>>> Jacob Segal <jsegal at mindspring.com> 01/13/00 11:45AM >>>
The thing is you don't need "conspiracy theories" to criticize bourgeois
culture or the limits of bourgeois media. Evidence strongly suggests that
JFK was killed by the "lone gunment"
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CB: I disagree. The evidence is almost beyond a reasonable doubt that JFK was killed by a government secret police hit SQUAD,not a single person. I'm not sure what you mean by we don't "need conspiracy theories to criticize bourgeois culture or the limits of bourgeois media ". Of course we do. We need to repeatedly mention actual cases of the bourgeois government operating according to coup d'etat's instead of elections to counter the constant bourgeois propaganda that capitalism operates democratically, fairly, justly, to counter the lie that things are just as they are presented on televison. This is one of the most important examples that refutes this big bourgeois lie regarding its own institutions. Conspiracies and assassinations, dirty tricks of enormous magnitude are the normal mode of operation of bourgeois governments and corporations. The JFK murder is very important in this regard because it is known by just about everybody. Telling the truth about it is very impo! rtant to disabuse the average person of their confidence in the basic good faith and honesty of the American political system.
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(I don't know much about King) and a conspiracy theory that doesn't hold water is just a distraction.
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Charles: This widespread anti-conspiracy theory jargon and thinking is a brainwashing by the bourgeois propagandists to do the exact opposite of what I sketch above. There is an ongoing conspiracy to dissuade masses of people that conspiracies are a normal mode of operation of the U.S. dictatorial system. I'm starting to realize how much this rightwing thinking has penetrated the left.
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Hoover was horrible enough, its hardly necessary to involve him an assassination of which he was probably "innocent."
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CB: Excuse me but this is completely wrong. A main reason Hoover was horrible enough is that he WAS involved in so many conspiracies to suppress and murder opponents of the U.S. system. The presumption should be that Hoover was involved in a given important political assassinaton until evidence otherwise refutes it. They have succeeded in getting you, a leftiist, to think the exact opposite about these types of things as leftists from the 60's. That took some doing.
Our job is to undermine faith and confidence in the system. Encouraging skepticism about rightwing plots as ongoing and normal as part of the system is the job of the rightwing , not us, especially in these cases where it is blatantly obvious that there is a rightwing plot going on.
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Indeed, you innoculate him from valid critique by hanging on to these tenious theories, just like Clinton was partly innoculated from the true Lewinsky affair due to the untrue accusations about whitewater, filegate etc.
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CB: Wow. Now I see how they are doing this. Disbelief in rightwing discourse should not translate into equal or equivalent skepticism about leftwing theories of rightwing plots !!!!! I certainly never thought that Clinton didn't do it with Lewinsky . But having sex is not at all the same thing as political assassination !!!! THAT is a real rightwing take on things.
Amazing. Big Brother is more clever than he ever was in the novel.
CB
>I was reading an article in the bourgeois media yesterday and it made some
>mocking reference to a "conspiracy theory" as an explanation for some
>media event. With that it is fully dawning on me that the bourgeois
>propagandists have succeeded in selling some of the U.S. left, such as it
>is and reflected on this list, on the idea that there are too many
>conspiracy theories circulating around as explanations of various public
>events and incidents. This came up recently here with all the ostrichlike
>responses to the idea that John F. Kennedy was assassinated according to a
>conspiracy by the rightwing in the federal government, probably J. Edgar
>Hoover, etc. Below is another brief, valid analysis of an actual and
>important political conspiracy and assassination right under the noses of
>the naive "left".
>
>
>CB
>
>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Jan. 20, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>EDITORIAL: WHO KILLED DR. KING?
>
>It's the beginning of a new century. When will the
>culpability of this country's ruling class political
>establishment in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King
>Jr. be acknowledged before the public?
>
>On Jan. 15 and again two days later on the official
>holiday commemorating his birthday, much praise will be
>heaped on the great civil rights leader. It will come from
>ordinary people and from politicians. The former will be
>sincere, but much of the latter will be calculated and self-
>serving.
>
>There will be many glimpses on television of his courage
>facing the fire hoses and attack dogs of Southern
>segregationist police. We will again be moved by the soaring
>eloquence of his "I have a dream" speech at the historic
>1963 March on Washington.
>
>Then will come the shattering images taken at the motel in
>Memphis in 1968 when he was gunned down in cold blood.
>
>But why was King murdered? Who was really behind the
>trigger? Why did a jury in Memphis find just this Dec. 8, in
>a civil case brought by King's heirs, that he was killed by
>a broad conspiracy? And will this fact be given the
>prominence it deserves in the whirl of media around Martin
>Luther King Day?
>
>The impression given now is that only the die-hard
>Southern racists were opposed to King. But that's a coverup.
>King was under enormous pressure from FBI Director J. Edgar
>Hoover, who had him under constant surveillance and even
>attacked him publicly. Hoover, in turn, was the top
>political cop of the U.S. because he had a close
>relationship to those in power--that is, the super-rich
>ruling class of the North and South.
>
>King's death came the same year as the assassination of
>Robert Kennedy immediately after he won the crucial
>California primary assuring him the Democratic presidential
>nomination. It came three years after the shooting down of
>Malcolm X, who was building an anti-imperialist movement
>among African Americans in solidarity with the oppressed all
>over the world. It came five years after the assassination
>of President John F. Kennedy, who, although himself a true-
>blue capitalist, had angered the far right on Cuba, Vietnam
>and his domestic policy.
>
>These assassinations were planned by professionals who
>covered their tracks with the help of the bourgeois
>political establishment and the media. In every case, the
>involvement of some element of the state has since been
>uncovered.
>
>They were meant to change the course of U.S. history. They
>didn't succeed. They merely changed its tempo. The civil
>rights movement that King led and inspired had thousands of
>leaders and millions of stalwarts. The struggle continued
>and finally brought down the Jim Crow laws.
>
>But the bigger problem--that of a
>system in which racism is nurtured in order to keep a whole
>people super-exploited by bosses and landlords--goes on.
>This class of exploiters protects the individuals and, most
>importantly, the institutions that killed Dr. Martin Luther
>King Jr.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>ww at workers.org. For subscription info send message
>to: info at workers.org. Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>------------------