Not All Propaganda is Art 2: Outsider Influence

Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything

Benjamen Walker & Radiotopia

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1956, New Yorker writer Dwight Macdonald joined Encounter, a magazine secretly backed by American and British security agencies. He arrived in London just as British Influencers turned a young Existentialist named Colin Wilson into England's answer to Jean-Paul Sartre. Meanwhile, the CIA incited a youth rebellion in communist Hungary. We investigate the covert propaganda behind Operation Free Youth Action and Operation Anti-Sartre and the Outsider’s influence on Macdonald’s famous critique of Mass and Middlebrow Culture.

Shownotes: Carol Ann Gill is the author of Carol Ann, Sarah Roth wrote on Operation Focus, Hugh Wilford is the author of The Mighty Wurlitzer, Jelena Ćulibrk writes on IRD and Newsreels, Gary Lachman is the author of Beyond the Robot, Alfred Betschart writes on Sartre, Stefan Collini is the author of Absent Minds, Geoffrey Wheatcroft is the author of Absent Friends.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything.
0:05.0	At Radiotopia, we now have a select group of amazing supporters that help us make all our shows possible. If you would like to have your company or
0:14.8	product sponsor this podcast then get in touch drop a line to sponsor at radiotopia
0:21.4	fm thanks
0:24.0	William beres is in big trouble this is police he is accused of running a pan-European
0:29.9	art smuggling ring with ties to the Sicilian mafia and if convicted he faces up to 20 years
0:35.7	in prison.
0:36.7	He's called the professor by dealers and traffickers.
0:40.1	To stay out of jail, William Verres plans to find a hundred million dollar painting, Caravaggio's
0:45.0	nativity.
0:46.0	I once asked how many mobsters do you know in Sicily.
0:49.0	He said, well, officially none.
0:53.1	From brazen and PRX, listen to the professor wherever you get your podcasts.
0:57.7	Out now.
1:01.7	Previously on, not all propaganda is art.
1:07.0	Our guest is Mr Dwight McDonnell, author and critic.
1:10.0	My argument is not to keep out people, but just to give the right name to the thing.
1:15.4	I mean don't let's talk about culture if we don't mean it.
1:18.7	Thank you Mr. McDonald.
1:20.9	In the 1950s, writer and critic Dwight McDonald shut down his little magazine politics and turned to culture.
1:27.5	If we do mean culture, then let's be extremely, you want to say snobbish, discriminatory,
1:32.0	but anyway, let's be extremely strict in what we call this.
	...

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