I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak (new book)

[Fred Litwin]

My new book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak, is now available for purchase.

Fred Litwin recounts how he became a JFK conspiracy freak at eighteen, and then slowly moved to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. This book demonstrates how the left and the right have used the JFK assassination to drive home myths about power in America. There is also the horrible persecution of a gay man prosecuted for conspiring to kill Kennedy, the ugly story of Oliver Stone?s homophobic film JFK, an expos? of conspiracy nonsense on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a look at how the Soviets tried to influence American public opinion into believing the CIA was behind the assassination, and the incredible secret why some JFK assassination documents must remain locked up forever. And a whole lot more.

PRAISE for I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak

?As a young man growing up in the heyday of Kennedy assassination theorizing, Fred Litwin believed a conspiracy killed JFK.  And then he grew, and he studied and he researched.  The result is this volume, a thorough, cogent and meticulously argued case for a lone assassin.  A seasoned conspiracy skeptic will learn new things here, and a conspiracy believer open to looking at the other side could do no better than this volume.?
     John McAdams, Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University and author of JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think about Claims of Conspiracy

?This is a great book for conspiracy buffs?and, more important, for those who debunk such theories. Fred Litwin does a terrific job in blowing up the myriad JFK assassination scenarios, not least in completely demolishing The Fifth Estate?s decades-long efforts to ?uncover? the truth. The CBC?s lead investigative show is revealed here to be more than slightly unhinged.?
     J. L. Granatstein, Author of Who Killed Canadian History?

?Who killed John F. Kennedy has become the conspiracy theory of conspiracy theories. Despite the many recent books debunking all of them, scores of people still believe Lee Harvey Oswald was not involved or had accomplices, and was directed by either Moscow, the CIA, the FBI, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro,  or whomever one chooses to accuse.

In Fred Litwin?s marvelous book, he charts how he went from becoming one of the earlier skeptics to someone dedicated to dissecting their arguments and carefully tearing them apart. The penultimate chapter is the one in which Litwin takes a scalpel to the vehicle that has unfortunately convinced many Americans there was a real conspiracy. That source is the famous Oliver Stone movie, JFK, in which Litwin shows the director created a nonexistent homosexual cabal planning to assassinate Kennedy, which was also in cahoots with the CIA. The agency, according to Stone, wanted Kennedy dead because he was about to pull U.S. troops out of Vietnam! Exposing Stone?s lies after lies, the director won?t know what hit him if he dares to read Litwin?s book.

Litwin continues to update the many books and new theories that keep coming to prove conspiracy, up to the present. What he has accomplished is to put the final nail in the coffin of all the conspiracy theorists, who develop new ones as old theories are proven wrong. He has given us a beautifully written and compelling book, one in which Litwin tells the bold, unvarnished truth. How anyone reading this can still conclude that JFK was killed by various conspirators, rather than the lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, is beyond my comprehension. Everyone still concerned with JFK?s death and thinks it?s a mystery, must read Fred Litwin?s I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak. They will be glad they did.?
     Ronald Radosh, Professor Emeritus of History at CUNY, opinion columnist for The Daily Beast and co-author of A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel.

?Mr. Litwin?s book is the best in many, many years in dealing with the truth about this horrendous piece of history?and exposing the fakirs, cons and opportunists who often call themselves ?historians.? A fine presentation!?
     Hugh Aynesworth, Author of November 22, 1963: Witness to History and JFK: Breaking the News

[Mike Orr]

Fiction

[Nicholas Turner]

Fiction

Opinion.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

My review of the book is now up:
http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2018/10/book-review-i-was-teenage-jfk.html

[Tom Scully]

My review of the book is now up:
http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2018/10/book-review-i-was-teenage-jfk.html

From your book review.:

http://wtracyparnell.blogspot.com/2018/10/book-review-i-was-teenage-jfk.html
... Litwin notes that ?? you weren?t a proper leftist if you didn?t understand the ?right-wing? plot to take over America and the huge coverup.? To illustrate the critic?s mindset, Litwin quotes Marcus who thought that If people became aware of the ?fraud? of the Warren Report, ?they?ll start to demand other answers. Maybe they?ll ask about the Rosenbergs, Hiss, the whole Cold War. Maybe we can get clean and whole. But if this stays down, there?s no hope.? However, while Litwin is critical of conspiracy theorists on the left, he notes that President Trump promoted the discredited story that Ted Cruz?s father was one of the men who handed out pro-Castro leaflets in front of the Trade Mart in New Orleans at the behest of Lee Harvey Oswald.....

http://www.startribune.com/new-exhibit-reveals-u-s-dark-history-of-segregation-and-anti-semitism/443978873/
New exhibit reveals U's dark history of segregation and anti-Semitism
Famous names on campus were behind discriminatory practices in the 1930s and 1940s.
By Sharyn Jackson Star Tribune  SEPTEMBER 12, 2017 ?
...A report marked ?Confidential? lists ?radical leaders? at the U from 1934 to 1937.

On the list: Robert Loevinger, who became a pioneer in radiation treatment of cancer, is called a ?campus agitator. Marxist. Jew.? Minnesota Daily writer Eric Sevareid, who became a famous war correspondent, is described as: ?Radical. Pro-Communist. Anti-Fascist.? Minnesota Daily editorial director Joe Toner: ?Jew. Radical agitator.?...

Mr. Parnell, in the past it is my sense you and I have agreed much more often than we have disagreed.
Do you really accept that Trump is a rightist or the U.S. was not overtaken by rightist/fascist sentiments and influences
before the 1960 presidential election or that Dallas, and to an extent, Washington, DC were not still in rightist/fascist
political dominance in 1963 -  64? In his time, JFK was a progressive compared to his political opposition and
evolved on the issue of racially motivated suppression as his presidency progressed.

Mr. Litwin evidently discerns political issues and orientation in black or white terms, i.e., no gray.
Trump has no history of right or left ideology; he is a self promoting, manipulative opportunist. Southern democrats
in 1963 were of rightist orientation, more so if you accept this placement of fascism in the political spectrum.

Note "the left" in the following description is not qualified or segmented, and only a portion of the "right" is
described as in opposition to fascism.:
:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

...According to most scholars of fascism, there are both left and right influences on fascism as a social movement, and fascism, especially once in power, has historically attacked both left, moderate right wing and the opposition in the radical right in order to maintain power....

The point I am making is the election of JFK seemed an initial step in moving as a country from the embrace of
fascism if the defeated confederacy and the ongoing legally codified racial segregation succeeding the militarily defeated C.S.A. were indications of the grip of extreme right political control.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

Tom,

The point I was making is that Litwin criticizes conspiracy theorists on the left but not exclusively. Trump is certainly not on the left, although you are correct that as a populist some do not consider him on the right either. As for the political aspects of the book, I'll let Fred speak for himself if he so choses.

[John Iacoletti]

Fred, could you succinctly describe what it was specifically that changed your mind?  Was it based on evidence or was it just a matter of reading some conspiracy arguments that were wacky -- therefore the Warren Commission must have been right?

[John Agee]

The point I am making is the election of JFK seemed an initial step in moving as a country from the embrace of fascism if the defeated confederacy and the ongoing legally codified racial segregation succeeding the militarily defeated C.S.A. were indications of the grip of extreme right political control.

You have not found a zillion connections with Fred Litwin, his ancestors and all of these right wingers yet? Maybe Litwin's great grandfather's best friend's cousin second removed graduated in 1927 from the New Mexico Military Institute with Edwin Walker.