Fifty years ago next Friday is the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. What few recall these days was how deeply the right hated Kennedy. Well here is the poster that was handed out on the streets of Dallas Texas days before the President made his fatal visit.
Here’s the story behind the handbill.poster according to PBS:
According to the Warren Commission Report, this anti-Kennedy handbill appeared in Dallas one or two days before Kennedy’s arrival. It was designed like a “wanted” poster, with frontal and profile photographs of the president at the top.
Investigators ultimately identified the author of the handbill as Robert A. Surrey, a business partner and political associate of right-wing political agitator General Edwin Walker. The typos are original to the handbill.
Sounds and looks familiar, doesn’t it? Perhaps that is because the John Birch Society and right wing ideologues such as General Edwin Walker are the progenitors of today’s right wing extremists, the very groups that collectively use the phrase “Tea Party” to represent their supposed uber-patriotism. The same Tea Party groups that have used racist propaganda, including cartoons, posters, emails, etc. to denigrate our current President, such as the following:
and threatening messages such as these:
and lastly, this one:
Not a lot has changed in half a century, only the names the extremists call themselves. Substitute Tea Party for John Birch Society and you have nearly identical political platforms. And you certainly have an equal measure of vitriol and venom directed at a President who just happened to be a member of the Democratic Party.
JFK was hated by the Reich-Wingers of his time, because he was starting to take Civil Rights for African-Americans seriously.
And the city of Dallas was full of pre-Tea Partiers at that time.
So was most of the state of Texas – then, a pretty solidly Democratic state.
And they didn’t start switching to the Republican Party, until after LBJ got the CRA’s passed.
Coincidence?
I think not.
I was a young sailor stationed here on that day. It is an experience I will never forget.
We were in the midst of a squadron party ala “McHale’s Navy” when a guy came flying down to our picnic area in a jeep with the news and orders to arm and launch all aircraft since radar was showing incoming aircraft. Well, the pucker factor went to maximum and we got everything we could into the air pretty quickly. Found out the incoming contacts were friendly civilian aircraft. Although some of us were pretty buzzed from the party, we pulled it off without a mishap.
I’ve always given JFK credit for forbidding the generals from doing a very stupid thing that would have probably resulted in turning a lot of folks, myself included, to radioactive ash.
The big difference is that in those days, normal Republicans had no time at all for the Bircher kooks.
Bingo. Most people read normal news, nothing farther right than the Chicago Tribune, and listened to normal news on radio and TV.
Then came the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the end of restrictions on media ownership.
Now “normal” Republican are all Birchers.
If, in 1986, you had tried to tell Democratic Party members that this was the threat they’d have considered you a crazy paranoid.
I suppose the American far-Right hasn’t really changed all that much in 50 years. To them, the Left is always committing “treason” and filled with “traitors” as a result of some social welfare policy or other. They’ll never, ever stop being largely motivated by blind race hatred, that’s one of the common elements that defines our “conservative” Right and always will. Virulent militarist nationalism is the other.
There’s now just a lot more of ’em….certainly no longer a “fringe” element.
Not more today — perhaps slightly fewer. The major difference today is that far more have been emboldened to show their faces and spout the nonsense that has been “think tank” and Rush crafted for them. On their own they can’t articulate anything much beyond “n…., n…, n…..” and have been socialized just enough to know that stopped being acceptable in public during the 1950s.
The reason it seems like there are more of them is the rise of the internet and the proliferation of cable channels. We’ve just exposed to them more often.
Possibly. Having grown up with a step family who were certified members of the far right my personal theory is that the population always has a base of about 25-35% who is latent wingnut/fascist. Probably less than 1% will be actively fascist on their own, but the rest will fall into fascism willingly given sufficient external influence and group support. These are people who latently carry Fear of the Other – other races, religions, ethnicities, gender, and of course of anything new. They’ll always carry an undercurrent of personal anxiety for these reasons and will be drawn to fascist narratives which help rationalize their anxiety.
So, IMHO, they’ve always been there. But in 1963 you really had to go out of your way to get Birch society material. Today you have to go out of your way to avoid it.
I think there are fewer of them and more concentrated. (Demographics rules)
After all, Obama won twice by impressive margins despite their howling, and has been able to get something done as well. They just have taken over an increasingly fragmented and money losing media-take AM radio. Back then AM radio was the nervous system of the United States, and programmers had a real interest in catering to mainstream Americans. Not only that, but it was owned by owners who lived in the community, and scaring people with crazy Bircher stuff would get a flurry of protests and letters from folks they knew.
not because the Prez just happens to be a Dem…..but because he IS a Dem. No randomness due to party affiliation, but directly because of party affiliation.
Add to Obama’s case the fact he’s Black….
The problem is, it all presumes that there is a real difference between the parties, or that JFK wasn’t actually worse than Nixon, or that Obama and Romney aren’t interchangeable tools of the interests, all of which my in-depth reading of the progressive blogosphere assures me is not the case….
Mostly I learn lots from your comments, Davis X Machina, but this is one place where I do disagree with your premise that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the GOP and Dem Presidents. Yes, all of them are influenced by money and power,(how could it be otherwise in this “money is all” society we’ve embraced?), but there are differences between them.
I get angry at Dem politicians and Presidents, for the reasons that Chris Hayes mentioned last evening, but there’s every reason to support a Democratic nomineee over a GOP one. It’s the difference between moving forward or spending zillions to hold off inevitable change and move the country backwards.
Heh. Methinks you missed the tongue firmly planted in cheek during the writing of that comment, friend. One always needs to be conscious of tongue placement with our pal Davis X Machina’s commentary.
Try reading it again with wry amusement at the folly of one’s overzealous putative allies.