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How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

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Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#61

Post by Kamq »

jjackson5324 wrote: post #20

Funny enough, if you look at polling data of Americans... amongst people who actually lived during the JFK assassination & later investigation and kept up with all the details.... only about 11% believed the official narrative. More than 80% thought the official narrative was a lie. Nowadays (when most Americans have just read about it in history textbooks), it feels like most people believe the official narrative an…

That seems to contradict the available data.

Using gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/514310/decades-later-americans-...

It seems that a majority doubt the official narrative these days (that LHO acted alone), but it was much lower in the past.

There are, of course, limits to polling. People will tend to lie about things with social consequences, but you specifically call out polling data in your post.

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#62

Post by underlipton »

woodruffw wrote: post #24
jjackson5324 wrote: post #20

Funny enough, if you look at polling data of Americans... amongst people who actually lived during the JFK assassination & later investigation and kept up with all the details.... only about 11% believed the official narrative. More than 80% thought the official narrative was a lie. Nowadays (when most Americans have just read about it in history textbooks), it feels like most people believe the official narrative an…

> Nowadays (when most Americans have just read about it in history textbooks), it feels like most people believe the official narrative and dismiss conspiracy theories as "crazy". A significant confounding factor here is the encompassing and totalizing nature of modern conspiracy theories: there's a substantial difference in breadth, depth, and assumed priors between a JFK assassination conspiracy (painted against th…

>Put another way: American culture is prone to conspiratorial beliefs, but isn't (yet) prone to Big Lies.

Lost Cause mythology, pretty much everything related to the popular conception of mid-century American society, "It's not a recession because hiring and consumer spending are strong," etc.

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#63

Post by CyberEldrich »

pvg wrote: post #46
jjackson5324 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations was established to investigate the assassinations of JFK and MLK. After their investigation, they concluded that the official narrative was most likely wrong and they found a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. There were no investigations after that.. > Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at…

The House Select committee didn't do a very good job and did not have access to accurate information. There has been, of course, plenty of investigating done on the assassination since then. A well-known overview is Gerald Posner's Case Closed , it goes over the deficiencies of that and many other assassination theories with a fine-toothed comb.

[dead]

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#64

Post by marginalia_nu »

underlipton wrote: post #57
hackandthink wrote: post #39

"Despite gathering years of NSA-worthy surveillance on the philosophers, Hoover’s agents were never able to discern the ideological program of the French. “I can’t work out,” wrote one in a note in Sartre’s file, “if he’s pro-Communist or anti-Communist." I feel the same. Lévy often seems to be a manichean ideologue, but I found his Sartre book revealing: "Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentie…

It's almost as if exceptional thinkers don't always fit inside an ideological box or something.

It's a tradition as old as Socrates.

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#65

Post by aphroz »

hackandthink wrote: post #39

"Despite gathering years of NSA-worthy surveillance on the philosophers, Hoover’s agents were never able to discern the ideological program of the French. “I can’t work out,” wrote one in a note in Sartre’s file, “if he’s pro-Communist or anti-Communist." I feel the same. Lévy often seems to be a manichean ideologue, but I found his Sartre book revealing: "Levy depicts Sartre as a man who could succumb to the twentie…

Levy is not regarded as a serious person. He once quoted a made up philosopher and has some dubious interests. In the french speaking world most people treat him as a joke.

https://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1963338,0...

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#66

Post by woodruffw »

underlipton wrote: post #62
woodruffw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nowadays (when most Americans have just read about it in history textbooks), it feels like most people believe the official narrative and dismiss conspiracy theories as "crazy". A significant confounding factor here is the encompassing and totalizing nature of modern conspiracy theories: there's a substantial difference in breadth, depth, and assumed priors between a JFK assassination conspiracy (painted against th…

>Put another way: American culture is prone to conspiratorial beliefs, but isn't (yet) prone to Big Lies. Lost Cause mythology, pretty much everything related to the popular conception of mid-century American society, "It's not a recession because hiring and consumer spending are strong," etc.

I don’t think any of these things are conspiracy theories. Lost Cause mythology is definitely revisionist pseudohistory and not a conspiracy; I don’t know what the alleged recession conspiracy would be.

(To my original point about breadth and depth: the adoption of non-conspiratorial but otherwise fringe views is a large part of what makes contemporary conspiracy both syncretic and naturally limiting — a “big tent” policy around conspiracies makes it hard to latch onto a single Big Lie.)

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#67

Post by ericfr11 »

krapp wrote: post #54
hk__2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't imagine that a state that is obsessively dreaming about the world revolution and has a wide spy network and large group of naive sympathisers doesn't try to infiltrate all the possible influential counter cultures then you are a little too naive. How are Blacks, communists and poets “counter cultures”?

>How are Blacks, communists and poets “counter cultures”? You don't understand American culture at all if you can even ask this question sincerely.

American culture is, indeed, a mix of culture. It exists only thanks to external influences. Black culture is at the heart of American culture (jazz, soul, and more music), great athletes in the best team...

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#68

Post by ericfr11 »

mhitza wrote: post #27
hk__2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't imagine that a state that is obsessively dreaming about the world revolution and has a wide spy network and large group of naive sympathisers doesn't try to infiltrate all the possible influential counter cultures then you are a little too naive. How are Blacks, communists and poets “counter cultures”?

Because it was the counter culture, eg Black Panthers, youth communist parties

Not entirely true. Without some "counter" culture, we would not have culture today.

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#69

Post by ericfr11 »

jjackson5324 wrote: post #20

Funny enough, if you look at polling data of Americans... amongst people who actually lived during the JFK assassination & later investigation and kept up with all the details.... only about 11% believed the official narrative. More than 80% thought the official narrative was a lie. Nowadays (when most Americans have just read about it in history textbooks), it feels like most people believe the official narrative an…

So many Americans are prone to conspiracy theories. Most of the flat-earther, no-climate-urgency, election-was-stolen are Americans who have access to lots of facts, but still are in denial

Re: How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

#70

Post by [deleted] »

Kamq wrote: post #51
saghm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't imagine that a state that is obsessively dreaming about the world revolution and has a wide spy network and large group of naive sympathisers doesn't try to infiltrate all the possible influential counter cultures then you are a little too naive. Being able to imagine something isn't concrete proof that it exists. "There's a first time for everything" isn't literally true; plenty of totally plausible t…

I mean, that's kinda fair. But it's also a much lower bar to suspect that a group might be infiltrated when we're talking about an entity with a proven track-record of infiltrating and espionage. Doubly so during the cold war, when this kind of thing was normalized. I also wouldn't be that surprised if you told me the CIA managed to infiltrate some philosophy group. Hell, they funded Jackson Pollock.

[deleted]
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