Peter Coleman wrote ?gIn June 1950, as the Cold War grew more intense in Europe and North Korea invaded South Korea, more than a hundred European and American writers and intellectuals met in Berlin and established the Congress for Cultural Freedom to resist the Kremlin's sustained assault on liberal democratic values. In the 1950s the Congress spread throughout the world, successfully creating magazines, organizing protests, establishing a network of affiliated national committees and fostering international contacts. The Congress continued into the 1960s, broadening its focus to lay the basis of an international community of liberal and democratic intellectuals. It was America's principal attempt to win over the world's intellectuals to the liberal democratic cause.?hThe Great War of 1914-18 was a great evil but it spawned another that turned out to be far worse. This was the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Red takeover in the aftermath of the revolution. For the remainder of the century the Soviet empire spread devastation across the globe, not only in it's own domain but in every other country where its agents and its ideology polluted both politics and the world of ideas.
Peter Coleman has provided an invaluable account of the counter-attack by liberal intellectuals in the battle of ideas with communism. At the time that this story begins, Arthur Koestler was convinced that the future of civilisation would be decided by the outcome of the battle between communists and ex-communists like himself. He believed that others could not comprehend the true nature of their adversary, with its capacity to recruit both the best of people and the worst of people. He was mistaken. The thin anti-red line was held by a mix of ex-communists and others who had not drunk from that poisoned cup.
The Liberal Conspiracy is the story of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the loose-knit world-wide confederation of groups and people who attempted to match the influence of the communists and their fellow travellers in the cultural and educational arenas. It is a proud and heroic tale, although it was mostly just slogging, old-fashioned hard work. Few of the protagonists would claim the mantle of heroism but they deserve high praise for their courage and their fortitude.
"Then, in an era of the Vietnam War, a New Left, a new Conservatism and an emerging detente, the Congress began to falter in its purpose. It was finally dissolved in 1967 amidst disclosures of its funding by the CIA".
The opponents of the Congress, the ?guseful idiots?h in the west who helped to prop up the Soviet empire, attempted to claim a moral victory when it transpired that the CIA was contributing funds to the movement. This scandalous story has not yet run its full course, however the information emerging from the Eastern European archives should ensure that eventually the full story of the treason of the communist fellow travellers will be told. This book is a mirror image of that dismal tale, the story of men and women who beat against the intellectual tide in defence of freedom and dignity.