Who Killed JFK?

william_kent

Well-known member

version

Well-known member
... questioning authority in the US is a preserve of the right...
theres a new(ish) censorial attitude to conspiracy (admittedly for obvious and understandable reasons) like i couldnt beleive how hysterical the tone of this was, like, lighten up bro https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...calypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix

That's what I was on about here.

The other day someone told me one of their friends didn't actually believe there was such a thing as a left wing conspiracy theorist as they viewed conspiracy theorising as inherently right wing.

An incredible rebranding job's been done on this stuff.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
in those dark days of corona lockdowns i remember leftwing anti-authoritarian antifascists shouting "we're gonna vaccinate you all" towards people protesting against government restrictions

uuuuuuuhm?
 

william_kent

Well-known member
in those dark days of corona lockdowns i remember leftwing anti-authoritarian antifascists shouting "we're gonna vaccinate you all" towards people protesting against government restrictions

uuuuuuuhm?

the world ended in 2012 with the end of the Mayan calendar and we're all fucking about in limbo, totally confused in the post-truth after-life?
 

version

Well-known member
I'm not a fan of the theory that conspiracy theorising inevitably leads to right wing and bigoted views either. I know plenty of people into this stuff who aren't anti-Semites or homophobes or whatever else and who completely reject that sort of thing.

There were and are a ton of liberals who were cooking up or believing all sorts of theories about Trump who didn't turn into frothing bigots either.
 

william_kent

Well-known member
Lobster magazine is still carrying the torch for left wing conspiracy theory in the UK - their theory* on JFK, LBJ done it

* well, according to Robin Ramsay, the editor, and maybe also Anthony Frewin, esteemed pulp author, former aide of Stanley Kubrick, and regular contributor to Lobster, who maybe concurs


edit: @martin may appreciate this - I once bought some early, low numbered copies of Lobster magazine at an anarchist book fair from a stall which was run by a guy I immediately recognised as the ex-teacher who said that he got his pupils to read books by introducing them to the Skinhead novels of Richard Allen ( not the Delphi Murders suspect! ) who appears about 16 minutes into this classic BBC documentary:


Skinhead Farewell - Richard Allen Documentary

Nick Holt, Boot Seller: "steel toe-caps, commando soles - you wouldn't argue with someone who's got a pair of those on, put it that way.."
 
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padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I'm drunk enough, and being a thoroughly rum soaked sarcastic dickhead, to express my puzzlement about the differences between the UK anarcho punk scene and the US equivalent...

when I used to hang around with ( UK based ) squatters, crass style anarcho punks, new age travellers and the like, there would have been no argument if you ventured the notion that LHO was a patsy and that a secret cabal plotted to remove a head of state... that's par for the course in the UK ( Wilson Plot, etc., we know it goes on ) , but I sort of learnt from when a, sadly deceased, friend of mine visited New York and I asked him to pick up a copy of Peter Dale's Scott's Deep Politics II for me, and he enquired in a supposedly radical bookshop ( pierced penis pictures in the window,Modern Primitive RE/Search style ) and he almost got thrown out on the spot, that questioning authority in the US is a preserve of the right, whereas in the UK we seem a little more open minded and across the board with our disbelief of those in power?
yeah I'm gonna have to push back against that hard, bc I grew up in U.S. anarchopunk, squatting, etc culture, and no offense to you or your dead friend, that is a totally inaccurate picture. the issue is definitely not a reluctance to question those in power or not being "open minded". there are real conspiracies that happen not infrequently. Lying about the Vietnam War and Watergate have already been mentioned.. Misleading the media and public about WMDs in the leadup to Iraq II and the CIA attempt to cover up and then lie to defend its post-9/11 torture program are two more recent examples. most conspiracies are much mundane tho - they're about people conspiring to abuse their positions of power for financial gain, whether thru direct embezzlement or kickbacks or whatever - but as those aren't sexy in the same way that secret powerful cabals committing secret coups are people mostly don't care about them.

also has to be said anarchopunks are also in my fairly extensive experience usually some of the most ignorant people I've ever encountered (including my younger self tbc). can't personally speak to the UK there but I don't imagine it's too much different.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the issue with JFK isn't trusting or mistrusting authority in the form of LBJ, the Warren Commission, or whoever. it's that in 60 years no one has been able to construct a conspiracy theory that withstands any kind of scrutiny. the overwhelming majority of forensic evidence reinforces that it was a lone shooter in the book depository. even if you say alright, Oswald was the shooter but he was a patsy, no theory of who and why passes basic plausibility or cui bono tests. if the deep state/mafia/Cuban exiles etc assassinated JFK, why did the aftermath of his assassination turn out so disastrously for all of them? the military got a disastrous quagmire in Vietnam that it took almost 20 years (and a couple minor invasions) to recover from. the mob was eventually gutted by RICO and mandatory drug sentencing. the CIA was unable to stop its dirty laundry from being aired by the Church Committee (or a string of tell all memoirs by people like Philip Agee). and so on. LBJ is perhaps the most implausible of all - he assassinated JFK to what, become a one-term President so badly damaged by Vietnam that he didn't even seek reelection? (fwiw LBJ also was famously not a cloak and dagger guy - he was extremely critical of U.S. involvement in the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem shortly before the Kennedy assassination)

the issue isn't that conspiracies don't exist, it's that the the less plausible they are the less likely they are to have happened. not impossible - unlikely things do happen - but there's a greater burden of proof on conspiracy theorists.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I don't disagree more broadly that antiauthoritarian leftists have been put in something of a cleft stick over the last decade or so

a big part of that is intentional - the deliberation and quite successful cooptation of culture and tactics by the alt-right etc

but it's also about a lack of options

no one was like wow I really love what Obama's doing with drone strikes

but when the other side does things like actively deny your right to exist and a huge part of their appeal is nonsensical conspiracy bullshit, which is also actively killing people, it puts you in a tough spot

yunno it's not like Big Pharma is awesome and we should automatically trust everything the medical establishment says, but also fucking get vaccinated

as luke said, there are obvious and understandable reasons
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
mostly I think that stuff like JFK or jet fuel can't melt steel beams or whatever distracts people from all those actual non-sexy conspiracies

Ponzi schemes, price-fixing, fraud - these things make average peoples' lives more difficult. they ruin lives. they happen all the time.

one recent example - ex-NFL quarterback Brett Favre was involved in an awful scheme to steal millions of dollars that was supposed to go to aid for impoverished Mississippians. 5 million of it went to build a new stadium for his daughter's fucking college volleyball team.

I wish things like that received more attention, and that less went to secret cabals.
 

version

Well-known member
if the deep state/mafia/Cuban exiles etc assassinated JFK, why did the aftermath of his assassination turn out so disastrously for all of them? the military got a disastrous quagmire in Vietnam that it took almost 20 years (and a couple minor invasions) to recover from. the mob was eventually gutted by RICO and mandatory drug sentencing. the CIA was unable to stop its dirty laundry from being aired by the Church Committee (or a string of tell all memoirs by people like Philip Agee). and so on. LBJ is perhaps the most implausible of all - he assassinated JFK to what, become a one-term President so badly damaged by Vietnam that he didn't even seek reelection? (fwiw LBJ also was famously not a cloak and dagger guy - he was extremely critical of U.S. involvement in the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem shortly before the Kennedy assassination)

I'm not arguing in favour of any particular theory, but things not turning out well for the people who may or may not have been involved in the assassination isn't proof of there not being a conspiracy. Nobody can predict the future.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I'm not arguing in favour of any particular theory, but things not turning out well for the people who may or may not have been involved in the assassination isn't proof of there not being a conspiracy.
of course it's not proof of there not being a conspiracy. it's impossible to prove a negative.

but one of the central pillars of any JFK conspiracy theory is that the people who did it were powerful and competent enough to secretly assassinate a sitting President and get away with zero repercussions. that the same people were then unable to benefit from their own conspiracy suggests that they were not in fact so powerful, which makes it less likely to have occurred.

if the last few decades of intelligence personnel and mob memoirs have any lessons, they that things almost always eventually come to light, and that while undoubtedly powerful those organizations are not all-powerful, hypercompetent monoliths
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
@padraig (u.s.) - sorry, i'm extremely drunk and being a dick... i should never post on here after having a drink, but @IdleRich insists that is the only time I should
no worries

and we had the Green Scare here in the U.S. so I'm well familiar with undercovers, provacateurs, etc

I meant ignorant more in the sense of having a very narrow, and passionate, worldivew. people tend to know a lot and care deeply about what they know about, which certainly imparts a kind of strength, but doesn't make for the most lucid analysis. that's definitely a generalization tbc but I think it's pretty true.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
mostly I think that stuff like JFK or jet fuel can't melt steel beams or whatever distracts people from all those actual non-sexy conspiracies

Ponzi schemes, price-fixing, fraud - these things make average peoples' lives more difficult. they ruin lives. they happen all the time.

one recent example - ex-NFL quarterback Brett Favre was involved in an awful scheme to steal millions of dollars that was supposed to go to aid for impoverished Mississippians. 5 million of it went to build a new stadium for his daughter's fucking college volleyball team.

I wish things like that received more attention, and that less went to secret cabals.
Absolutely. A case in point is the vast amount of money that went to companies run by spouses, siblings or friends of cabinet ministers and other Tory MPs during the (height of the) covid pandemic for supplies to the NHS, which were rushed through without any of the normal scrutiny, on the basis that that would take too long. Predictably, the government ended up buying stuff at vastly inflated prices that it could have got for far less elsewhere, stuff that it did need but at tens or hundreds of times greater volume than it needed, and stuff that wasn't up to legal standards in the UK and ended up getting incinerated because it couldn't be used. In one case, a guy who used to run a pub that was (then-health secretary and born-again kangaroo-penis-eater) Matt Hancock's local, who'd started a company that made plastic cups and stuff like that, got a contract worth £40M to supply the NHS with plastic tubes for diagnostic tests, despite never having made medical supplies before. Many other cases involved sums in the hundreds of millions.

But, as we've seen with a couple of honourable members on this very forum, what actually gets people fired up is a completely fictitious epidemic of vaccine-induced heart disease.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This is definitely true, there are loads of non-sexy very real conspiracies happening all the time which are very often skipped over in favour of more exciting ones that are far less concrete and happened in other countries decades ago.

But of the purpose of this thread was to find out what people thought about JFK then I have discovered that there are far fewer subscribers to non-official versions and that is a result of sorts.
 

sufi

lala
This is definitely true, there are loads of non-sexy very real conspiracies happening all the time which are very often skipped over in favour of more exciting ones that are far less concrete and happened in other countries decades ago.

But of the purpose of this thread was to find out what people thought about JFK then I have discovered that there are far fewer subscribers to non-official versions and that is a result of sorts.
yes it's definitely true that everybody is ignoring the very real non-sexy underwear magnate tory ppe conspiracy that is on the front cover of the msm guardian today for sure
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
The conspiracy types probably are though... seeks to be either or... you worry about being controlled by Bill Gates OR boring nepotism stuff but not both
 
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