Facebook and the JFK Assassiination

I was just so fed up with the latest disinformation in the public media that I decided to do a series of posts on my Facebook page about the conspiracy to murder JFK - reaction wasn't too bad, though clearly a few people there think I've lost my mind; one thing that this whole experience has shown me, and as I posted there recently, is that many of the same people who are on the left and who repeatedly cite the MSM as the idiots they are, and as institutions that have gotten everything wrong in the last 50 years (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran Contra, presidential elections, the economy, you name it) now love to cite the VERY SAME MSM to point out that there was certainly no conspiracy, and that such beliefs are the refuge of sad, desparate people like myself.

anyone who wants to send me a friend request to see the postings, please do so; I'm sure I did a lesser job that most of the posters here, but I felt it was necessary to take a public stand.

Or, to quote Rachel Maddow, such beliefs are "necrotic".  Instead of having revolutionary potential (in fact, I don't think that the notion that conspiratorial beliefs are somehow "comforting" is exclusive to reactionaries like McAdams). 

Part of this comes from the fact that the "Left" (whatever that is currently in the USA) became substantially the domain of academics (sadly, and I speak as an insider) after the 60s, and for them, "conspiracy theories" are tainted with "populism", as if it were another form of bible-thumping. 

Part also comes from contemporary theoretical prejudices concerning the role of the "subject" ("history" has little to do with the conscious or deliberate choices of individuals or small groups; this is a perspective shared by Foucaldian post-structuralists and neo-Marxists alike).

And finally, part of it comes from general bad faith, an unspoken desire to be part of the power structure.

For me, all this is nothing less than another trahison des clercs.

Can't find you, Allen

Can you friend me?

https://www.facebook.com/martin.hay.92

just sent you a request -  thanks, I can use some help.


the great thing about all this is that all these Left Wingers I know on FB are busy quoting McAdams and other CIA disinformation; and Albert is absolutely right about academia and the left -

and btw, here's my Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/allen.lowe.18

I’ve googled for your Facebook page, Allen, but haven’t found it. I’m no Scully, I’m afraid.
 
I’ve become somewhat leery of left/right political categories. The purported left wing parties have largely abandoned traditional left wing principles so as to accommodate themselves to the totalitarian neoliberal world order.
 
The assassination of JFK was a crucial step in eliminating the democratic challenge to that world order, as implied in James Douglass’ book JFK and the Unspeakable.
 
The mainstream media are integral to the maintaining of that order and are thus precluded from examining the JFK assassination in any serious way.

here's my FB link: https://www.facebook.com/allen.lowe.18

Goban Saor wrote:I’ve become somewhat leery of left/right political categories. The purported left wing parties have largely abandoned traditional left wing principles so as to accommodate themselves to the totalitarian neoliberal world order.
 
The assassination of JFK was a crucial step in eliminating the democratic challenge to that world order, as implied in James Douglass’ book JFK and the Unspeakable.
 
The mainstream media are integral to the maintaining of that order and are thus precluded from examining the JFK assassination in any serious way.

Goban, I agree with you about this, but I think an additional effect of the 60s, aside from castrating (sorry for the gendered metaphor) the Left was to drive it behind Ivy-covered walls.  Hence no effective active force in day-to-day political struggles.  But what you say about the party sell-out and the role of the media is, for my money, absolutely correct. The two-party system does not help matters either.  In the last presidential election I voted for Jill Stein, who got less than 1% of the vote nationally.

Thanks for that thoughtful reply, Albert.
 
The 22^nd November 1963 may not have been the day the music died but it was the day democracy died. The Dealey Plaza execution put an end to all that Enlightenment nonsense about freedom, equality, brotherhood etc. It was a stark demonstration of Mao’s dictum, ‘Power proceeds from the barrel of a gun’.
 
It’s no wonder many intellectuals retreated to the halls of Academia where they could bedazzle each other with verbal pyrotechnics about nothing really.
 
In his book How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World Francis Wheen entertainingly dealt with these people in a chapter titled ‘The demolition merchants of reality’. Another chapter is titled ‘Right is the new left’. (As far as I am aware, Wheen is dismissive of JFK conspiracy theories but nobody’s perfect I suppose.)
 
Politically, I consider myself anti-authoritarian and a democrat (with a small ‘d’) which for me mean more or less the same thing. So-called left-wingers can be just as authoritarian as so-called right-wingers, Joseph Stalin being a prime example.
 
I use the term ‘authoritarian’ to refer to the presumed infallibility of those in authority, or, more colloquially, ‘the bosses are always right’ mentality. The famous Stanley Milgram experiment demonstrated that 65% of subjects tested were authoritarian, insofar as they were willing to administer lethal electric shocks to innocent strangers when told to do so by an authority figure. In real life the percentage is probably higher given the sanctions available to the authorities to punish recusants.
 
There’s a Russian saying, ‘Believe your own crooked eye’. I believe my own crooked eye when I see President John Kennedy being shot from the front on the Zapruder film.
 
As far as I’m concerned, lone nut theorists dogmatists are authoritarians who ignore what they see with their own eyes as well as a mass of other evidence in deference to what they’re told by their ‘superiors’.
 
The one reason for hope in all of this is that the majority of people in the US don’t believe the lone nut malarkey.

Yes, Goban, I agree that authoritarianism (or in its extreme manifestation, totalitarianism) can grow in any ideological soil.  Left and Right meet at that extreme in some sense; except that the historical context and socio-economic perspectives behind Hitler and Stalin are not identical, and the fact that both were responsible for untold atrocities against humanity should nevertheless not be allowed to mask those differences.  At the risk of turning this thread into a more broadly political discussion, let me just say this: as much as I share your democratic and anti-authoritarian stances, for me they are necessary but insufficient.  Socio-economic justice needs to be a component in my personal personal philosophy.  But perhaps we should return the discussion to the JFK assassination and disinformation.  As for dogmatism, there is also the common saying in the USA, "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?".  I don't know the book by Wheen, but it sounds worth a read.  Thanks for pointing it out.

Just a brief addendum by way of a reply, Albert.

My conception of democracy encompasses socio-economic justice. Equality, the fundamental principle of democracy, implies economic equality.

Goban, got it, thanks!