Joe Rogan Was Wrong About JFK and Secret Societies
By: Jakob Krause
Tags: Podcast, Conspiracy Theories, History

Joe Rogan in the “JRE Clips” YouTube video “JFK warned us about secret societies”. This screenshot was taken by the author.

“He’s talking about secret societies. He’s talking about the military-industrial complex. He’s talking about all of the gears in play that are making money and making war and [deciding] what information people should or shouldn’t have.”

So said Joe Rogan, the infamous podcast personality when recently postulating on the meaning of a speech by President John F. Kennedy. A speech that has been making the rounds in conspiracy circles on the internet. The infamous bit goes as follows:

“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence — on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”

Feel chills run down your spine?

Joe Rogan certainly did.

A former president of Kennedy’s renown seeming to confirm everything Special Agent Fox Mulder believed in The X Files? Over a table with a couple of beers that’s a damn good conversation.

In our time of YouTube mystery channels, Ancient Aliens, and conspiracy theory peppered podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, it is easy to jump to the ideas that so often get modern netizens into a tizzy.

Unfortunately, the full speech and its context cut those theories down faster than Donald Trump can tweet.

Kennedy gave the speech on April 27, 1961. It was only in January of that same year that President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, coined the term “military-industrial complex.” That phrase looms large in our minds in this modern era, as do our fear of secret societies. In April of 1961 it had not yet fully taken root in the minds of America.

When secret societies were mentioned in the 1960s the imagination of many, if not most, would turn to communism. Not the Illuminati.

The United States of America was in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, named due to the absence of any physical combat or opposition directly between the two powers. It was a war of ideology and posturing fought through espionage, propaganda, and proxy wars. A conflict that, though it often grew very warm, never became hot due to the imminent threat of Mutually Insured Destruction, a doctrine that promised annihilation should either nation ever put nuclear weapons to use.

The power of the Soviet Union and the communist ideology was spreading around the globe. From 1950 through 1953 the U.S. had been engaged in a very bloody war in Korea in an effort to stop the Communist North, which was backed by China and Russia, from taking the entire Peninsula. In 1959, a man named Fidel Castro led a communist uprising in Cuba, which lies just a hundred miles off the coast of Florida. He was victorious. The United States feared that the Soviets would find an ally in Cuba, vastly extending the reach of the USSR. American intelligence was not wrong, but their plan to counter the threat would prove disastrous.

On April 17, just 10 days prior to the delivery of Kennedy’s speech titled The President and the Press, Cuban refugees that had been trained by the CIA made an attempt to invade Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Their landing and coup attempt would become known simply as the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Less than 24 hours of gunfire on the beach resulted in the deaths of 114 would-be-rebels and the capture of over 1,100 survivors. It was a disaster. The plan had been inherited from the Eisenhower administration, but the Kennedy administration now sat squarely in the hot seat.

Media leaks were rampant. Public disdain was growing. People were struggling to unite in the face of the invisible threat posed by the Soviets and their ideology. It was difficult to unite a nation in the face of a conflict when they were not aware they were in one. President Kennedy decided it was time to implore the public to understand the gravity of the situation.

His now-famous speech would directly stress the danger being faced by the growth of communist ideology globally. This was evidenced at the beginning of his address by highlighting Karl Marx’s former employment with the New York Herald Tribune as a foreign correspondent. He used this story to at once stress the importance of the press and its many human parts, but to also reveal its destructive power. He warns: “If only this capitalistic New York newspaper had treated him [Karl Marx] more kindly; if only Marx had remained a foreign correspondent, history might have been different.”

In immense contradiction to current popular belief about the message of this speech, Kennedy stated, “I refer, first, to the need for a far greater public information; and, second, to the need for far greater official secrecy.”

Kennedy goes onto suggest a sort of self-censorship be performed by American newspapers and magazines by publishing content based not only on how newsworthy it was but also on its potential impact on national security.

The monster beneath the bed of this address was the ideology of communism and its Soviet backers; its purpose a call to the American media to take action on censorship to protect military secrets and national interests.

Joe Rogan’s heart would be broken.

Kennedy certainly remained a darling of the media until his untimely death. However, as with everything in our world, nothing is a simple as it first appears. Especially in regards to politics.

It is desperately important in a time where the vast majority of information is spread by heresy that we, as often as we are able, find the source of a matter and its truth, rather than becoming unnecessarily entangled in a conspiracy.

Thankfully, the source of this matter is available for free on the internet. The transcript and audio of the speech, in full, can be found on jfklibrary.org.

I strongly suggest you read it.