5 - The Unofficial Version
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
So far we have looked at how the Kennedy assassination has been represented in a cluster of mainstream and government works, which together have come to be seen as the official version of events. This chapter will concern itself with a whole variety of ‘unofficial’ versions, from conspiracy theories to forms of popular memorialisation of the event. There is a vast literature on the Kennedy assassination, with over two thousand books, countless newspaper and magazine articles, along with novels and films, not to mention the dozens of journals and websites devoted to the topic. The overwhelming majority develop a conspiracy theory of one stripe or another. Over the past four decades, the public both in the US and elsewhere have come to distrust the official lone gunman version, entertaining instead a host of alternative conspiracy scenarios that have become increasingly complex and all-encompassing. Every aspect of the event has been obsessively scrutinised for clues by ‘amateur’ historians who refuse to accept the orthodox account, and whose detailed knowledge of the case often far exceeds that of ‘professional’ academic historians. For many people the Kennedy assassination is the linchpin in a whole chain of conspiracies that have shaped the postwar world. Opinion polls consistently report that at least three quarters of Americans distrust the official version (see DiLouie 2003), and conspiracy theories in general have increasingly come to occupy a less marginal and more mainstream position.
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- The Kennedy Assassination , pp. 75 - 104Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2007