Yesterday the New York Times printed an op-ed by Gloria Steinem, "Women Are Never Frontrunners." It was at once an excuse for why Hillary Clinton lost in Iowa and an attack on men for the sexism that oppressed Hillary. She even suggested that racism is gone but sexism endures.
Now, up until Iowa Hillary was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, and by winning in New Hampshire she is again the frontrunner. So Steinem's premise was wrong. But what was the point of the op-ed?
Let me give you a hint as to whom Gloria Steinem is and why she said what she did. Here is an article from the same New York Times from forty years ago:
The New York Times, February 21, 1967
C.I.A. Subsidized Festival Trips
Hundreds of Students WereSent to World Gatherings
A New York freelance writer disclosed yesterday that the Central Intelligence Agency had supported a foundation that sent hundreds of Americans to World Youth Festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki, Finland, in 1962.
Gloria Steinem, a 30-year-old graduate of Smith College, said the C.I.A. has been a major source of funds for the foundation, the Independence [sic -- Independent] Research Service, since its formation in 1958. Almost all of the young persons who received aid from the foundation did not know about the relationship with the intelligence agency, Miss Steinem said. Ironically, she said, many of the students who attended the festivals have been criticized as leftists. The festivals are supposed to be financed by contributions from national student unions, but are, in fact, largely supported by the Soviet Union.
Miss Steinem said she had become convinced that American students should participate in the World Youth Festivals after she spent two years in India.
"I came home in 1958 full of idealism and activism, to discover that very little was being done," she said. "Students were not taken seriously here before the civil rights movement, and private money receded at the mention of a Communist youth festival."
Miss Steinem said she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her C.I.A. money might be available to finance American participation in the seventh postwar festival scheduled for Vienna in the summer of 1959.
The former association officers had had ties with the C.I.A. while serving the association, which last week conceded it had taken money from the intelligence agency since 1952.
"Far from being shocked by this involvement, I was happy to find some liberals in government in those days, who were far-sighted and cared enough to get Americans of all political views to the festival," Miss Steinem said. She noted that most Americans who had attended various festivals were sympathetic to Communist policies.
The Independence [sic] Research Service, originally called the Independent Service for Information on the Vienna Festival, was organized with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass. It concentrated, Miss Steinem said, on disseminating information about the festival and urging young persons who espoused flexible, but non-Communist, foreign policy views to attend.
Miss Steinem was a full-time employe of the service till following the Helsinki festival in 1962.
About 130 youths who had made contact with the foundation did attend, although few of them received significant financial help, Miss Steinem said.
Before the Helsinki festival in 1962 the foundation again recruited young teachers, lawyers, scholars, linguists and journalists -- most of whom would consider themselves very liberal Democrats -- to attend.
The Independent Service financed a newspaper, a new [sic -- news?] bureau, cultural exhibits and two jazz clubs during the festival. However, 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.
Miss Steinem insisted that the C.I.A. had never tried to alter the policy of the foundation.
"I was never asked to report on other Americans or assess foreign nationals I had met," she said.
Miss Steinem noted that since the foundation was started in "the post-McCarthy era" the Federal Government could not openly finance the foundation. Overt government support would also have "alienated" youths from other countries who were suspicious of the United States, she said.
"The C.I.A.'s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough," she observed.
Now, Ms. Steinem had a history consistent with being a CIA asset prior to her admitted work for The Agency spying on international student festivals.
(An aside: You'd be surprised how many important people went to these student festivals without knowing that they were working for the CIA. For ex, Steve and Cokie Roberts! Maybe they still don't know.)
Steinem had done a lot of globe-trotting as a student with little apparent support. Soon after her admission of working for the CIA (though not totally honest in the article either) she stopped being a sensible liberal funded by the CIA to found Ms. Magazine, along with Clay Felker (who also had CIA ties, working with Steinem at the Helsinki Youth Festival). Guess who funded Ms.? Yup, the CIA.
Now why would the CIA want to fund a feminist magazine?
From a review of The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America:
One of the more interesting threads that could have unraveled feminism and undoubtedly fomented conflict is the extent to which, under COINTELPRO, the FBI infiltrated and spied on feminist activists and organizations. Characterizing feminist politics as "paranoid," by the early 1970s, Rosen goes on to note the sound basis of many wary activists' concern, stating, "Still, in my wildest flights of paranoia I never imagined the extent to which the FBI spied on feminists or how many women did the spying" (p. 240). The FBI was apparently able to recruit women informers to attend meetings and report back to the FBI with ease. Bureau files contain summaries of feminist meetings with such subversive aims as, "They wanted equal opportunities that men have in work and in society."
There was a memo from the FBI's San Francisco office back in the late sixties where a bureaucrat suggested that feminism could be used as a tool to defeat the civil rights and anti-war movements. Get the sisters and brothers fighting. Divide and conquer.
And then Gloria Steinem, a toiler for the CIA, becomes a feminist at a spanking new magazine funded by the CIA. What do you think her job has been the last forty years? Does her op-ed gather together all progressives of good will to work for a better land for all people? No, she drives a wedge between blacks and whites, men and women. Divide and conquer.
By taking a look at her romantic attachments you get a feeling that whatever her public stances on women's rights she doesn't seem to care much about human rights. Steinem had a nine-year relationship with Stanley Pottinger, the Republican Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights during the Nixon and Ford regimes. If you recall, the Attorney Generals in Nixon's Justice Department were getting indicted and convicted hand over fist. They were overseeing COINTELPRO, etc. Pottinger thrived there. He was still around Washington, D.C. in 1980 when he was involved in the October Surprise.
Steinem also got all gooey with Henry Kissinger, a man who's got the blood of millions on his hands.
In short, is this woman a feminist? Well, the New York Times says she's a feminist.
Her lifelong body of work has been in the service of the oligarchy, to mislead and misdirect the feminist movement, to continually divide women from the greater social justice movements. And as hard as it is to believe, most Americans don't know her connections to the CIA and don't understand her special kind of magic.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program.
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