General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. [View all]stopbush
(24,396 posts)"The paranoid message will give more and more, and then it will give even more. The entertainment resources of the paranoid message are unrivaled. It offers puzzles, drama, passion, heroes, villains, and struggle. If the story-line can be tied to an historical event, especially one that involves romantic characters and unexpected death, then fiction, history, and popular delusion can be joined in the pursuit of profit. The story, moreover, need never end. If evidence appears that refutes the conspiracy, the suppliers of the discrediting material will themselves be accused of being part of the conspiracy. The paranoid explanatory system is a closed one. Only confirmatory evidence is accepted. Contradictions are dismissed as being naive or, more likely, part of the conspiracy itself."
- Political scientist Robert S. Robins and psychiatrist Jerrold M. Post in "Political Paranoia as Cinematic Motif: Stone's 'JFK.'" which was presented at the 1997 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.