The CIA-Orchestrated Assassination of JFK Did Not Mark the "End of our Democracy" But Rather the Continuation of What Was Always a Dictatorship of the Richest Americans
The United States was NEVER a democracy or anything even close to one
The JFK Assassination Was Not the Beginning of the Dictatorship of the Oligarchy But Merely Its Continuation
Before I discuss why the CIA assassination of JFK—which really did happen!—was not the great turning point from democracy to a dictatorship of the billionaires that some people say it was, let me affirm that this assassination was indeed an example, though by no means the first such, of the dictatorship of the richest Americans imposing its will on the government.
Allen Dulles, from World War II until shortly before the JFK assassination, had been the director of the CIA or of its precursor covert operations organization, Office of Strategic Services. Allen Dulles’s brother, John Foster Dulles had been the very powerful Secretary of State from 1953 to 1959. Both of these men were partners in the exceedingly powerful New York City-based international law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP, whose clients were members of the billionaire class.
These Dulles brothers acted as agents of their billionaire clients, and not as agents of whomever happened to be sitting in the Oval Office.
In 1963 the CIA—Allen Dulles in particular who, even though he had been fired from his position as Director of the CIA by President Kennedy, was still the de-facto boss of the key CIA operatives—orchestrated the assassination of JFK because the president was intending to end the Cold War. The Cold War, like the neo-conservatives’ warmongering today, was an essential means by which the billionaire class not only amassed a fortune for the weapons manufacturers but also—even more importantly—by which it controlled the American population, as I discuss in some detail here.
Regarding specifically Allen Dulles’s role in orchestrating the JFK assassination, see The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, by David Talbot.
Regarding the CIA’s role in orchestrating the JFK assassination and the motive being to prevent the president from ending the Cold War, see: 1. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, by James W. Douglass; 2. JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy years who ran the global system designed to provide military support for the clandestine activities of the CIA from 1955 to 1964; 3. “When They Killed JFK They Killed America” by Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
The JFK Assassination Was Not the First Time the CIA Dramatically Disobeyed Presidential Orders for the Purpose of Preventing Peace from Breaking Out
In the last year of President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s administration, 1960, Ike decided to make his legacy be the ending of the Cold War and the establishment of peace. Ike launched what he called a Crusade for Peace, and it was to result in a summit meeting between Ike and the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev (who, as detailed in the above-cited book by James Douglass, wanted peace but was opposed in this regard by other powerful members of the Soviet government). In order to make sure this important summit meeting would take place without a glitch, Ike ordered the CIA—Allen Dulles—NOT to conduct any spy plane operations over the Soviet Union.
But guess what? Dulles disobeyed his Commander in Chief. Dulles sent a U2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 and, though it was officially intended for it to fly past the Soviet Union, it made an emergency landing due to supposed “engine trouble” right in the middle of the Soviet Union. This was the famous U2 spy plane incident that made world headlines. The Soviet government claimed that it had shot down the U2 spy plane and that its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, had ejected and landed safely by parachute. But Allen Dulles in later years told a Senate Hearing that in fact the pilot had landed the plane due to “engine trouble.” The result was that Khrushchev declared that the U2 spy plane showed that Eisenhower had no genuine interest in peace and the summit meeting was cancelled, to the great anger of president Eisenhower. All of this is recounted by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty in his above-cited book, in which Prouty says that the so-called “engine trouble” was no doubt deliberately created by Dulles for the purpose of preventing Eisenhower’s Crusade for Peace succeeding in ending the Cold War. Note this was BEFORE the assassination of JFK.
The CIA Countermands Eisenhower in 1954-5 to ensure that U.S. troops will be sent to Vietnam despite Eisenhower’s Orders to the contrary
Colonel Prouty, in his book, also recounts how in 1954, even earlier than Eisenhower’s aborted Crusade for Peace, President Eisenhower “vehemently” gave explicit orders to all of the relevant top members of his cabinet, including specifically Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles, that U.S. troops were absolutely not to be used in Vietnam.
But guess what? The Dulles brothers absolutely ignored this command by their Commander in Chief. They deliberately took steps in Vietnam to create a “Viet Cong Communist enemy” to be a pretext for calling in U.S. troops eventually numbering 500,000. (How the Dulles brothers did this is a story for another article, but I strongly suggest you get Colonel Prouty’s book and read the gory details there. I give a brief summary in this footnote *.)
What this shows is that long before the JFK assassination the billionaire clients of Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP were running the show, not the man in the Oval Office
But surely, some say, the United States was a democracy or something close to that at SOME time in its early history, right? Sorry; it was never such.
Let’s take a look at the Founding Fathers of the United States. In my article, “The Founding Fathers Were Enemies of We the People,” I discuss what one finds by reading academic history books about our Founding Fathers rather than by simply believing the myths we are taught in school and by the mass media. Here are some of those books I suggest one reads:
1. Shays's Rebellion: The American Revolution's Final Battle, by Leonard L. Richards
2. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, by Charles A. Beard
3. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, by Thomas P. Slaughter
What one learns from this actual history is that the Founding Fathers were the Jeff Bezoses and Bill Gateses and David Rockefellers (etc.) of their day, and that they used violence to horribly enforce extreme economic oppression of the have-nots in order to make themselves obscenely rich at their expense. By the ‘have-nots’ I am referring to the small farmers who enlisted in Washington’s revolutionary army to fight King George III because they (wrongly, as they learned from later bitter experience) believed that Washington was aiming to create a genuine democracy with equality and true representative government. One of these small farmers who helped lead the famous (but falsely villified by America’s ruling elite from day one till today) Shays’s Rebellion was Emily Dickinson's great-grandfather. These small farmers were being absolutely screwed by the likes of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, and when you read my short summary of this (again, it’s here) you will be shocked, so read it!
The Founding Fathers wrote the U.S. Constitution in large part to create a government that would be strong enough to make sure that rebellions such as the Shays’s Rebellion (which scared the hell out of the Founding Fathers and led Sam Adams to call for all of the small farmers in it to be hanged), and which came very close to making a revolution against the Founding Fathers in Massachusetts) would never EVER be permitted to succeed.
And so far I’ve not even mentioned that the Founding Fathers were slave-owners (or their great friends). The Founding Fathers were members of the same upper class that, in earlier years, CREATED race-based chattel slavery in order to ensure that there would never be the kind of solidarity between the different races of have-nots that had almost resulted in a successful revolution against the upper class of large land-owners in the Virginia Colony: Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 (read all about this in my article, “What CRT Censors.”)
My article about the Founding Fathers ends with these words:
John Adams?
John Adams was on the side of the rich upper class and was an enemy of ordinary people--the have-nots. You can see that this is so by looking at these two website articles about him:
1. Regarding his opposition to Shays's Rebellion (he spelled it "Chaises") and to the Whiskey Rebellion (both of which rebellions were by the have-nots against the haves): "John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 30 June 1813" at https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0216 .
2. Regarding his opposition to allowing non-wealthy people to vote: "John Adams Explains Why People Without Property Should Not Be Able to Vote" at https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1645 .
Thomas Jefferson versus The Haitian Slave Rebellion/Revolution
In 1804 the slaves of Haiti succeeded in their revolution and achieved independence. As Wikipedia writes of this slave revolution, "It was the only slave uprising that led to the founding of a state which was both free from slavery, and ruled by non-whites and former captives." Thomas "All men are created equal" Jefferson was president from 1801 to 1809, so he had enormous ability to help the newly freed slaves in Haiti, or harm them. What did he do? The same Wikipedia article says this:
"The American President Thomas Jefferson—who was a slaveholder himself—refused to establish diplomatic relations with Haiti (the United States did not recognize Haiti until 1862) and imposed an economic embargo on trade with Haiti that also lasted until 1862 in an attempt to ensure the economic failure of the new republic as Jefferson wanted Haiti to fail, regarding a successful slave revolt in the West Indies as a dangerous example for American slaves.[131]"
With friends like this, We the People don't need enemies!
The Moral of the Story
The moral of this story is that to create a genuine democracy (by which I mean this) in what is called the United States, we need to aim explicitly for genuine democracy; we need to forget about getting genuine democracy by citing the authority of our supposedly democracy-loving Founding Fathers or their supposedly wonderful documents such as the U.S. Constitution (read about it here.)
There was never a time in the United States (or in the North American British colonies before the United States came to be) when ordinary people had the real power in society. Acknowledging this fact is liberating! It enables us to begin thinking realistically about how to win genuine democracy without illusions that disable our efforts. The road to genuine democracy does not follow “good capitalism” or “Mom & Pop Capitalism” because the principles on which even “good capitalism” is based lead to what we have today—obscene economic inequality; I discuss this here. We need to follow the egalitarian road to get genuine democracy and prevent the abuse of power, as I discuss here.
Read here how YOU can help build the egalitarian revolutionary movement that aims for genuine democracy with illusions about our Founding Fathers.
*As Colonel Prouty describes in great detail, the CIA starting in 1954 forced 1.2 million peasants in the northern Vietnam region of Tonkin to be transported by CIA airplanes and U.S. naval ships and other means to the south of Vietnam where they were dumped onto the peasants of the south who were ethnically quite different and who perceived these “immigrants” as invaders. (This is one if the early examples of the U.S. using “Weapons of Mass Migration” for divide-and-rule; I write about the current use of this strategy here.) The Ngo Dinh Diem (CIA-controlled) government of South Vietnam made many of these northern peasants police officers and other government officials with power over the southern peasants. Furthermore, the Diem government drove the southern peasants off their land and made them refugees in their own country who had to resort to banditry just to obtain food and water to survive. The Diem government then declared the southern peasants to be “Viet Cong Communists.” Presto! There was a need for U.S. troops to combat the “Communist insurrection”; ultimately 500,000 U.S. troops, despite president Eisenhower’s instructions to the contrary and despite JFK’s intention to bring U.S. troops home from Vietnam (there were only about twelve thousand U.S. troops, called “advisors,” in Vietnam as of March, 1963).