The Good Samaritans: Radio Free Europe and the US State Department

• In Event: From Liberation to Liberty: Politics and Values on the Airwaves at RFE/ RL

Abstract

This paper examines the political culture, in the US, in which Radio Free Europe was created, focusing on a secret plan developed by the US State Department to use Eastern European refugees as political warfare. Using declassified State Department documents, I argue that the vision behind Radio Free Europe imagined liberation as a form of political control rather than emancipation, and used a rhetoric of rescue to justify the manipulation of refugees.

Author

• Andreea Deciu Ritivoi, Carnegie Mellon U