JFK, Tucker Carlson and the Stigma of ‘Conspiracy’

November 22 approaches, Happy JFK Day to all those who celebrate.

I don’t mean to be flippant. Love JFK or hate him, it’s nothing to celebrate. Even Pat Buchanan, who I’m sure was no fan of Kennedy’s policies, said that 11/22/63 is basically the exact day when American decline began in earnest. There’s an irony to that because one of the major reasons for the decline is the 1965 Immigration Act, championed by little brother Teddy and premised on JFK’s book A Nation of Immigrants, the title of which has now become an unfortunate catchphrase that may as well be tacked onto Emma Lazarus’ sappy poem on the Statue of Liberty. But what Pat meant is that the Kennedy assassination was a traumatic event for the public, a trauma that it never really recovered from, and one which seemed in inaugurate major changes in American society and culture. This is also the thesis of the 2007 documentary Oswald’s Ghost, which chronicles how the death of JFK was followed in quick succession not only by the other famous assassinations of that decade, but by endless government scandals—the Gulf of Tonkin, the Pentagon Papers, Watergate—which only seemed to confirm what everyone thought in the aftermath of JFK: the government, the authorities, can’t be trusted. Add to that the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which called into question virtually every value of the past and which permanently severed the tie between the boomers and previous generations, and you had one giant, nationwide mindfuck, which still reverberates today.

Because the Kennedy assassination was never really investigated—the Warren Commission and to a lesser extent the House Select Committee on Assassinations were efforts to prove pre-established conclusions—it quickly became a cottage industry for amateur sleuths and sperg obsessives who felt it was their duty to try to solve the hopelessly complex case. For many, that duty became a compulsion, and for more than a few became the definitive calling of their life. There are people who have thought about the Kennedy assassination every single day for thirty, forty, fifty years and more. For them, November 22 is not a day that they celebrate per se, but it is one that they observe—somberly, faithfully, like Good Friday. In Oliver Stone’s film JFK he has Kevin Costner say, “We’ve all become Hamlets in our time: children of a slain father-leader, whose killers still possess the throne.” At the time this was decried as fascistic, but that’s just because critics of the film were slinging any and every insult that would stick. JFK wasn’t a fascist (even if he was an admirer of Hitler in his youth) and neither are JFK obsessives. To the contrary, most of them cling to the myth of Camelot, of Kennedy as a young liberal savior who stood for truth, justice and the American way, which in most of their minds means liberal values. This puts them in a bit of a quandary because liberal values are not what they used to be. The fact that JFK—and every other Democrat of his time—would be cancelled today for being far to the right of everyone in the GOP illustrates Mencius Moldbug’s saying that “Cthulu swims left.” It’s been amusing watching these people who cling to the image of the Democratic Party as “the party of JFK” have to give very reluctant praise to Donald Trump for releasing some of the remaining classified files, more than any previous president has done.

Many people who are not JFK obsessives and don’t share their (and my) interest in historical mysteries would argue that the Kennedy assassination is largely irrelevant today, that Trump making a big deal out of releasing the files is just self-aggrandizement and a distraction from other things he’s not doing or other files he’s not releasing. There is probably some truth to that. But if the JFK assassination isn’t quite the Rosetta Stone of 20th century American history that obsessives make it out to be, it remains relevant because of the way it has become a template which continues to shape the way political events are viewed. The phrase “deep state” was invented by a JFK researcher, Peter Dale Scott. Look at the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk: my X timeline is filled with questions and speculations about bullet calibers and trajectories, sniper locations, decoys and cover-ups. And that is only the most recent example. There are similar questions and speculations about the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, and about Stephen Paddock in Las Vegas and many others. Every time a political shooting happens, there is always a second gunman, a magic bullet, a grassy knoll.

Are these questions about Kirk and the others legitimate questions, or are they “conspiracy theories”? This phrase “conspiracy theory” has its origins in a CIA memo about how to counter criticism of the Warren Report: label critics as “conspiracy theorists” i.e. nutjobs. If you parse it, the phrase is a misnomer. “Conspiracy” is a legal term, it means a plot between two or more people. If I rob a bank by my myself it’s not a conspiracy. If my cousin Henry plans it with me, it is. A “theory” is a speculation, a postulate, a hypothesis. “I think this was a conspiracy” simply means “I think there may have been more than one person involved.” These are not complicated words or ideas, and the fact that “conspiracy theory” has become such a widespread term of derogation—they even shorten it to just “conspiracy” now, e.g. “Oh that’s just a conspiracy”—testifies to the general dumbing down of the public that has occurred since … well, since the days when politicians like Robert Kennedy would quote Aeschylus or Camus in a speech and it was normal, not high-falutin’ intralexualism.

There is a false dichotomy between the official story, which is always seen as resulting from reason and science and truth, and the conspiracy theories, which are by definition anti-science and kooky. As Dr. Fauci might say, when you criticize the Warren Report or the 9/11 Commission, you’re really criticizing Science. This is one of the reasons why I support Tucker Carlson in the direction that he has taken since leaving Fox and establishing his own show, despite some dangers and drawbacks that he faces. Many people, including friends of mine, have criticized Tucker for becoming more and more like Alex Jones, i.e. a “conspiracy theorist.” I agree with them that this is a danger and something to be avoided, for two reasons: First, because the further you go “down the rabbit hole,” the more you become different from normies, and if normies are your audience—every popular pundit is a shepherd—you alienate more and more of them and end up in a self-limiting echo chamber. Normies by definition want to be respectable, and if the prevailing consensus is that “conspiracy theories” are nutty, they will reflexively avoid them and disavow them. If Tucker goes too far in this direction, that is what will happen.

The second reason that becoming a “conspiracy theorist” is inadvisable is that many conspiracy theories really are nutty, and the people who propound them range from mildly unbalanced to deranged. The limo driver did not turn around and shoot Kennedy with a .45 in plain sight of dozens of people, as Bill Cooper of Behold A Pale Horse fame alleged. The airplanes that hit the Twin Towers were not holograms. The Donald Trump elected in 2024 is not a decoy “second Trump.” The problem with conspiracy theories is that they vary in strength, like street drugs. Believing that Oswald didn’t act alone is like smoking a joint at a party—it’s mild, it used to be illegal but now it’s mostly not, and besides, everyone’s doing it. But it can be a gateway. First you start looking at the books and the YouTube videos on MLK and RFK, then the Roswell crash, and the Watergate break-in, and the Mena airport, and Vince Foster, and Seth Rich, and before you know it, you’re a full-fledged junkie mainlining Qanon multiple times a day. The government could implement Scared Straight programs where they take students to conspiracy research conventions, show them the attendees and tell them, “This is why you need to just believe what we tell you, you don’t want to end up like that, do you?”

For decades, the mainstream media functioned in such a way that there were no advantages to entertaining “conspiracy theories” and every advantage to parroting the official line. That might be ok if the official version really was the product of the scientific search for truth, but it’s not. The government is a collective entity made up of human beings who are just as fallible and corrupt as anybody—probably more corrupt since they hold various degrees of power, and those positions attract the corruptible. There is every reason to be skeptical of government institutions, and that is supposed to be the media’s job, but in practice, the mainstream media is merely an arm of the government. For decades, the alternative media that provided an outlet for “conspiracy theories” was small potatoes. But with the rise of the internet, that started to change. A blog could garner more readers than the New York Times or Washington Post. Today, “credentialed journalists” compete with nobodies like me, and other nobodies with huge audiences, on Substack.

The narrative is up for grabs. You don’t have to go full pomo and say “there is no truth, it’s all just competing points of view jockeying for dominance.” The fact of the matter is that some conspiracy theories have some degree of truth in them. What has been lacking for a long time is a sober, rational analysis that separates the wheat from the chaff, that is equally skeptical of conspiracy theories and official narratives, which regards them both as what they are: products of human minds which have their own biases, vested interests, and shortcomings. My hope is that Tucker can aspire to be that, and can inspire others to be that.

In the case of the JFK assassination, it’s an historical event from sixty years ago, and even though it still reverberates today in some ways, it doesn’t really matter what you believe about it.* You don’t need to have an opinion about it at all, and if you do, it won’t really change your life one way or another (unless you become obsessed with it, which is a possibility). But whether you are a believer or a skeptic towards official narratives and proclamations in general does matter, and will affect your life. The proof of that is covid. If you are the sort of person who trusts the authorities, who believes they have good intentions and superior knowledge, who believes that the skeptics are whackos and nutjobs, you probably got the jab. After all, as the propaganda said, you’re not an expert, they are. The experts say it’s completely safe and 100% effective. They’ve read the studies. They know the Science.

Tucker was one of the voices who promoted healthy skepticism about the covid jabs. (In this case it’s quite literally “healthy” skepticism.) He has also promoted alternative views of many other subjects, ranging from history and politics to cancer and even UFOs. Critics say that even talking about these things puts you in the kook category. That was true thirty years ago, but I don’t think it’s as true today. The number of people who don’t believe in the official proclamations is probably higher now than it’s ever been, and the reason for that isn’t “misinformation” and “Russian propaganda”—the reason is that for too long the official narratives have been too full of shit. It didn’t start with JFK, but I think that’s when larger numbers of people started to become aware of it. The government, the media, the experts, they all lie. The watchword of any authentic media needs to be the slogan of the great Dr. Gregory House: “Everybody lies.” Because the job of a real journalist is to separate truth from lies, fact from fiction, to the best of his or her ability.

Critics, especially those of the pro-Israel persuasion, want to say that Tucker has already gone too far down the rabbit hole, he’s already become a tinfoil hat wearing grassy knoll Tower 7 UFO chemtrail Qanon ANTISEMITE! I don’t think he has, but it is a real danger that it could happen. One of my good friends, who is more critical of Tucker than I, points to his newfound religiosity as one of the problems with him. (I critiqued some of Tucker’s religious ideas in a previous article.) He is in danger of becoming just another Pat Robertson, hosting a 21st century version of The 700 Club. (It should be remembered, Pat Robertson promoted New World Order conspiracy theories in the 90s and even wrote a book called The New World Order about them.)

It’s not my place to tell a man what to believe; I would only say that it’s fine to believe in demons if that’s what your experience shows you, but that doesn’t mean you should trust self-styled demonologists. Whatever Tucker’s religious beliefs, the guiding principle of journalism has to be the scientific method. Not The Science, that hodgepodge of consensus and propaganda that gets passed down from on high, but the rigorous method of skepticism and evaluating evidence from all angles, of being up front about the difference between what you can prove and what you can’t, what the evidence shows versus what it merely suggests, and furthermore, what it suggests to you, because you bring your own inclination to see what you want to see.

Thomas Aquinas crafted the doctrine of the Two Truths, or two levels of truth. There is this world, which operates according to scientific principles as established by Aristotle and the scientific tradition that follows him, and then there is the truth of divine revelation. If you want to believe in demons and angels and that God is in control of all things, that’s fine. Religious faith is a personal thing. (Yes, I just revealed that I was raised Protestant.) But in terms of understanding the world and how things work, science is the way. Explaining everything in politics as being a reflection of the battle of Good vs. Evil, while it may be useful for rallying simpletons to your cause, doesn’t actually explain anything. And the problem with people who use these manipulative non-explanations to their audience is that they eventually end up drinking their own kool-aid. We don’t need another Pat Robertson or another Alex Jones. We need Tucker to remain the voice of calm, level-headed reflection and analysis. Because we simply don’t have anyone else.

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* For the record, I think the preponderance of the evidence strongly suggests that there was a conspiracy in the JFK case. The medical and ballistics evidence indicates that he was shot in the head from the front: all the doctors from Parkland Hospital in Dallas who treated him immediately after the shooting remembered a hole the size of a baseball in the back of his head. And these are not decades-later reminiscences; they wrote up reports of what they saw that day or that weekend, before there was any controversy in doing so, and they used precise anatomical language like “occipital-parietal area” to describe the wound. (When Gerald Posner wrote his apologia for the Warren Commission in 1993 he tried to claim that when the doctors said “back of the head” they actually meant “top of the head” because Kennedy was laying flat. This is what passes for “the Science.”) As for whodunnit, I simply do not know, but I think Larry Hancock in his book Tipping Point makes an admirable and persuasive case that, whoever the leaders and organizers of the plot may have been, the people “on the ground” who manipulated Lee Harvey Oswald into place as the patsy were a handful of anti-Castro Cubans and their CIA handlers at the JM/WAVE station in Miami.

https://semmelweis7.substack.com/p/jfk-tucker-carlson-and-the-stigma