10-12-2012, 05:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-12-2012, 04:59 PM by Charles Drago.)
[PLEASE NOTE: My posts on this thread represent my thoughts and feelings exclusively. They do not necessarily reflect the positions of my partners, the co-owners of Deep Politics Forum.]
It was with the deep regret familiar to all who, acting on principle, have been forced to sever close, long-standing personal and/or professional relationships that I joined in the unanimous decision of DPF's co-owners to revoke Professor James Fetzer's posting privileges on this site.
Over the past two years, Jim Fetzer, once held to be among the most respected and even revered of JFK assassination researchers, has exhibited a diminution of critical faculties evident in his multiple, fevered endorsements of thoroughly discredited conspiracy hypotheses. At the same time, he repeatedly disparages his critics not on the bases of their counterarguments' respective merits, but rather via vicious personal attacks.
The latest case in point -- the tipping point, for me -- comes in the form of Fetzer's ludicrous defense of chiropractor "Ralph Cinque's" ludicrous analysis of the controversial Altgens 6 photograph of the Kennedy assassination, in which a figure in the doorway of the Texas Schoolbook Depository has been tentatively identified as either TSBD employee Billy Lovelady or accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
In scores of posts published on at least three major JFK assassination-related websites, "Cinque" and his work have been laughed out of the room. His methods have been shown to be fatally flawed, his observations ill-informed, his arguments rife with circular reasoning. Yet for reasons that remain unclear, Fetzer chooses to act as Cinque's often rabid guard dog and all-around Internet flack.
In the words of the old song, "everybody has the right to be wrong." The issue at hand that prompted my decision to vote to ban Fetzer from DPF is not the fact that what he chooses to defend is indefensible -- or, if you will, just plain wrong. Nor should my decision be read as an endorsement of any identification of the so-called Doorway Man.
Rather, I voted to ban Fetzer because of the unique manners in which his high-profile embrace of "Cinque" supports the on-going cover-up of the JFK assassination conspiracy.
The ultimate purpose of the cover-up is to maintain and, when necessary, reinvigorate the doubt upon which control of the many by the few is predicated. The accessories-after-the-fact in the JFK assassination look to create in the minds of the masses the illusion of a level playing field on which their "lone nut" lie and the truth we express as the conspiracy argument compete for acceptance based on the false premise that both are honestly presented points of view supported by the evidence.
Further, those who administer the cover-up are eager to counterbalance the demonstrated junk science upon which their "lone nut" argument is clearly based with the documentation of junk science that they can argue, without merit, is at the core of what they would term conspiracy "theory."
Given his once-high standing in the JFK research community, Fetzer's endorsement of "Cinque's" disinformation -- like his endorsement of the LBJ-as-assassination "mastermind" disinformation peddled by one Phillip Nelson -- serves this goal admirably.
Another benefit of Fetzer's decline that accrues to the killers of JFK may be measured in how well-deserved ridicule of the aging professor's contemporary work is being used to taint -- unfairly and cynically -- his frequently valuable earlier efforts and, by extension, those of his close collaborators.
And let us not forget how the undermining of Fetzer's standing among his comrades in the JFK assassination research community prompts the sort of internecine conflict without which our work might actually bring about the attainments of truth and justice in this case.
Thanks in no small measure to Fetzer, we too often find ourselves at each others' throats.
Given the esteem in which I once held Fetzer, it is tempting to create rationales that let him off the "hostile intent" hook. Perhaps he is experiencing the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. Perhaps he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Anything, at this point, would be preferable to the conclusion that Fetzer is an agent provocateur long ago sent into our midst as a sleeper and now being activated as the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder approaches.
(I am not a trained psychoanalyst, so any effort on my part to detect a clinical cause for Fetzer's behavior must be appreciated for what it is: pure guesswork. That being noted, the literature does tell us that narcissists value themselves as inherently better than others. At the same time, their self-esteem is inordinately fragile, they cannot handle criticism, and they resort to disparaging others sadistically in an attempt to validate their own self-worth.
I can think of no more accurate description of Fetzer's responses to recent criticism of his increasingly incoherent and damaging assertions.)
My decision was not lightly made. I sought the counsel of other, trusted friends who enjoy unique, deep, invaluable perspectives on Fetzer. But ultimately, the decision was mine alone. For in the final analysis, one conclusion is inescapable:
Continued presentation on DPF of Fetzer's troubled and troubling contemporary work would violate one of the basic principles upon which this forum was founded. DPF will not aid and abet individuals who aid and abet the forces that, as James Jesus Angleton put it, "struck John."
Is Fetzer an unwitting, half-witting, or witting accessory-after-the-fact to the murder of JFK? Ultimately, the question is moot. For if, as I have previously written, a man shoots you in the head because he wants to cure your migraine headache, you still end up dead. And he is still a murderer.
And so DPF has bid a sad farewell to Professor James H. Fetzer. It remains my hope that those closest to him -- members of his family and the colleagues with whom he once was gloriously identified -- will come to his aid and lead him to the care that he so clearly needs and richly deserves.
It was with the deep regret familiar to all who, acting on principle, have been forced to sever close, long-standing personal and/or professional relationships that I joined in the unanimous decision of DPF's co-owners to revoke Professor James Fetzer's posting privileges on this site.
Over the past two years, Jim Fetzer, once held to be among the most respected and even revered of JFK assassination researchers, has exhibited a diminution of critical faculties evident in his multiple, fevered endorsements of thoroughly discredited conspiracy hypotheses. At the same time, he repeatedly disparages his critics not on the bases of their counterarguments' respective merits, but rather via vicious personal attacks.
The latest case in point -- the tipping point, for me -- comes in the form of Fetzer's ludicrous defense of chiropractor "Ralph Cinque's" ludicrous analysis of the controversial Altgens 6 photograph of the Kennedy assassination, in which a figure in the doorway of the Texas Schoolbook Depository has been tentatively identified as either TSBD employee Billy Lovelady or accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
In scores of posts published on at least three major JFK assassination-related websites, "Cinque" and his work have been laughed out of the room. His methods have been shown to be fatally flawed, his observations ill-informed, his arguments rife with circular reasoning. Yet for reasons that remain unclear, Fetzer chooses to act as Cinque's often rabid guard dog and all-around Internet flack.
In the words of the old song, "everybody has the right to be wrong." The issue at hand that prompted my decision to vote to ban Fetzer from DPF is not the fact that what he chooses to defend is indefensible -- or, if you will, just plain wrong. Nor should my decision be read as an endorsement of any identification of the so-called Doorway Man.
Rather, I voted to ban Fetzer because of the unique manners in which his high-profile embrace of "Cinque" supports the on-going cover-up of the JFK assassination conspiracy.
The ultimate purpose of the cover-up is to maintain and, when necessary, reinvigorate the doubt upon which control of the many by the few is predicated. The accessories-after-the-fact in the JFK assassination look to create in the minds of the masses the illusion of a level playing field on which their "lone nut" lie and the truth we express as the conspiracy argument compete for acceptance based on the false premise that both are honestly presented points of view supported by the evidence.
Further, those who administer the cover-up are eager to counterbalance the demonstrated junk science upon which their "lone nut" argument is clearly based with the documentation of junk science that they can argue, without merit, is at the core of what they would term conspiracy "theory."
Given his once-high standing in the JFK research community, Fetzer's endorsement of "Cinque's" disinformation -- like his endorsement of the LBJ-as-assassination "mastermind" disinformation peddled by one Phillip Nelson -- serves this goal admirably.
Another benefit of Fetzer's decline that accrues to the killers of JFK may be measured in how well-deserved ridicule of the aging professor's contemporary work is being used to taint -- unfairly and cynically -- his frequently valuable earlier efforts and, by extension, those of his close collaborators.
And let us not forget how the undermining of Fetzer's standing among his comrades in the JFK assassination research community prompts the sort of internecine conflict without which our work might actually bring about the attainments of truth and justice in this case.
Thanks in no small measure to Fetzer, we too often find ourselves at each others' throats.
Given the esteem in which I once held Fetzer, it is tempting to create rationales that let him off the "hostile intent" hook. Perhaps he is experiencing the onset of Alzheimer's Disease. Perhaps he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Anything, at this point, would be preferable to the conclusion that Fetzer is an agent provocateur long ago sent into our midst as a sleeper and now being activated as the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder approaches.
(I am not a trained psychoanalyst, so any effort on my part to detect a clinical cause for Fetzer's behavior must be appreciated for what it is: pure guesswork. That being noted, the literature does tell us that narcissists value themselves as inherently better than others. At the same time, their self-esteem is inordinately fragile, they cannot handle criticism, and they resort to disparaging others sadistically in an attempt to validate their own self-worth.
I can think of no more accurate description of Fetzer's responses to recent criticism of his increasingly incoherent and damaging assertions.)
My decision was not lightly made. I sought the counsel of other, trusted friends who enjoy unique, deep, invaluable perspectives on Fetzer. But ultimately, the decision was mine alone. For in the final analysis, one conclusion is inescapable:
Continued presentation on DPF of Fetzer's troubled and troubling contemporary work would violate one of the basic principles upon which this forum was founded. DPF will not aid and abet individuals who aid and abet the forces that, as James Jesus Angleton put it, "struck John."
Is Fetzer an unwitting, half-witting, or witting accessory-after-the-fact to the murder of JFK? Ultimately, the question is moot. For if, as I have previously written, a man shoots you in the head because he wants to cure your migraine headache, you still end up dead. And he is still a murderer.
And so DPF has bid a sad farewell to Professor James H. Fetzer. It remains my hope that those closest to him -- members of his family and the colleagues with whom he once was gloriously identified -- will come to his aid and lead him to the care that he so clearly needs and richly deserves.