Was Gloria Steinem, the face of the Women’s Liberation movement and founder of Ms. magazine, in league with the CIA to neutralize second-wave feminism? That’s what a small group of feminists (and Betty Friedan) alleged in 1975—but why? Cristen unravels the kernels of truth and valid suspicions regarding her CIA connection and path to becoming a feminist celebrity and activist icon from the infighting and state surveillance-induced paranoia that made the plot seem so plausible.

Sources: conspiracyshewrote.com/episodes

Inbox: conspiracyshewrote@gmail.com

Instagram: @unladylikemedia

Website: conspiracyshewrote.com

Patreon: The Cabal

Conspiracy, She Wrote is an Unladylike Media production written and produced by Cristen Conger. Music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the late 1960s, the FBI began recruiting female informants across the country to spy on the growing Women’s Liberation Movement. But why? And what happened when the feminists realized they were being watched? Cristen unravels an often overlooked chapter of the Bureau’s infamous COINTELPRO counterintelligence program when then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was convinced that the movement for gender equality was either a Communist front or a pipeline to violent radicalism. For Women’s Liberation leaders and activists, that real surveillance seeded legitimate fears of infiltration that curdled the movement from within.

Sources: conspiracyshewrote.com/episodes

Inbox: conspiracyshewrote@gmail.com

Instagram: @unladylikemedia

Website: conspiracyshewrote.com

Patreon: The Cabal

Conspiracy, She Wrote is an Unladylike Media production created, hosted and written by Cristen Conger. Music is from Blue Dot Sessions.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Far-right ideologies rely on a conspiracist worldview of puppet masters secretly orchestrating any social movements or culture shifts deemed threatening to white, male power. Jews are their go-to “puppet master” scapegoats, but as evidenced by manifestos left behind at two mass shootings this year, feminists (which is really just shorthand for Western white women) have ascended the villainized ranks to enemy number two. Alex DiBranco of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism deconstructs the framework of antifeminist conspiracism, its evolution from men's rights grievance to top-tier organizing belief and intersections with gender ideology and cultural marxism conspiracies.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.