Sidney Hook
| Sidney Hook was the central figure in CIA front Congress for Cultural Freedom and its US branch the American Committee of Cultural Freedom. He was educated at City College NY, New York University and Columbia University as student of John Dewey. He supported the Russian Revolution and Emma Goldman. He wrote for Commentary magazine. He was one of the NY Intellectuals with Lionel Trilling and Delmore Schwartz. He was also vice-president of the League for Industrial Democracy with Midge Decter and Arch Puddington of the CFW, Arnold Beichman (Washington Times of Unification Church). |  |
He visited Germany in 1929 and worked with marxist Karl Korsch of the Fabian Society and Frankfurt School. Korsch was a friend of marxist Bertolt Brecht and Felix Weil (Frankfurt School).
Hook than visited the Soviet Union. In the US he became a member of the Socialist Party of America, the American Communist Party and American Workers Party. He was a follower of Norman Thomas (The Nation, founder of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, precessor to the American Civil Liberties Union).
He worked for the American Civil Liberties Union with Zionist Horace Kallen.
After Joseph Stalin's Moscow trials of 1936, Hook was a member of the Dewey Commission of John Dewey, with John Dos Passos, Norman Thomas, Franz Boas (Columbia, cultural, relativism, teacher of jesuit Margaret Mead), Louis Hacker (Columbia), John Chamberlain (National Review), Edmund Wilson (The New Statesman of Fabian Society, married to Mary McCarthy). The aim of the commission was to support communist Leon Trotsky in an anti-Stalinist narrative.
He wrote a letter with Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt for The NY Times.
The Dewey commission was used in propaganda with George Orwell, HG Wells, Arthur Koestler, CEM Joad as preparation of the fake Nuremberg trial.
He signed the Humanist Manifesto with Julian Huxley, Corliss Lamont, Betty Friedan, BF Skinner, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Sanger, Julian Huxley, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, BF Skinner, Erich Fromm, Gloria Steinem, Jonas Salk, Ashley Montagu, Bill Nye, Alice Walker, Carl Sagan, Ted Turner, Steven Pinker, Murray Gell-Man, Anthony Fauci, he was named Humanist of the Year.
He was a member of the Committee for the Free World, PRODEMCA and later of the Hoover Institution.
The Center of Inquiry gave him the In Praise of Reason Award.
American Committee for
Cultural Freedom