I still believe in the idea that the CIA or factions within the bourgeoisie assassinated JFK. It doesn’t matter that JFK was a war criminal who was just as bad as most other Presidents in the United States history. What matters is that his death to this day just comes off as incredibly suspicious and the fact that he wanted to get rid of the CIA just makes me… not really trust the official narrative. I mean, the narrative painting the man who did initially as a communist just seems too convenient…

I’m sorry, I know how I sound, but I used to grow up with 9/11 conspiracy theories as well. In many ways, it made me anti-imperialist, but it certainly did give rise in me to certain suspicious about the US government as well. I know that I shouldn’t be thinking like this, but honestly? I don’t know. And perhaps none of us will know for sure. But I can’t help but get the feeling that the bourgeoisie would easily cannibalize their own.

The US would never kill its own head of state? They’re easily replaceable, don’t have complete control of the federal government, and besides, kings were assassinated by nobles way back when for much less.

Honestly, I get how I sound, and maybe it’s my extreme case of OCD, but I just grew up with this as a fact. Maybe I need to rethink all this.

I’m sorry, comrades, but this is kinda hard for me.

(Also, this is a reply to the previous thread about this topic).

  • chad1234
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    4 years ago

    the thread did not seem to conclusively go one way or the other on whether he was killed by the CIA.

    the death of JFK and the murder of the assassin while in police custody is very suspicious to me. I have not thought about it enough to have decided what to believe plus it was very long ago

    However, if, for example, tomorrow Dotard got assassinated, I would suspect it was CIA.

    Even though he does do most of what they want, small differences with previous official line have motivated them to run Russiagate, pee-tape and impeachment against him.

    US government also had a hand in the coup against former Australian PM Rudd for minor differences in foreign policy: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/12/aust-d08.html

    However, I dont think it really should make much difference on whether you became communist or not. What if instead, they got a sex tape and convinced JFK to retire for “health reasons” instead? Also, the problems of capitalism would still exist even if the government did not have a CIA carrying out these plots

  • some_random_commie
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    4 years ago

    Glad you enjoyed my response enough to make a completely different thread about it!

    Whether or not the US government actually killed its own head of state was never addressed by me. Such issues are actually decided on the evidence. I offered my opinion on such ideas, namely, that there is no reason to actually believe any of that nonsense. You’re of course, free to agree or disagree with me.

    What I offered was to ponder over the implications that the belief in this conspiracy has had on the minds of the entirety of the one-foot-in-the-grave “Left.” I myself was most active in student organizing when 9/11 truthers were everywhere, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt in my mind, these people were a combination of imbeciles and government agents. The sincere ones actually believed that, somehow, if the majority of people just accepted the idea that the US government did 9/11, that the government would just spontaneously collapse on its own. The government agents would just show up to protests they didn’t even organize with bullhorns and screech it as a disruption tactic. Now the majority of the people on the planet believe some form of this conspiracy theory, and guess what? Nothing has changed at all. And this includes people actually living in New York City, though by the time OWS was around, these people only gathered in handfuls at a time, their numbers having dwindled down to the sincere believers only, and were no longer the force of disruption they once were.

    I also asked the reader to consider what it could mean if the conspiracy is actually true. If the “American” government is willing to murder their own heads of state, why don’t we see more political violence of this type? Why aren’t US presidents shot every couple of terms? Why aren’t senators and governors and congressmen who don’t toe the line of the murder-the-president-and-get-away-with-it faction killed? Why isn’t US history filled with more civil wars?

    Hell, it is clear probably the vast majority of the US ruling class despises Trump. Why don’t they simply murder him, and blame it on antifa? Is not sending the troops into Syria on behalf of their Wahabi-contras just as offensive to the kill-the-president faction as not acting as the gusano air force was allegedly to them during the Bay of Pigs invasion? Why was that particular moment in history so special? If Cuba meant so much to them, why is it still today ruled by communists? Did the kill-the-leader-of-American-imperialism faction have post assassination regrets?

    And finally, if you actually investigate all the claims about Kennedy wanting to “end the war” or any such nonsense, it is all based on nothing. It is not merely grasping at straws to say that because JFK signed National Security Action Memorandum 263, that he was opposed to the Vietnam war. This is borderline lying to people. Signing a document which says “The war is going great, we can reduce our troops by about 1,000” is turned into evidence for the feelings opportunist geriatric “Leftists” project onto the figure of JFK. But organizing the coup against Ngô Đình Diệm for even suspicion of wanting to negotiate a settlement with the North is just conveniently forgotten, because it doesn’t fit the narrative they want to tell themselves about their anti-war-hero-Jesus president murdered by his own government. So they torture the evidence until it says what they want it to say, and then trot out a handful of people who say Kennedy told them personally he wanted to withdraw from Vietnam, often these quotes appearing for the first time decades later, with of course, no way to actually confirm any of this, and would mean nothing even if it he did say what tons of people in the US military circles already believed and were telling JFK about the war being unwinnable, about not wanting more “Americans” to die for Vietnamese people, etc. Seriously, offhand jingoistic remarks about the lives of “American” soldiers not being worth the conflict are turned into (secret!) plans for immediate withdrawal after his re-election.

    This is, of course, the lynchpin of the whole narrative, and without it, there is nothing at all, so of course the whole thing is sustained by nothing but lies about the contents of public record documents and imaginary conversations reported to historians desperate to substantiate the anti-war-hero-Jesus presidential myth, so the geriatric “Leftists” can die believing they have done a good thing by collaborating with the “Left” wing of “American” imperialism, least that ever elusive ultra-deep-state-murder-the-president-faction ever decides to act again when they don’t get their way. Watch out Trump!

    • MakanOP
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      4 years ago

      You didn’t really answer my thoughts on the matter (such as JFK wanting to do away with the CIA because they had too much power) but you did give me a lot to think about.

      And again: I already know that JFK was a war criminal.

      (For the record, I respect you and your response, and you gave me much to think about, but I feel that the suspicious circumstances of the assassination and the cui bono reasons for ousting JFK, even with foolhardy at the time, cannot be ignored, imho)

      • some_random_commie
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        4 years ago

        JFK wanting to do away with the CIA because they had too much power

        There was a quote about Kennedy allegedly wanting to do this that was popularized a few years ago by Wikileaks, as they made it a password to some file they were spreading on the internet. The quote is completely fictitious, of course, first appearing in print 3 years after Kennedy was dead, and (allegedly) given by an unnamed official at that.

        Perhaps you should consider why you think it is a legitimate practice to do history by way of anonymous quotations from dead people who can’t confirm or deny what people claim they told them in private. What makes this stuff believable to you? So the CIA got wind (somehow) that Kennedy didn’t care for them, and they immediately plotted his murder? So why didn’t they kill everyone involved in the Church Commission a decade later?

        Notice also how the motive changes from conspiracy to conspiracy. Is it because he failed to give air support to gusanos in Cuba, was going to withdraw the troops from Vietnam, or because he was going to get rid of the CIA? Whatever the motive, Kennedy happened to tell someone about it, and then years later someone tells someone else. Charles Bartlett first put his own anti-war-hero-Jesus Kennedy quote to print in 1985, over two decades after the fact. You know, when the JFK conspiracy theory was already believed by the vast majority of “American” society, like it is today, and no one would bother trying to call him out on it.

        • MakanOP
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          4 years ago

          The CIA came up with the term “conspiracy theorist” in order to discredit people that believed in stuff like JFK conspiracy theories. And either way, the death was pretty suspicious and couldn’t have been done by some random communist. I’d rather trust that unnamed source than the official narrative.

          • some_random_commie
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            4 years ago

            couldn’t have been done by some random communist

            This is one of the purposes of the lie; not only to paper-over the differences between liberalism and Marxism, but to imply the US government is some sort of omnipotent entity that couldn’t be shook to the core by the actions of a single individual. Can’t have people getting the idea that they too could change the course of history, if they are just willing to pick up a gun and fight!

            I’d rather trust that unnamed source than the official narrative.

            The “American” government has no qualms peddling bullshit themselves to gullible people; just look at the QAnon stuff.

            • MakanOP
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              4 years ago

              The QAnon stuff is a psy-op and Lee Harvey Oswald was not a communist; besides, his connections to the CIA are sus to me, tbh.

  • queer_bird
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    4 years ago

    It’s all good, comrade. Just because someone said they don’t believe that JFK was assinated by the US on a thread doesn’t mean that the issue is solved. We aren’t a monolith here, we disagree on things.

    • MakanOP
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      Of course, yes.

      I just didn’t want to come off as too much of an outlier. I know that “conspiracy theories” at best are a double-edged sword. I do not like conspiricism. But even so, I trust people that actually lived at that time to know that there was something fishy about it all. I mean, think about it, nobody was really taught to be a “conspiracy theorist” before that happened and yet somehow people sort of thought there was something up with it.

      lol Maybe I’m insecure, but I know that many MLs don’t like conspiricism (with good reason), but to me, that shouldn’t deter us from looking at the official narrative with a critical eye, imho.

      • silver_panda
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        4 years ago

        I feel you on being insecure, I am in a similar though I have a different experience when in comes to conspiracies. I definitely agree we should be critical of the narratives presented by any Imperialist nation, while still remaining materialist in our analysis. However I’m not sure if it’s something that will radicalize people to Marxism or even “the Left” generally. I could be wrong but I haven’t seen someone that was like “Well Maxism-Leninism agrees with my view point on JFK, so that’ll be my ideology”. I feel it’s the person’s material conditions that will lead them to the MLism. I think it’s more valuable to say “Hey, this is why you can barely make rent, while the CEO of your company earns extravagant amount of wealth” rather than “I believe X in conspiracy Y”. Though I could see those topics as a good jumping off point if you and another person agree on something, but their political development has to go further than just researching conspiracy-related topics. Hopefully I’m not being obtuse or unclear, but it’s more compelling to talk and learn about other prescient topics (such as SwCC) as someone new to MLism. Plus I’m not sure if I’ll be alive long enough to get satisfactory answers on various conspiracy topics – though having the truth revealed would be nice – so I tend to focus on what can help radicalize people now.

        All that being said, as long you come to your conclusion in a scientific, materialist manner, then I say go for it! Solidarity comrade!

        • MakanOP
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          4 years ago

          Thanks! Solidarity!

          And thanks for the satisfactory answer. I get exactly what you mean. Too many conspiracy theorists focus on the, well, “conspiracies” and not the actual working conditions that many suffer in. The political is important but we need to connect it to the “bread and butter” issues that many around the country face.

  • calmlamp
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    4 years ago

    Conspiracy theory pushers usually push a lot of emotional buttons really hard to get people to buy into their theory. If you grew up around them I could understand having this be a really big deal for you.

    Here’s a bigger question you should ponder. What difference does it make if this theory is true or false? If it’s true that JFK wanted to abolish the CIA and they offed him because of that, what does this tell us about the world? It doesn’t really tell us all that much. It may tell us something about JFK as an individual, but what would it even matter? As you acknowledged, he was an imperialist war criminal. If he felt the CIA had too much power it was because he felt they posed a threat to his own power, not out of some noble patriotic love for democracy.

    And we all know the CIA’s bread and butter involves political assassinations. I don’t see any reason to suspect they would refrain from offing a POTUS if they saw a reason. Nothing else so far has been off limits for them. So it wouldn’t tell us much new about the CIA or world imperialism. It could provide us with information about political cleavages in the state sixty years ago, but this is hardly valuable tactical information now

    There’s not gonna be some storybook moment where the masses gather in Langley, Virginia and shut down the CIA because sixty years later we finally got confirmation that JFK was an inside job. Not gonna happen.

    So I would encourage you to shift how you think about this question. The answer doesn’t really matter. Therefore the question itself is not all that important at this point.

    • MakanOP
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      4 years ago

      I know all this. I’m just saying that I still think that JFK was offed by the CIA. And yes, I’m well-aware that JFK only cared about his position in all this, nothing more.

        • MakanOP
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          I don’t think it matters much in the grand scheme of things. I just think that people deserve to know the truth, but that’s about it.

          • calmlamp
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            4 years ago

            In general I agree actually, but really how this question could be settled is by opening up the CIA’s archives one way or another, not endless speculation.

  • Hagels_Bagels
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    4 years ago

    The belief that the CIA assassinated JFK seems plausible to me. For example, if you look at what was happening in the Congo with Patrice Lumumba things start looking suspicious. The Congo had and still has a fuck ton of natural resources worth a huge amount, and they were just getting their independence from Belgium. I’d imagine the CIA’s mission at the time would be to ensure that the Congo becomes another neocolonialist client state of the global north, and while we can talk about the faults of JFK, I believe he had a stronger sense of morality than other presidents (excluding Lincoln), and was a supporter of Congolese independence. Patrice Lumumba was assassinated by the intelligence services of some countries in the global north, and If I remember correctly, his death was kept hidden from Kennedy for some weeks afterwards by the authorities, and was gutted when he learned of the news.

    I find myself believing some select conspiracy theories generally associated with the “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” crowd as a commie. There’s also the Dag Hammarskjöld assassination(?) case that ties in with JFK and the Congo, which I find super suspicious, however I haven’t looked into that at length. The UN has even reopened the inquiry into his death (in 1961) at some point in the last decade.

    MI6 accused of thwarting effort to solve 1961 death of UN chief

    • MakanOP
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      4 years ago

      The UN has reopened the inquiry into his death?

      Honestly though, they’re probably going to obscure the truth like they usually do, imho

      • Hagels_Bagels
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        Yep, 2013 they said that new evidence had come to light of what happened in 1961. The UN is pretty useless so even if they do find a few smoking guns, I doubt it’ll do shit. They might try to conceal things, but the people with the most to hide is probably intelligence services like the CIA and MI6.

        https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/768350?ln=en

        • MakanOP
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          Fair enough and all good points.