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.
He’s talking about the Soviet Union. This would have been clear to anyone at the time. Conspiracy just means more than one person working together.
It was mostly before my time, so I don’t have that kind of insight. When I read it, it sounds to me a lot like what we see happening in the U.S. today.
Well, back then it was the Soviets, and now quite a lot of what we see in the west is being guided by the hand of Putin, so it basically is the same thing happening all over again.
He was talking about the Soviet Union. Don’t they teach this very basic history in school?
Who do you think was conducting the ‘Cold War’ in the last sentence?
It’s pretty funny to see this thread filled with wrong answers by lemmy.world users and those same smuglibs downvoting anyone that suggests otherwise when it’s pretty universally accepted that he was killed by the CIA.
The CIA even did a distinctive CIA-style cleanup job , eliminating all parties with knowledge of the hit afterward.
What for many years seemed unthinkable has turned out to be true after all.
There was a CIA cover-up. The CIA did suppress information. The CIA did stonewall both of the official government investigations of the JFK assassination. And as a consequence of this Agency misconduct, both investigations were compromised in important respects-particularly in regard to the fundamental issues of whether the assassination resulted from a conspiracy and whether Lee Harvey Oswald (alleged to be the sole assassin in the Warren Report and alleged to be one of multiple assassins in the Report of the House Assassinations Committee) was affiliated with the CIA.
So you’re saying JFK was referring to the CIA when he talked about a “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” from around the world?
Yes. They did, after all, assassinate him.
Probably the oligarchs. They have been trying to install fascist dictatorships for a very long time.
He was talking about worldwide communism. This was during the Cold War and no one would even think America was an oligarchy at the time. The audience knew it was the Soviets he was talking about primarily.
Bookmark worthy, thanks!
Russian and Chinese communism
This could be as easily applied to the people who killed JFK
From his wording, I’d think it probably did/does.
With out any diligence this makes more sense and likely why they assassinated him.
Remember folks tupac was in killed in las vagas and killer was never found.
Brian Thompson the United Health Parasite was denied a claim to life in NYC and some how they found some rich Chad as a fall guy 🤡
Any guess as to what or who he was referring to specifically? Like, who is “they”?
Again talking out of my ass but the oligarchs who were in charge at during that time along with the spooks who colluded to kill him.
Speeches like these got them big mad.
Its like the business plot, we know rich people did a thing but the government covered it up so we won’t know what actually happened.
That the beauty of being the owner of the country. The state works for you even if you kill the president
Assuming he was telling the truth and he was right, it doesn’t sound like something that would have disappeared from the world any time soon. Which then makes me wonder if what he was referring to has anything to do with what’s happening today, cause there does seem to be a striking resemblance if we compare it to his description…?
Who are “they”?
Russian and Chinese communism
Yes, both have been forms of authorities rules.
And in light of OP’s question. To me “they” are all the authoritarians; both the extreme left and right winged.
Said the normie almost reflexively without doing any critical thinking 🤡
I’m not going to debate you, but I will laugh at you.
✊
How do you know that? Seriously asking.
In the quote he says he’s talking about the Cold War.
He makes reference to it, but also speaks of some kind of opposition from “around the world” that was working on “expanding its sphere of influence”. He also described this thing as operating in secret, not out in the open. Was Russia operating secretly? (I don’t know much about the Cold War.)
For those of us who lived through it, what he said was blatantly obvious at the time.
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.
Yes they were operating in secret. There are many examples of their infiltration, such as the Cambridge Five.
Ok, I didn’t know that. I was too young still to remember most of it.
