Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve
aND the MeaNINg of MeMory
SpaCe expLoratIoN aND the CuLt of CoNSpIraCy
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americans, certainly, and perhaps all the cultures of the world, love the idea
of conspiracy as an explanation of how and why many events have happened.
Certainly this is the case in one of the counter narratives of spacefight. these
conspiracy theories play to the innermost human fears and hostilities that there
is a well-organized, well-fnanced, and Machiavellian design being executed
by some malevolent group, the dehumanized “them,” which seek to rob “us”
of something we hold dear. usually the “something” being robbed is one of the
constitutionally defned rights of all americans: life, liberty, or property.
Conspiracy theories abound in american history. oliver Stone’s flm,
J.F.K., while presenting a truly warped picture of recent american history,
shows how receptive americans are to believing that Kennedy was killed as a
result of a massive conspiracy variously involving Cuban strongman fidel Castro,
american senior intelligence and law enforcement ofcers, high communist
leaders in the Soviet union, union organizers, organized crime, and perhaps
even the vice president, Lyndon b. Johnson. Stone’s flm only brought the
assassination conspiracy to a broad american public. for years amateur and
not-so-amateur researchers have been churning out books and articles about
the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. It has been one of the really signifcant
growth industries in american history during the last 40-some years. 59
Conspiracy theories, of course, have been advanced to explain many
other historical events in the united States. a favorite is the “backdoor to war”
conspiracy thesis of u.S. entry into World War II. as stated, president franklin
D. roosevelt had intelligence information about the Japanese attack on pearl
harbor hours beforehand and with the help of other highly placed national
leaders withheld that information from the Navy’s pacifc fleet so that it would
be destroyed—all so he could get the american people behind a war with
germany. 60 another conspiracy argues that there has been a grand intrigue in
the 20th century “to control the foreign and domestic policies of the united
States, subvert the Constitution, and establish a totalitarian society.” 61
59. David r. Wrone and DeLloyd J. guth, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Westport, Ct:
greenwood press, 1980), listed more than 5,000 publications dealing with the subject. the
number has grown substantially since that bibliography was published.
60. Charles a. beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances
and Realities (New haven, Ct: yale university press, 1948) makes the case for conspiracy.
Countervailing positions are argued in roberta Wolstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision
(palo alto, Ca: Stanford university press, 1962) and gordon a. prang, “At Dawn We Slept”:The
Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New york, Ny: Mcgraw-hill, 1981). a superb discussion of the
memory of the pearl harbor attack may be found in emily rosenberg, A Date Which will Live:
Pearl Harbor in American Memory (Durham, NC: Duke university press, 2003).
61. Chesly Manly, The Twenty-Year Revolution: From Roosevelt to Eisenhower (Chicago, IL: n.p., 1954), p.
179, as cited in richard hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New