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Comment by aebtebeten | Hacker News Reader

> ... there must be some kind of conspiracy between communists, blacks, poets and French philosophers.

If you can connect these dots, then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati_(game) might be for you!

There is necessarily no cross-links between all of them, but there is a link. If you can't imagine that a state that is obsessively dreaming about the world revolution and has a wide spy network and large group of naive sympathisers doesn't try to infiltrate all the possible influential counter cultures then you are a little too naive.

"If you can't imagine" is a bad start. If you're imagining people obsessively dreaming about destroying you, and using the naive "blacks" to do it, you're about a millimeter away from joining the fight against "Judeo-Bolshevism."

> If you can't imagine that a state that is obsessively dreaming about the world revolution and has a wide spy network and large group of naive sympathisers doesn't try to infiltrate all the possible influential counter cultures then you are a little too naive.

How are Blacks, communists and poets “counter cultures”?

Because it was the counter culture, eg Black Panthers, youth communist parties

Not entirely true. Without some "counter" culture, we would not have culture today.

Of course we would. Just not this culture, but a variation on it.

I take the most favorable interpretation and I presume that the young age is in play in such large ignorance.

Obviously the notion of poets doesn't contain all of them like the ones who write rhymes for children but poetry has since Age of Enlightenment been a tool of political critique if not earlier. The same applies to philosophy. I'm hope that you for sure have heard of Marx.

I also hope that you have learned about civil rights movement of the black people and Martin Luther King.

So which one of all of the four has the support of a large superstate with an extensive spy network?

And what comes to McCarthy then he had every right to be extremely paranoid about the activities of Soviet Union in attempts to secretly influence American politics from the within. The work of American counter intelligence agencies is a clear proof of it.

no because a healthy politics does include alternative views. It is the unhealthy security mindset that becomes inflexible @! and does anyone now support the activity of Senator Joe McCarthy, honestly?

> I take the most favorable interpretation and I presume that the young age is in play in such large ignorance.

The US are just one of the 195 countries in the World; don’t assume that everyone on the Internet is 1- living in the US and/or 2- familiar with the US culture as if it were the center of the world.

The context here is clearly US - hint: FBI.

Clear for you. https://xkcd.com/1053/

I'm not from US, but fair enough, just the article is very obviously about US if you cared to read it even superficially.

But now I'm curious from where you are from and how you don't know about civil rights movement of blacks in US. Does the name Martin Luther King tell you anything?

The comment talked about "world revolution" and a "wide spy network" so it was not immediately clear to me that the infiltration you were taking about where only on domestic soil like what the article was about.

OK. The only communist "world power" at the time was USSR (Soviet Union) that was factually dominated and controlled by Russia. They had from the very beginning (revolution in Russia) dreamed about the world domination. They tried already right after the revolution to overtake Europe but were stopped by Poland. Next attempt was during WW2 but they were first stopped by Germany and then by US (partially, as even part of Germany was occupied by them).

USSR had very wide spy network and they had considerably infiltrated US.

China was also overtaken by communists and had some influence among some naive Western intellectuals but I don't know about direct influence in US (maybe it existed, I'm just not aware of it).

These days of course both Russia and China are actively attempting to extend their influence through spy networks or by manipulations in social media (and yes, there are also obvious shill accounts here).

You couldn't tell that this article was about the US? "FBI" and "JFK assassination" didn't tip you off? Did you read the article?

I read it, but I responded to a comment without taking the article in context.

>How are Blacks, communists and poets “counter cultures”?

You don't understand American culture at all if you can even ask this question sincerely.

It truly does seem like it would be an easy thing to ascertain just from knowing about the existence of the Black National Anthem, the Communist Manifesto, and Howl.

Then again, it's also characteristic of mainstream American culture to try to discourage people from acknowledging them.

American culture is, indeed, a mix of culture. It exists only thanks to external influences. Black culture is at the heart of American culture (jazz, soul, and more music), great athletes in the best team...

And it's good. The point was that part of it was clearly a counter culture in opposition of white dominated main culture. This is completely something that a state level adversary may attempt to infiltrate given an opportunity.

And they tried and keep trying. A little recent refresher

https://www.npr.org/2017/10/30/560042987/russians-targeted-u...

Or perhaps they were born in the last twenty or so years.

In America, today, Black culture IS culture and communism isn't viewed critically for the murderously-bad idea that it is.

Most of the immigrants that fled here from communism are either old, boring or dead. Kids today rarely have the benefit of speaking to older folks who fled Cuba, Laos, Cambodia, Burma, the USSR and others.

Instead they're following influencers on Twitch and Youtube who have extremely privileged lives speaking from ignorance about communism with no pushback.

> You don't understand American culture at all if you can even ask this question sincerely.

Some people on HN always assume that this is a website a US-only audience. No, not all people understand American culture and that’s normal because it’s not universal. I interpreted the comment as a general affirmation, not something specific to a single country. I’m downvoted and almost insulted for asking a question.

Being able to imagine something isn't concrete proof that it exists. "There's a first time for everything" isn't literally true; plenty of totally plausible things don't end up happening.

I mean, that's kinda fair. But it's also a much lower bar to suspect that a group might be infiltrated when we're talking about an entity with a proven track-record of infiltrating and espionage. Doubly so during the cold war, when this kind of thing was normalized.

I also wouldn't be that surprised if you told me the CIA managed to infiltrate some philosophy group. Hell, they funded Jackson Pollock.

Okay, I can imagine it. Mission accomplished?

Using public French intellectuals who dabble in socialism to plot the assassination of an American president would be the dumbest thing imaginable. (If that is what the topic is about? The submitted article is awfully vague about what the McCharthian fears were even about.)

I loved that game, but in my friendless highschool youth I never found anyone interested in playing the version I had (the "New World Order" card game).

I do remember the Talented and Gifted English teacher at my school randomly saw me with cards for the "John Birch Society" and "FNORD" and guffawed.

I'm pretty sure that "... there must be some kind of conspiracy" is the literal definition of a Conspiracy Theory. Nice to see that even the FBI is into that fun stuff.

The FBI has a checkered history. We do need federal level policing but, like all policing, it needs to be buttressed by accountability and oversight.

Rip Fred Hampton. Hoover, he was a body remover.

Wait till you learn about RICO.

Accusation, confession, etc.

so anything is falsifiable if you create a board game using its components? Moon-landing conspirators unite!

Conspiracies can be dismissed if they are presented without convincing evidence. After all, the space of possible conspiracies is vast; all but a tiny fraction must be nonexistent.

Could it be that instead of attempting to falsify anything I had merely been attempting to promote a really fun game? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes!

At what point in history did the FBI first begin to require aptitude tests to become an agent?

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