Oliver Stone took to Twitter last weekend to bemoan the fact that the mainstream press is ignoring his so-called documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.
"In short, historical scholarship and the evidence at the National Archives make it clear that Garrison’s prosecution of Shaw, who was accused of acting with Oswald and another man, was largely conducted to provide a public forum for questioning the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman.
As we approach the assassination’s 60th anniversary, let’s look to the historical record rather than the silver screen for satisfying and nuanced answers to still-important questions. An archive borne in tragedy and consolidated on the basis of durable but disputed claims of conspiracy retains the ability to enlighten us historically about a whole range of issues that resonate in contemporary American life."
Please read her piece. And then go and buy a copy of her excellent book, Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime.
There was also an important article about JFK conspiracy theories in Rolling Stone. Yes, Rolling Stone was the magazine back in the 1970s that loved JFK conspiracy theories.
Times have changed.
Tim Weiner's article, This Is Where Oliver Stone Got His Loony JFK Conspiracies From, discusses the Paese Sera series of articles from March 1967 that was most probably a KGB operation designed to blame the CIA for the assassination. You can read my book, On the Trail of Delusion, for more information on those articles.
But Weiner understands just how dangerous conspiracy theories can be:
"I can tell you for a fact that our democracy is suffocating under an avalanche of disinformation. Trump won the 2020 election! Covid vaccines are seeded with microchips! Democrats are blood-sucking pedophile communists! 9/11 was an inside job! Our body politic is being poisoned by lies. They stalk the land like brain-eating zombies. And we can’t seem to kill them.
We have a moral obligation to call bullshit when we see it. Especially when public figures promote lies for profit. Stone’s JFK films are fantasies. Conspiracy theories are not facts. They’re a kind of collective psychosis. And they’re driving our country down the road to hell."
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