The question of politicization of culture is usually analyzed in terms of the importance of keeping the distance between the institutions of the cultural sector and the politicians on the national, regional and local level. In this paper, we – however – turn the attention to the producers of culture themselves. Based on a problematizing approach and empirical material from the 1970s and 2010s, we raise a principal question: Is the liberty and autonomy of culture threatened by ideological motivated public servants within the institutions of the cultural sector? The central concept in the paper is political and ideological activism. In 1970s, activists in the field proclaimed that the cultural policy institutions should be instruments in the working class struggle against the capitalist society, today these concepts have been replaced by antiracism and identity politics. Three fields of cultural policy are in focus in our tentative exemplification: libraries, theaters and museums