What was John F. Kennedy referring to when he said “a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy”?
Excerpt
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
For those of us who lived through it, what he said was blatantly obvious at the time.
There were people that assumed he meant Jews, but they were always going to think he meant that.
Makes sense, I was too young to remember most of it. Still, does his description not strike you as resembling what we see happening in the U.S. today?
I disagreed with it at the time and do again now… there’s no grand conspiracy; people are just depressingly predictable in how they respond to economic and cultural pressures. Some people recognize the trends and attempt to ride them or even control them (or stop them), but with a few notable exceptions, history tends to just roll on regardless — which can look to some as if there must be some cabal of puppet masters calling the shots.
Sorry, do you mean you disagreed with what JFK was saying, that you didn’t believe him?
I believe his observations were mostly correct, but wouldn’t tie it as closely to a “group” as he did.
That’s amazing to me, that you were there to hear him and remember it. He’s one politician I would have loved to listen to firsthand. He seemed to say a lot of very controversial things, like when he spoke out against religious involvement in politics and named the religious groups very specifically… he was either really dumb or very brave… I imagine the latter. So do you think in this case he was maybe a bit too paranoid, or just mistaken?
I think he, personally, had made a lot of enemies because of how he spoke, and then conflated that with more general and organized resistance to his ideas instead of it being reactionary responses so his delivery.
People are generally nowhere near as organized as we give them credit for.
I can see that… it would be an easy mistake for anyone to make. Still, there are an awful lot of coincidences between what he said, what we see in fact taking place today, and that he was ultimately assassinated. Because of all that, I can’t help but believe a lot of what he said.
That’s logical fallacy though. More likely, there were general principles at play that resulted in his probability of being assassinated increasing. Secret organized groups plotting his downfall aren’t necessary and would be much more complicated to pull off than just letting social response take its course.
But human minds like to turn everything into a narrative where all the parts are directly connected, when in truth, it’s usually a combination of natural selection and social dynamics.