Wednesday, June 17, 2015

The company she keeps


Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal has been a conspiracy theorist for a long time.

“Grassy Knoll” Sid:
Hillary’s Personal Conspiracy Theorist

Four decades ago, Blumenthal was not only in league with JFK assassination buffs who claimed shots were fired from the proverbial grassy knoll--he also argued earnestly that “the reason the hopes of the ‘60s were not realized was because a group of people at the top made certain they were dashed.”

The previous sentence comes from Government By Gunplay, a 1976 paperback book edited by Blumenthal and Harvey Yazijian. Yazijian being one of the founding members of what was called the Assassination Investigation Bureau (AIB), then headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts....


Government by Gunplay would bear Blumenthal’s editorial imprint more than anyone’s. He wrote the foreword, the epilogue, and two chapters (one on the FBI’s COINTELPRO plan against the Black Panthers, and another on the Rockefeller Commission).

The misrepresentations, distortions, and falsehoods that Blumenthal either wrote or associated himself with are so numerous and stupendous they defy listing. ...


there is no indication that Blumenthal retracted or ever distanced himself from the rampant paranoia and crude, Soviet-style propaganda evident in Government By Gunplay. (Change the names of the editors, contributors, and publisher, and Government By Gunplay is almost indistinguishable from the slew of Soviet disinformation tracts about the assassination published from the 1960s to the 1980s, save that it is more thoughtful and informed, and much better written). Blumenthal’s penchant for spinning conspiracy theories has persisted, the only difference being they seem to have become more sophisticated.
RTWT

As HRC says, she has known Blumenthal for a long, long time. They became friends when Blumenthal's "vulgar Marxism" was still fresh and his penchant for conspiracies was on full display.

Worth noting:

Philip Agee, a disgraced former CIA officer who was effectively functioning as an agent of Cuban counterintelligence by 1976, wrote the introduction to Government By Gunplay.
Also worth noting: Blumenthal's far-Left views and "paranoid style" was no hindrance to his journalistic career. The Washington Post, New Republic, and The New Yorker were happy to give him a big megaphone and treat him like a star.

3 comments:

miriam sawyer said...

Christopner Hitchins had his number though.

CJinPA said...

This is why I think it is a great mistake for folks who aren't on the Left to let the JFK conspiracy supporters off the hook.

President Kennedy was killed by a left-wing extremist. The truth has been turned 180 degrees in the opposite direction. That event serves as the single greatest lie of the last 100 years, and no one pays a price for it.

craig said...

CJinPA Agree 100%. Grassy Knoller need to be treated like Flat Earthers and Moon Landing deniers.

We also need to do a better job explaining who and why promoted the lies for so long.