Explainer: This is just a sampling of my ongoing research for a project on social conditioning. There’s a vast amount of material to explore, and I’m still figuring out how to weave it all together. My hope is to someday write a book or at least compile a comprehensive piece on this topic.

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The U.S. government has long promoted anti-communist ideology by equating capitalism with democracy, a framing that dates back to Edward Bernays. Drawing on his uncle Sigmund Freud’s psychological theories, Bernays applied psychoanalysis to public relations, working closely with presidential administrations in the early 20th century to shape public perception of capitalism as both natural and morally superior. Among these efforts was the CIA’s book distribution program, which smuggled Western literature into the USSR and its satellite states. During the Cultural Cold War, the CIA launched covert programs to undermine Soviet influence, using cultural exports—particularly art and music—as tools of persuasion. “Jazz Diplomacy” was one such initiative, designed to showcase American creativity and freedom while subtly discrediting communist ideology.

These campaigns targeted not only foreign audiences but also domestic sentiment, discouraging U.S. citizens from sympathizing with communism. As a poet, I’ve long wondered whether poetry itself was weaponized in this ideological battle. It was. The CIA helped circulate Doctor Zhivago, a novel by poet Boris Pasternak, due to its implicit critique of Soviet life, and promoted the work of émigré poets like Czesław Miłosz and Joseph Brodsky, whose essays and verse challenged Soviet cultural authority.

Mao Zedong rejected the notion of “art for art’s sake,” asserting that all cultural production serves class interests. For Mao, art was a tool of ideological struggle and mass mobilization, a view echoed by Vladimir Lenin, who insisted that writers must serve the revolutionary movement rather than individual or bourgeois interests. “Down with non-partisan writers! Down with supermen of literature!” he proclaimed, demanding that literature become part of the proletariat’s general cause. Joseph Stalin institutionalized this approach with Socialist Realism as the official artistic doctrine, requiring creative work to reflect and reinforce socialist values.

Nina Simone once said, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times,” insisting that artists engage with their surroundings—not out of obligation, but necessity. “At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved.” Her words cut through abstraction: art is not neutral; it either reflects the world as it is or helps shape what it might become. Simone also declared, “We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore,” demanding intervention to actively shape public consciousness before it’s shaped by others.

This shaping is relentless and often conducted by institutions. Record labels, think tanks, and cultural foundations frequently align with state or corporate interests, curating what is heard, seen, and funded. In this vein, Trump’s Hollywood Ambassadors represent a modern embodiment of cinematic patriotism, expertly trained in Pentagon-approved storytelling. Each has collaborated closely with the Defense Department’s Entertainment Media Office, ensuring military narratives receive the right heroic glow. Promoted from script advisors to official cultural envoys under Trump’s watchful eye, they remind us that nothing says diplomacy quite like a blockbuster-ready version of history. If reality ever gets messy, they’re equipped with years of experience cleaning up inconvenient details.

Similarly, the recent Global Music Diplomacy Initiative aims to use music as a diplomatic tool to promote cultural exchange and foster international relationships. While presented as a benign effort to bridge divides and celebrate diversity, it raises questions about whose interests are truly being served and what ideological messages are being transmitted. As Nina Simone warned, “We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore.” The question remains: who is doing the shaping, and whose interests are being served?

Contemporary cultural influence is frequently laundered through philanthropy and branded activism. Aloe Blacc’s 2025 album, Stand Together, released in partnership with the Koch-backed nonprofit of the same name, is framed as a bold fusion of music and social impact, promoting themes like unity, community, and individual empowerment. However, these values are curated through a libertarian lens. The broader mission of Stand Together, supported by Koch funding, emphasizes market-based solutions and minimal government intervention. Chase Koch, heir to the Koch empire, frames music as a tool to “solve America’s biggest problems,” yet these problems are defined through a libertarian perspective, with solutions that often reinforce market-based ideology. When artists collaborate with such institutions, their work risks becoming a vehicle for ideological messaging—shaping public perception while appearing apolitical or benevolent. This shaping isn’t limited to Cold War-era propaganda; when billionaires fund cultural production, they curate its message, reach, and resonance. What gets amplified isn’t always the most urgent, but what aligns with their vision of society.

In communist states, art aligned explicitly with the interests of the proletariat. In capitalist countries, however, cultural production has often been weaponized against the public. Institutions like the CIA used art, literature, and music to shape ideology and suppress leftist sentiment. The CIA front, Congress for Cultural Freedom, along with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, covertly funded writers, artists, and intellectuals—many of whom were connected to the Frankfurt School and later associated with the New Left—to promote liberal democratic values and discredit communism. These efforts served bourgeois interests under the guise of cultural exchange and intellectual freedom.

As Lenin aptly stated, “While the bourgeois state methodically concentrates all its efforts on doping the urban workers, adapting all the literature published at state expense and at the expense of the tsarist and bourgeois parties for this purpose, we can and must utilise our political power to make the urban worker an effective vehicle of communist ideas among the rural proletariat.” This perspective highlights the struggle against bourgeois influence in culture and underscores the importance of mobilizing the working class to challenge dominant narratives.

In both systems, art was never neutral. In the U.S., its weaponization was often obscured behind the language of freedom, creativity, and choice.