In the case of Nina Simone, the CIA had to use trickery. As Wilford uncovered, Simone was sent on a tour to Nigeria in 1961 by the American Society of African Culture, a CIA front organization. As Keefe notes, “It’s one thing for the government to pressure Louis Armstrong to go to Africa on a propaganda mission and have him grudgingly but knowingly go along. It’s a very different thing to covertly send an artist on false pretenses. And Nina Simone was no patriot. She ended up renouncing the United States and living abroad. She called it, ‘the United Snakes of America.’”
A lot of what the CIA does is done through deniable means and intermediaries. Not knowing you work for the CIA, or being able to claim you do not know you worked for the CIA, is standard operating procedure.
Some standard leftist paranoid purity testing. While partially true, I doubt Nina Simone was going to be tricked into hurting someone. But you knew that.
“But comandante! did not know I was working for the CIA!” has been heard before in the jungles of South America, usually in the presence of a firing squad. Do you think claiming ignorance should immediately be a plenary absolution?
Quite the jump from unknowingly performing your art for a CIA front to a firing squad. But you do you boo.
Or do you think only people who are not famous are responsible for the outcomes of their actions,
Gods damn, this is quite the jump of a conclusion. I think people are responsible, famous or not, for the knowledge that motivates their actions.
comrade?
Don’t “comrade” me. You sound like one of those self proclaimed vanguards that’ll shoot my dumb ass in the back of the head.
I suggest doing some mutual aid. Make some solidarity irl. Because takes like this aren’t going to find it online.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/wind-of-change-cia/
Way to bury the lead. But anything to disparage a woman of color I suppose.
deleted by creator
You called her a CIA asset when she was tricked. There’s only one person being uncharitable and it certainly isn’t me.
deleted by creator
Based on the meme above do you think she would have done the tour if she knew that it was funded by the CIA?
deleted by creator
This is where I should have stopped reading.
Some standard leftist paranoid purity testing. While partially true, I doubt Nina Simone was going to be tricked into hurting someone. But you knew that.
Quite the jump from unknowingly performing your art for a CIA front to a firing squad. But you do you boo.
Gods damn, this is quite the jump of a conclusion. I think people are responsible, famous or not, for the knowledge that motivates their actions.
Don’t “comrade” me. You sound like one of those self proclaimed vanguards that’ll shoot my dumb ass in the back of the head.
I suggest doing some mutual aid. Make some solidarity irl. Because takes like this aren’t going to find it online.
deleted by creator