Somehow I Got Dragged Into a JFK "Education" Forum debate About Allowing a New Member Into the Place Facts Go to Die.
Libel ensued
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Libel ensued
All hail Spartacus JFK “Education” Forum
I will address three participants in that discussion, since the accusations were made in public, I will reply in kind. There were actually two others, but being them is punishment enough.
CLIFF VARNELL
Cliff originated the thread, advocated for a member of the now archived ROKC Forum to be allowed to join.
In one post, Cliff stated the following:
A dozen years ago on ROKC Yusuf Hasan and Lee Farley expressed a desire to kick my head in. I joined ROKC for the express purpose of cussing them out, then I was banned.
None of this had anything to do with me, except that I was the creator of the forum.
In any case, here is the full story.
Cliff is referring to a time when another member who was also a moderator, starting calling him a “plastic punk.” Apparently Cliff hated being referred to in this way. For those who are unaware, Cliff is very much into the punk rock era, and I think may have managed a band or two back then.
This poster also claimed that Cliff carried his ego around in a suitcase. Cliff responded to this banter at the Education Forum, taking it to another level.
This was responded to by the ROKC member by saying that he would like to see how Cliff goes against real punks in a fight. By this stage, another ROKC member had chimed in.
Childish stuff, but it can happen when you manage to push the right buttons.
Cliff then joined the ROKC forum. I personally approved it. It seems his sole purpose was to confront his “tormentors”. He did that, then got banned by a moderator. But certainly not before he was given the chance to have his say on the matter.
The main person involved at ROKC was also a member at the Ed Forum and from what I understand, it carried over to that forum, privately through PMs. Both of those at ROKC eventually recognized that forums were not healthy places for them, and resigned. Cliff of course, is still around.
I want to make it clear that the two ROKC members were and are very decent human beings. But I will also add that I’ve never had any personal issues with Cliff, If I have, I don’t recall them.
DON JEFFRIES
Don thinks I loathe him. But that would be because he is a loathsome individual who had no qualms about abusing his moderator position in favor of those whose positions he supports – and any analysis of their their hoary theories would be deemed personal attacks as an excuse to “flex” his super human moderator powers.
As a side note – the person who made him a moderator has said in this same thread,
“Being a moderator is a thankless task and the abusive behaviour towards them as resulted in several leaving or being inactive.”
To which I would say, on face value, that is a valid statement. But what do you do when a moderator is trolling you and doing things in admin that favor those you are debating, especially when they are baiting you, rather than debating?
There is an old saying that applies. Never put anyone in a position of power if they are advocating or volunteering for it. Respect is earned, not dubbed with a sword. And it’s a two-way street. Your approach was and still seems to be, that moderators are automatically unbiased, inscrutable, and fair-minded, and therefore any action they take must be correct and no correspondence shall be entered into it. It is a fantasy world. Which is just as well because that forum is populated by fantasists. And those are the ones most frightened by the rapier wit of the nominee.
But back to Don.
Here is what he had to say
Greg Parker on this forum (and others- he was banned from all of them), you know how he felt about me. I have no idea why he feels this way. We had several battles on this forum when I was an administrator, always about Parker being excessively nasty to others, calling them liars, making threats, etc. Parker fancies himself as some kind of serious researcher, and it is astonishing to me that some real researchers seem to respect his work. Before Wilson arrived on the ROKC scene, the “researchers” who comprise Parker’s small but loyal fan club were calling me juvenile names, taking a photo of me online and smearing my face with chocolate, etc. They are an incredibly immature bunch, who have one primary purpose- to promote the Prayer Man theory, and to ridicule John Armstrong’s Harvey and Lee work.
I don’t think the ROKC forum has been active for quite a while. Parker has a Substack no one reads, and not that long ago he attacked me, and once again suggested I was a Nazi/”anti-Semite” in one of his typical screeds. As bad as the others were at ROKC, I think Wilson is perhaps the worst of the bunch. It would sound egotistical to say he’s obsessed with me, but you can read some of his old posts and decide for yourself. He would contribute nothing valuable here.
Don keeps repeating the falsehood that I have been banned from all forums. I Have never tried to join all forums. I’m not that masochistic.
I was banned from the Education forum for a bad pun. Someone had mentioned a lady by the name of Polly (LNU). I replied “Polly want a cracker”? The person I had replied to complained to the the admin – who – being British, had no idea what the problem was. It had to be explained to him that a “cracker” is an insulting term about equal to saying, “poor white trash” in the US. Now if a Brit was unfamiliar with that usage, how was someone living even further from the US supposed to know? The complainant of course was a proponent of that most ridiculous of theories – the Two Oswald/Two Marguerite Theory. Those bastards were allowed to say whatever they wanted, and as already indicated, Don, despite being a moderator, would often pile on, or stoke the fires behind the scenes.
What happened at ROKC was a direct result of Don’s behavior as a moderator. And what was used was perfectly legitimate parody.
Don’s accusations that I have called him a Nazi/Anti-Semite stem from this substack piece about the writing of one of his books as related to me by a co-author who eventually pulled out of the project after reading one of Don’s Anti-Semitic screeds. I had already known that Don was partial to appearing on the podcasts of white supremacists, and reading comments on his various platforms over the years, he has many of those types as “fans”. From what I gather, Don is now very much active again at the JFK “Education” Forum.
If you click the link and read the piece on Don, you will see I never called him those things at all. I did quote his former co-author calling him that. But I also quoted another co-author who I contacted for comment, defending Don on that issue. So I did my own digging to get to the bottom of it, and found relevant quotes from Don, and named the people he said he admired, and let readers make up their own minds.
I guess he was a bit pissed about being caught out in a big lie citing the Antisemitic Awareness Act as if it was a new federal law, so that he could attack it’s alleged wokeness and anti-free speech qualities. The fact is that the Antisemitic Awareness Act provides statutory authority for the requirement that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights take into consideration the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) working definition of antisemitism when reviewing or investigating complaints of discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. According to the IHRA’s working definition, antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.
Further, it relies on a definition of antisemitism which includes this nugget: criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
So… it was an Act that only applied to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. But I would assume it has been bull-doged into oblivion by now and Don is still celebrating.
Lastly on Don, he again has tried to insult me by stating no one reads my substack. Like I give a shit. I don’t charge for anyone reading it. Unlike Don, I write for my own satisfaction, not because I feel entitled to make a living from it, And mark my word. Don feels entitled.
This is the quality of person once put in charge of “educating” people about the assassination of JFK.
JOHN SIMKIN
John replied to Don with this
Good to see you back posting as you are a researcher I respect. I also have had trouble with Greg Parker. I met him in Australia and he appeared fine, although I was never convinced he was a serious researcher. I then heard from a mutual friend that he was putting it around that I was running a CIA disinformation project with the Education Forum.
It is not clear if he is talking about a mutual friend with me or with Don. But either way, I have categorically never publicly or privately speculated about anyone being CIA. I would ask John to post what I allegedly said, and where I said it.
Not that I am surprised that John chose to believe scuttlebutt. He is one record, along with Jeff Morley, as believing every single rumor, innuendo and piece of disinformation about JFK’s alleged philandering.
We are expected to believe the drug-addicted JFK was banging everything up to and including the fridge door, despite his notoriously bad back. It has the chilling effect of making it seem like he got what he deserved,
To mimic Jerry Maguire…. “SHOW ME THE EVIDENCE!”
I did once ask John to give me his best piece of evidence for any of the accusations. The best he could do was a letter from JFK to Ellen Rometsch in which he promised to catch up with her when he was next in Germany. That’s it. That was the best the academic could come up with. Which is one reason it’s so funny that he now says he doesn’t rate me as a serious researcher.
It’s not me passing off a single comment in a single letter as the best evidence that JFK was a serial philanderer. And it certainly wasn’t me who has populated multiple biographies on John’s Spartacus website with citations and quotes from conspiracy books. About as unacademic as it gets.
When I first joined his JFK forum, I really wanted to like John. I liked his aims, though maybe not so much his methodology.
He started to lose me when we met. He insulted me for wearing clothes he didn’t approve of, and then insulted my country as being too much like America – but conversely also for not having enough TV channels.
One thing I’ve learned. You can’t please everyone. That John is not enamored of my research is no skin off my nose. I’m no fan of his idea of what constitutes good source material. Or who he chooses to admire. I’m sure that’s no skin off his nose, and I wish him well with whatever he is doing these days.
Just a general final comment, especially for the JFK “Education” Forum members. Say whatever the hell you want about me. Lampoon me. Makes jokes. All good. But if you say anything in a serious discussion like this one that isn’t true, I will be responding. And I won’t always be this gentle.
Addendum
After contacting John by email, he has now posted a retraction (of sorts) and an apology
Unlike others, I don’t charge subscribers. But if you’d like to throw a couple of dollars my way for a coffee that’d be awesome.
Sounds the Three Inch Forum is still up to their usual gobshite, not advancing the case one jot since I was last there… sometime in 2014, if I remember it rightly.
The only thing I have ever seen of worth there – aside from Sean Murphy’s Prayer Man series – was when the Fez (can’t even recall his name) realized the evidence WAS the conspiracy… which most of us knew from the outset.
Apparently John Simkin is back in charge to try and straighten the place out. He won’t achieve that because he has an inbuilt bias against those that defend themselves against those he actually does consider being “serious researchers”, Case in point. He has made Sandy Larsen a moderator again.
Oh, good. Sandy Larson! His latitude in defining “serious research” is uniformly uninformed.
Yep. Re-promoted to deputy by John Simkin. Seriously. John just has no idea that his choices of moderators are a main cause of the problems in that place. Not to mention policies and rules made on the fly and sometimes contradicting other rules and policies.
There are some there who rightly compare moderation to sports umpiring. The umpire should never be the story. Journalism is another comparison. The reporter should never be the story. In all cases, being impartial and being SEEN to be impartial are paramount to building two-way trust. But John seems to have this very British attitude that knighthoods confer not just a title, but respect, and likewise dubbing someone a moderator confers upon them not just a title and a few duties, but automatic respect. Honestly, 6th graders would do a better job than those he “dubs” as mods and demands respect for.
And they say WOMEN are catty! LOL! Good luck over there! I’ve only rarely been on the EF since the golden days of the Prayer Man thread with Sean Murphy etc… (It’s actual title was something different…can’t remember). I hate bickering like that!
“Not that I am surprised that John chose to believe scuttlebutt. He is one record, along with Jeff Morley, as believing every single rumor, innuendo and piece of disinformation about JFK’s alleged philandering.
I once asked John to give me his best piece of evidence for any of the accusations. The best he could do was a letter from JFK to Ellen Rometsch in which hehe promised to catch up with her when he was next in Germany. That’s it, That was the best the academic could come up with. Which is one reason it’s so funny that he he now says he doesn’t rate me a serious researcher.”
Thanks for that tidbit about those pushing JFK’s alleged philandering. It’ total disinfo IMO. Sean Kane and Bill Raider over on “That’s Enough Outta You” have done at least one video, (and I think possibly more) shooting down that crap too.