>> They didn’t “establish” abstract expressionist art. They helped promote it just as they helped promote jazz music and other US culture.
I've heard it claimed that they generally don't try to start movements because it's too difficult, but instead just promote and amplify things that are already leaning the direction they want them to go or is beneficial to their agenda somehow. Makes sense to me!
This is how effective propaganda works best generally.
Find existing propagation lines (whether positive or negative), and gently encourage them.
Much recent online propaganda, particularly from Russia and China (though those are hardly the only actors) operates along these lines. Russia generally tries to stir up fracture points amongst its adversaries, China seeks more to distract through diversion (e.g., TikTok) though it also has active antagonistic campaigns.
Another classic CIA tactic was not to seek out intelligence, but to plant it, through manufactured journalism. This came out in several 1970s US Congressional investigations of the Agency, by the Church Committee and others.
See "CIA and the Media: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence" (1978):
I've heard it claimed that they generally don't try to start movements because it's too difficult, but instead just promote and amplify things that are already leaning the direction they want them to go or is beneficial to their agenda somehow. Makes sense to me!