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.
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it seems like you didn’t quite get the responses you were hoping for.
i appreciate your questioning and attempt to reframe the JFK speech in a modern context. it makes sense to me that he might have been speaking about some underground conspiracy which is still in operation today.
👍
I was looking for something that would click in my mind, like when you just know puzzle pieces fit together… and, no, I haven’t heard anything like that yet.
Russian and Chinese communism
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
I was thinking almost the same but in addition I’d add the whole Cold War, because from the URSS, the KGB used to do analog things but IMO with less effectiveness and judged more harshly, maybe because the International agreement were naive and powerless against the USA.
