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.
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?
If he was talking about nothing more than the Soviet Union, why didn’t he simply say ‘we are opposed around the world by the Soviet Union’? Seems like a very complicated way of saying Soviet Union. And no, the schools I went to didn’t teach about covert global conspiracies, the likes of which John F. Kennedy was clearly warning us against.
You’re not going to like this answer but he didn’t say Soviet Union because he didn’t need to. Everybody understood that ‘communism’ was ‘THE Global Conspiracy’ ever since McCarthyism took of.
Check out A conspiracy so immense : the world of Joe McCarthy by David Oshinsky to learn a little of what the attitude of the time was like.
Also sorry for the previously snippy response.
Thanks, apology accepted. Thanks also for the link, saved it.
In his entire speech, he never mentions Russia in any form. Meanwhile, he does refer to some enemy in plural form, that is advancing from around the globe, i.e. “those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe”, and “this nation’s foes”, etc. He also warned against religious involvement in politics in a different speech, which I think has gone mostly ignored at our own peril. People scoff at religion if they themselves aren’t religious, ignoring the fact that the leaders of the world are mostly very religious people (whether sincere in their religion or not). I mention this because I suspect these two were somehow connected in JFK’s mind.
For the sake of objectivity and truth, I’m trying to take into account my lack of any firsthand perspective. I just honestly cannot see how he was talking about the Soviet Union alone when I read what he said and how he said it. It honestly seems to me he had to be talking about something far greater.
Nah man sorry. You’re just wrong in this case. You’re missing the forest for the trees.
Communism was the conspiracy. China. Vietnam. Laos. Cuba. Yemen. Somalia. Congo. Mozambique. Afghanistan. These were the countries succumbing to the worldwide conspiracy he was talking about.
Not to forget that Kennedy increased US involvement in Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism. He sent more troops and military advisers to South Vietnam to fight Ho Chi Minh’s forces. His brother also served under McCarthy as his father was a major ally and raging anti-communist.
Also regarding religion, Kennedy was a devout Catholic, which was a massive issue for him during the election, giving him good reason to try and dissuade people from considering it as an issue for him. Back then Catholics were often questioned on their loyalty, with people concerned that the president would be answerable to the pope. Crazy I know.
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.
What I’m trying to get at is 1) Exactly what this thing is that JFK was talking about; and 2) Whether this precise thing has continued to exist since JFK’s time up to today. With the very elaborate way JFK was speaking, it sounds to me like it had to involve more than just the Soviets, and not like something that would have easily and suddenly died off. But I suspect you must be right, that the Soviets were and obviously are significantly involved still. Maybe I’m just asking an impossible question.
Russian and Chinese communism
Said the normie almost reflexively without doing any critical thinking 🤡
I’m not going to debate you, but I will laugh at you.
✊
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.
