it. Corey is a professor at Brooklyn College and the author of three books: Fear: The History of a Political Idea, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (revised and re-issued as Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump), and most recently The Enigma of Clarence Thomas. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, and Jacobin, among many other places.  Eminent Americans is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Eminent Americans at danieloppenheimer.substack.com/subscribe

Joel Whitney is the author of Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers.

Joel Whitney, the author of “Finks,” joins Robert Scheer to discuss a little-told episode in the socialist actor and singer's life and why it's seemingly been erased from our collective memory.

Joel Whitney joins Robert Scheer to talk about the lives of poets George and Mary Oppen, two admirable Americans persecuted for their leftist ideals.  

I was reading in Facebook yesterday, a friend had planted all of these autumn crocus, colchicums, in her garden. Like any bulb, it takes lots of dedication to get them planted and then you have all of the anticipation - waiting to see if they come up and if they meet your expectations. Anyway, she'd invited some friends over to come and check them out. Instead of being amazed by the beautiful autumn crocus, her friends were completely taken her gorgeous hydrangea. Isn't that the way it goes? We toil in our gardens and then we invite people over to come and see it. Yet, the plants we expect others to be amazed by, the plants that have stolen our hearts, are not always the plants that are the most popular with our visitors.  So, my piece of advice, if you have an affinity for autumn crocus, is don't plant hydrangea. If you do have hydrangea, only invite other gardeners over.  Only gardeners will appreciate the dedication that it takes to plant colchicum. Only gardeners are sensitive to the fact that if they've been invited over to "see the colchicum", they will ooh and aah only for the autumn crocus, and offer merely a passing nod to the show-stealing hydrangea.      Brevities #OTD  Today is the birthday of the botanist Sarah Hynes who was born on this day in 1859,  Hynes was born in Danzig, Prussia and she immigrated to Australia in the mid 1800's. After graduating from the University of Sydney, she and Georgina King brought in fresh flowers for a botanical display at the Sydney Technological Museum. This is how Haynes came to know the director of the Museum, Joseph Henry Maiden. Maiden hired Haynes as a botanical assistant and when he was promoted to be the director of the Sydney Botanic Garden, he hired Hynes to be in charge of the herbarium. Once Hynes arrived at the botanic garden, she ran into difficulties with her male bosses. She was pointing out disparities between herself and her male counterparts; she had requested better pay. In 1905, Hynes was suspended and cited for 39 counts of insubordination including the use of "unladylike" phrase "lowdown, dirty larrikin trick." Hynes stood her ground and denied the charges, which were ultimately dismissed. But, five years later, it happened again. After this suspension, Haynes had had enough; she transferred to the Department of Public Instruction. After this position, Haynes spent the rest of her professional life teaching science to high schoolers.   William Fitzgerald named the (Acacia hynesiana) for her, in recognition of her work with Joseph Henry Maiden on his book Forest Flora.         #OTD   Today is the birthday of the botanical artist Faith Fyles who was born on this day in 1875. Fyles was trained as a botanist, but her natural artistic talent became apparent early in her career. She was the first female hired by the Canadian Department of Agriculture. In 1920, she transferred to the horticulture division where she began producing colored illustrations of plant specimens; especially   fruits and ornamentals.   Fyles is remembered for her work on the 1920 bulletin, Principal Poison Plants of Canada. The bulletin was prepared for farmers so that they could discern the problematic plants on their properties and avoid pasturing animals  with poisonous plants. The book was offered free through the Ottawa Department of Agriculture. Over her career, Fyles had the opportunity to study art with Stanhope Forbes in England and with Rene Menard and Lucien Simon in Paris.     #OTD   Today is the birthday of the Mexican botanist Helia Bravo Hollis who was born on this day in 1901. Bravo Hollis was the first woman to graduate with the title of Biologist in Mexico. By the age of 29, she was named curator of the University's herbarium where she was assigned the job of studying the cactus. In 1937, Bravo   Hollispublished "Las cactáceas de México", making her a leader of global cactus research.  Bravo Hollis focused on cactus in and in 1951, she cofounded the Mexican Cactus Society. Six cacti species are named in her honor. In 2001, the Cactus  Society had planned to celebrate her 100th birthday, but she died four days shy of the century mark. Bravo Hollis also helped found the Botanical Gardens at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. She served as the director of the Gardens throughout the 1960s. When a strike occurred, Bravo-Hollis offset the pay owed her workers with money out of her own pocket. Last year, Google commemorated the 117th birthday of Bravo Hollis with a Doodle. If you search for her online, you'll see a memorable image of Bravo Hollis, in a skirt and blazer with a knife in her hand, standing next to an Echinocactus platyacanthus, also known as the giant barrel cactus, that appears to be over 5 ft tall and just as wide; a very impressive specimen. This species is the largest barrel cacti. In Mexico, where the cactus is a native, the hairs are harvested for weaving and a traditional candy is made from boiling the pith. Today, the Helia Bravo HollisBotanical Garden, with more than 80 species of cactaceae, is found at the Biosphere Reserve of Tehuacán.         Unearthed Words  Today is the birthday of the American poet WS Merwin, who always went by William, and who was born on this day in 1927. In 2010, Merwin and his wife, Paula, co-founded the Merwin Conservancy at his home in Haiku, Maui. Merwin used the 19 protected acres surrounding his home to cultivate 400 different species of tropical trees; and many of the world's rarest palm trees. Merwin bought the property in 1977, and every day, he planted one tree. Merwin's story is outlined in an excellent opinion piece about Merwin that was featured in the New York Times earlier this year.   “come back believer in shade believer in silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain” “Obviously a garden is not the wilderness but an assembly of shapes, most of them living, that owes some share of its composition, it’s appearance, to human design and effort, human conventions and convenience, and the human pursuit of that elusive, indefinable harmony that we call beauty. It has a life of its own, an intricate, willful, secret life, as any gardener knows. It is only the humans in it who think of it as a garden. But a garden is a relationship, which is one of the countless reasons why it is never finished.”      “On the last day of the world I would want to plant a tree.”      Today's book recommendation: Planting in a Post-Wild World by Thomas Rainer and Claudia West  This book came out in 2015 and the subtitle is Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes. Right from the start, one can tell that this book has a different philosophical underpinning than other books on landscape design. And, I love that they incorporate the use of the word community; Rainer and West are trying to get us to think about our gardens as communities.  If we could begin to see our gardens and the plants in them in the way that Rainer and West do, we would be much more sensitive to concepts like density and diversity in our plantings. But, don't let those terms throw you; Rainer and West are all about extracting design principals that help gardeners focus on wise selections and year-round interest; all through the lens of community. If we could all do a better job of understanding the way plants behave in the wild, our gardens would benefit greatly.  I love what they write in the beginning of their book because I think it sets the tone for what they are trying to accomplish: "The way plants grow in the wild and the way they grow in our gardens is starkly different. In nature, plants thrive even in inhospitable environments; in our gardens, plants often lack the vigor of their wild counterparts, even when we lavish them with rich soils and frequent water. In nature, plants richly cover the ground; in too many of our gardens, plants are placed far apart and mulched heavily to keep out weeds. In nature, plants have an order individual harmony resulting from their adaptation to a site; our gardens are often arbitrary assortments from various habitats, related only by our personal preferences....   In fact, the very activities that define gardening – weeding, watering, fertilizing, and mulching – all imply a dependency of plants on the gardener for survival. Gardeners are often frustrated when some plants spread beyond their predetermined location and surprised     while others struggle to get established....   Further complication is the availability of plants from every corner of the globe...   So how do we  shift the paradigm, making desirable plantings that look and function sympathetically with how they evolve in nature? By observing and embracing the wisdom of natural plant communities."         Today's Garden Chore Add some color to your garden with chrysanthemums.  On this day in 2000, Stuart Robinson offered this advice about mums in his weekly column in the Montreal Gazette: "Before shutting things down for the winter, there are a few ways to make the fall garden look a bit nicer. Brighten up your fall flower beds with some colorful chrysanthemums. If you didn't plant any in the spring, so what. Markets and garden supply stores usually have lots of them on special at this time of the year. Buy a few of the larger pots, dig holes in the flower bed (removing a few poor-performing annuals if you have to) and just drop them in and water them well. If you do it when nobody's looking, your neighbors will never know."       Something Sweet  Reviving the little botanic spark in your heart As I was researching the poet William Merwin, I came across an interview with him done by Joel Whitney back in 2010. During the interview, Merwin revealed that his mother used to read him poetry and one of his early favorites was Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses.  When asked about Stevenson, Merwin recalled that Stevenson had spent a great deal of time in Hawaii: "and played cards with King Kalakaua... Kalakaua cheated at cards... They obviously got along very well together, Stevenson and Kalakaua. They were playing cards one day, and Stevenson said, 'I’ll beat him this time: four aces.' And Kalakaua said, 'Five kings beats it all.'"     Thanks for listening to the daily gardener, and remember: "For a happy, healthy life, garden every day."

Joel Whitney talks to Ivan about six things which he thinks should be better known. Joel is the author of Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers. Essential American Poets series https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/series/74631/essentialpoets When they see us https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/reviews/when-they-see-us-netflix-review-central-park-five-ava-duvernay-new-york-cast-trailer-a8936816.html Spitting on Richard Nixon https://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/vice-president-nixons-motorcade-attacked-in-venezuela-may-13-1958-106584 Elizabeth Buffum Chace http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2016/06/elizabeth-buffum-chace.html The Family https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/netflix-the-family-jesse-moss-secret-christian-cult-washington-dc-869396/ TWA Hotel at JFX International Airport https://time.com/5589561/twa-hotel-jfk/

Daniel Aldana Cohen, author of this article, on the role of housing in a Green New Deal. Then, Joel Whitney, author of this article, on the CIA's history as a purveyor of fake news.

On today's episode of Loud & Clear, Brian Becker and John Kiriakou are joined by Medea Benjamin, the co-founder of Code Pink and author of the book “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection,” and journalist and independent political analyst Marwa Osman.Israeli Prime Minister made a speech today arguing that Iran is in violation of the nuclear arms deal as Trump prepares for a possible end of compliance with the agreement. Israel carried out major military strikes against Iranians in Syria. The bombing was so big that it created an earthquake. Brian and John also talk about Pompeo’s trips to Saudi Arabia and Israel this weekend. The danger of war with Iran is growing. The hosts discuss, “Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers” with author Joel Whitney. It describes a situation that almost no Americans know about. In the early days of the Cold War, the CIA clandestinely recruited some of the greatest writers in the world--household names—to spy for them. They talk to the author about why this happened and why it’s been a secret for so long. Joel Whitney, the author of “Finks” and a co-founder of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics, joins the show. Mumia Abu Jamal has been in prison in Pennsylvania since 1981, after being accused and convicted of killing a policeman. He was on death row until 2011, when his sentence was converted to life without parole. Mumia and his supporters have always maintained his innocence, and he was in court today in Philadelphia. He is asking a court to vacate his previous appeals attempts on the basis of judicial bias so that he can appeal his case again. Brian and John speak with Dave Lindorff, an investigative reporter, a columnist for CounterPunch, and the author of “Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.” The attorney for a right-wing organization that sues for conservative causes has filed a lawsuit against Arizona teachers, contending that their strike is illegal and seeking to force them back to work. But teachers remained on the picket line today, the third day of the strike, demanding increased funding and a commitment to stop making tax cuts on the backs of education. Dan Cohen, a journalist and filmmaker who was in Arizona to cover the strikes, joins the show. Monday’s regular segment “Education for Liberation with Bill Ayers” looks at the state of education across the country. What’s happening in our schools, colleges, and universities, and what impact does it have on the world around us? Today focuses on a trip to the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a museum and memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, that honors the memory of lynching victims and asks localities to publicly acknowledge that they occurred. The hosts speak with Bill Ayers, an activist, educator and the author of the book “Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto.” Admiral Harry Harris has been nominated to be Donald Trump’s next ambassador to South Korea—an outrageous idea for a man who presided over the torture at the Guantanamo military base. Brian and John look into his record with Dr. Emanuel Pastreich, director of The Asia Institute in Seoul, Korea.Our friend and frequent guest Randy Credico was invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner over the weekend as a guest of Yahoo News. But the Washington swells didn’t like Randy’s message of freedom for Julian Assange, and they unceremoniously threw him out of the event. Brian and John speak with Randy Credico, an activist, a comedian, and the former director of the William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice.

Finks: How the C.I.A. Tricked the World's Best Writers (Or Books)   When news broke that the CIA had colluded with literary magazines to produce cultural propaganda throughout the Cold War, a debate began that has never been resolved. The story continues to unfold, with the reputations of some of America’s best-loved literary figures—including Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, and Richard Wright—tarnished as their work for the intelligence agency has come to light.  Finks is a tale of two CIAs, and how they blurred the line between propaganda and literature. One CIA created literary magazines that promoted American and European writers and cultural freedom, while the other toppled governments, using assassination and censorship as political tools. Defenders of the cultural CIA argue that it should have been lauded for boosting interest in the arts and freedom of thought, but the two CIAs had the same undercover goals, and shared many of the same methods: deception, subterfuge and intimidation.  Finks demonstrates how the good-versus-bad CIA is a false divide, and that the cultural Cold Warriors again and again used anti-Communism as a lever to spy relentlessly on leftists, and indeed writers of all political inclinations, and thereby pushed U.S. democracy a little closer to the Soviet model of the surveillance state. Praise for Finks  "Listen to this book, because it talks in a very clear way about what has been silenced."--John Berger, author of Ways of Seeing and winner of the Man Booker Prize  "It may be difficult today to believe that the American intellectual elite was once deeply embedded with the CIA. But withFinks, Joel Whitney vividly brings to life the early days of the Cold War, when the CIA's Ivy League ties were strong, and key American literary figures were willing to secretly do the bidding of the nation's spymasters."--James Risen, author of Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War  "A deep look at that scoundrel time when America's most sophisticated and enlightened literati eagerly collaborated with our growing national security state. Finks is a timely moral reckoningone that compels all those who work in the academic, media and literary boiler rooms to ask some troubling questions of themselvesnamely, what, if anything, have they done to resist the subversion of free thought?"--David Talbot, founder of Salon and author of The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government  "The marriage of politics and literature is always messy and seldom boring. Intrusive governments are invariably unimaginative and plotting writers are hilariously ineffective. The whole thing makes for tortured drama, and Joel Whitney is a savvy dramatist who knows perfectly how to juice intrigue!"--Ilan Stavans, author of Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Early Years  "The CIA's covert financial support of highbrow art and fiction may seem like a quaint, even endearing, chapter in its otherwise grim history of coups, assassinations, and torture. In Finks, Joel Whitney argues otherwise and shines a discomfiting spotlight on this obscure corner of the cultural Cold War. The result is both an illuminating read and a cautionary tale about the potential costspolitical and artisticof accommodating power."--Ben Wizner, ACLU Director of Speech, Privacy and Technology Project  Joel Whitney is a cofounder and editor at large of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, Boston Review, The San Francisco Chronicle, Dissent, Salon, NPR, New York Magazine and The Sun. Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is managing editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).

The author of Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World's Best Writers discusses how the spy agency used its own form of propaganda through highly respected magazines to counter the rise in communism around the world.

SPY Historian Vince Houghton sat down (remotely) with Joel Whitney, the cofounder and editor at large of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics, to discuss his book on how the CIA used culture to fight the Cold War, Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers.

The PEN America Center’s organizational focus is the effect of world events on the safety and freedom of expression of writers, so the topic of war naturally looms large in its cultural consciousness. As part of the recent PEN World Voices Festival, Polish journalist and author Wojciech Jagielski was interviewed by Joel Whitney, a founding editor of Guernica: A Magazine of Art & Politics.  Jagielski began his career on assignment in the former Soviet Union and then spent a decade in Afghanistan. He became particularly interested in how countries with trenchant ethnic divisions seem so often to wind up in the midst of seemingly irresolvable conflicts. His most recent book, The Night Wanderers, is on Uganda and the problematic resistance leader Joseph Rao Kony, a now recognizable name thanks to a wildly circulated viral video. The PEN World Voices event took place at the Brooklyn Public Library on May 2 and was introduced by Meredith Walters, the director of exhibitions at the library. Listen to the talk between Jagielski and Whitney by clicking on the link above. Bons Mots: Jagielski on becoming a foreign correspondent: "It was easy choice because in the '80s, when we [Poland] were the colonist country, writing about Poland and politics in Poland, it was not the job for the journalist, it was the job for the politician, the activist." Jagielski on child soldiers: "The scenario was always the same. At night the guerillas were attacking a village … and they were taking hostages, the children. It was planned action because it was easier for children to be made a soldier. I was even told the best age to be kidnapped … to be made a future guerilla, was eight to 10 years." Jagielski on Idi Amin: "The stereotype was created in Western media. The real Idi Amin was not the same person that we have from the movies, from the books."