"A monolithic and ruthless conspiracy": the speech of John F. Kennedy before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961 as a mirror of today's antagonism between liberty and the surveillance state

Fifty years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, it is close to certain that the murder was the result of a "ruthless conspiracy" of powerful interests that opposed a "free and open society".

Servicemen carrying the casket of President John F. Kennedy up the steps of the Capitol, followed by the late President's widow and children, during state funeral services for Pres. Kennedy in Washington, November 24, 1963.

Whatever you think of him and his policies otherwise, in a speech before the American Newspaper Publishers Association, April 27, 1961, President John F. Kennedy clearly pointed to a system of infiltration, secrecy, and subversion as being characteristic of the difference between an undemocratic, closed society, that is manipulated and monitored by covert, secretive means, and a truly democratic and open system, with a free public sphere; this was in the days of the Cold War. But as is increasingly turning out recently, the former, a system of (even more sophisticated) infiltration, secrecy and subversion, is (still) in place even today, more than twenty years after end of the Cold War, in the United States and elsewhere, and is undermining and working against the concept of a free democratic society. 

This secretive system is in contrast to the paradigm change after the Cold War, when societies, after the end of that global confrontation, were at leat theoretically ready to move towards Sir Karl Popper's "open society" and a growing demand of transparency and clarity emerged. The "war on terror" after September 11, 2001, created a new (pseudo-) enemy that, according to the main stream of political discourse, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, could only be fought with more security and less liberty. This delicate balance between civil rights and liberty on the one hand and security and (the purported need for more) surveillance on the other is one of the major political points of contention today between groups such as the liberal parties (e.g. the "Pirate Parties" in Europe), civil rights activists and other opposition groups on the "left" and proponents of a surveillance state, such as the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries and their respective security agencies, the NSA being the most prominent one in the limelight recently, on the "right".

The concise snippets from that JFK speech describing this secretive system and the need to fight it by "informing and alerting" not only the "American people", but society globally, are condensed in the following two minute video. The text is quoted below:



"Ladies and Gentlemen,

the very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. (...) For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies 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 secret is revealed.

That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy.

I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. (...) Confident, that with your help man will be what he was born to be, free and independent." 

On this day in 1963: “A shot heard round the world” - the assassination of John F. Kennedy fifty years ago. Civil Rights, the cold war and the “imperial” Janus face of the United States

“I should have left it there. Let them see what they've done” - these were the thoughts of Jacqueline Kennedy, shortly after she had wiped off the blood that had been spilled on her as her husband, the President of the United States of America, John F. Kennedy, had been shot dead just after midday local time on Friday, November 22,1963, in Dallas, as his motorcade passed a cheering crowd at Dealey Plaza in the Texan city.

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at Love Field, Dallas, Texas at 11.40 a.m. local time. About an hour later, the President was shot  and died the same day, November 22, 1963

It was a “shot heard around the world”. The tragic event of that sunny November afternoon in Texas historically most likely left the strongest mark in the memory of the Baby Boomer (i.e. the immediate post-war) generation not only in the United States, but also in Europe and elsewhere. In terms of the “collective memory” of that generation, it is probably at least on the same scale as the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 for them and their childrens' generation, that ushered in the end of the “Cold War”, and as, more recently, the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, that so relentlessly has been used by the Bush administration and others as a pretext to violate civil and human rights and basic free-doms, both domestically and internationally (torture, illegal detainment), and to wage a couple of major wars.


 
“Let them see what they've done” - Jackie's thoughts reflect that it was a highly polarized political climate in the United States, at least as polarized as the current one that Barack Obama is facing. “They” were (and today are) the enemies of a liberal, open society, that the Kennedys embodied and that JFK had strived for in his policies such as the Civil Rights Act, that he initiated but didn't live to see enacted (in 1964). That Act was a major step towards (at least legal) equality for minorities, especially Blacks, in the United States, "giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments”, as Kennedy had announced in his “Civil Rights Address” just five months before his death, on June 11^th. At the time of his presidency, racism, opposition to equality and tolerance for all groups of society (blacks, but also other groups such as artists, gays, “hippies”/”freaks”, intellectuals, Jews/Muslims, “liberals” or atheists) were still shown openly and not taboo, and in the southern United States even part of the political main stream; today those tendencies have been more or less pushed towards the right fringes - although you still have shocking cases of people getting away with crimes motivated by racism, as the Zimmermann-Trayvon Martin case in Florida has shown.


Himself not being a true “WASP”, as he was an Irish-American Catholic, the first and so far only one of that background in the Oval Office, John F. Kennedy was one of the major figures contributing to the process of gradual racial emancipation that to this day still, of course, isn't successfully completed by far. The latest and most apparent sign of this gradual process, though, was the election of an at least partially African-American, Barack Obama, into the highest political office, in 2008, and his re-election in 2012. In the 1960s, the election of a non-white president wouldn't have been possible. Racial segregation was still in place then (it was only officially entirely outlawed in 1968 by the Supreme Court); economic discrimination, educational and income inequality are often still running along ethnic lines today.


These election results reflect the increasingly non-white ethnic make-up of the United States and the end of the WASP hegemony; the Tea Party, a radical paleo-conservative group within the Republican Party, formed as a reaction to these trends. It desperately fights against the end of that hegemony, i.e. the end of the rule of gun-slinging, racist, redneck, Social Darwinist white men; they are dreaming of the days of the “frontier” of the 19^th century, promoting an extremist conservatism (anti-Abortion), libertarianism (for small government) and “fiscal darwinism” (further tax reductions for the rich), i.e. of regressing to the 1920s economically, to the 1950s socially and the 1980s (and Bush's 2000s) fiscally.


The circumstances of how JFK, the second-youngest president (after Teddy Roosevelt), born in 1917, i.e. 43 years of age at the time of the election, came into office in 1960 are of course doubtful, to say the least (and today's younger generation knows, from the “selection” of G.W. Bush in 2000, how prone U.S. Presidential elections are to fraud and irregularities). His ties to the mafia, his womanizing and his health problems, that he coped with by taking drugs on a daily basis, are usually a not part of the broader discourse on his legacy. Generally, he was definitely a new type of politician in the White House, stressing publicity and bringing in academics as secretaries rather than party hacks; his and Jacky's lifestyle was dubbed as a new “Camelot”, with JFK as a king surrounded by bright knights of the roundtable.