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The Straight Story

(48,121 posts)
Fri Mar 1, 2013, 04:15 PM Mar 2013

'Swedes have forgotten leftist US sympathizers'

The CIA invested heavily in propaganda in Sweden during the early years of the Cold War to counteract Soviet influence, confirms a new documentary that includes details about left-leaning Swedes who sympathized with the US.
...

Many of the details in the upcoming documentary are already known by academics, noted contemporary history professor Kjell Ostlund at Sodertorn University in a conversation with The Local.

But they are rarely discussed in public.

Ostlund said that given Sweden's pro-western stance in general during the 1950s, the most noteworthy detail was perhaps how US-friendly many top names on the left were.

When the left-leaning paper Stockholmstidningen published a critique of the Bay of Pigs, the then-head of the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), Arne Geijer, reacted angrily.

"He took them by the ear and forced them to apologize," Ostlund told The Local.

"The embassy considered Geijer the USA's best friend within the global workers' movement."

http://www.thelocal.se/46482/20130301/#.UTELzTfyCSo

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