Is the John Birch Society Responsible for Spreading Most of the JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories?

Just one month after President Kennedy was assassinated, one of the founders of the John Birch Society came out with an article entitled, "Marksmanship in Dallas". Revilo Pendleton Oliver, the man whom JBS figurehead Robert Welch described as, "quite possibly the world's greatest living scholar,” outlines some of the great conspiracy theories that would dominate the JFK assassination debate over the next forty years.

Revilo's article is extremely disturbing and demonstrates how much the far-right hated JFK and how much contempt they had for liberals, blacks and Jews at the time. Revilo asserts that Oswald was a communist and had help communists everywhere, including with the U.S. government. This article would unleash a flood of far-right literature designed to obfuscate the facts of the assassination.

It's no wonder that the Kennedy assassination has become associated with crackpots and nutcases as most of the stories and misleading information were spread by right-wing whack-jobs like the Birchers. Their message always seems to be, don't trust the government or the political left ,while implicating the usual suspects; it's all part of a communist plot, or maybe LBJ was involved with help from the CIA, possibly the Illuminati, and you can bet that the one-worlders in the Council of Foreign Relations were behind it. In all the noise, an American President’s murder becomes a joke and any possible conspirators walk cleanly away.

A careful reading of the record reveals that the major conspiracy authors have a lot in common with the John Birch Society perspective; don't trust the government, the government's out to get you, and the government will lie to you if they can get away with it. In 1969 this was Jim Garrison's case in a nutshell. Few are aware that Garrison, the New Orleans District Attorney who brought the only case involving the assassination to trial, was also an avowed supporter of right wing extremist Ayn Rand.

Many of the JFK conspiracy propagators share something else; connections with extremist organizations and groups. Mark Lane, author of "Rush to Judgement," ended up working for the ultra-racist Liberty Lobby and defended people like James Earl Ray and holocaust denier Willis Carto. Revilo P. Oliver went on to develop the National Alliance with William Pierce, and then went to work for the Institute for Historical Review in trying to discredit the Holocaust. Victor Marchetti and Fletcher Prouty were others who used the Orange County-based Holocaust denial network to spread their stories.

Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK, seems to have brought the John Birch Society story to the big screen. While clearing Lee Harvey Oswald, the Yale-trained filmmaker managed to blame the CIA, Naval Intelligence, the Secret Service, the FBI, and Lyndon Johnson! It is odd that a perceived liberal like Stone would saddle up to the same positions as extremists on the far right. It demonstrates, however, how much influence the John Birch Society has had on the death of a Democratic president.