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March 30: This Day in Discordian History

I recently stumbled upon this oddity in the Discordian Archives, an obscure publication called The National Informer dated March 30, 1969. And no, this wasn’t a Discordian gag as far as I can tell, but an actual magazine or newsletter (published by an apparent crackpot named Hazel Mullins) featuring the conspiratorial meme that JFK was still alive. That’s right, he never died!

The March 30, 1969 edition of The National Informer.

The JFK-never-died school of assassinationology is among my all time favs, right up there with the-secret-service-driver-shot-JFK-with-a-poison-dart-filled-with-deadly-shell-fish-toxin. There have been variations on this JFK never died theme throughout years, such as the rumor that he was still alive though withering away in a secret room at the Mayo Clinic. Let’s look at a couple more variations of this theory now, because apparently I have nothing better to do with my time…

George C. Thomson’s The Quest for Truth

A rare copy of George C. Thomson’s The Quest for Truth.

My first whiff of this JFK-never-actually-died doo-dah came courtesy of a Southern California swimming pool engineer named George C. Thomson. The gist of Thomson’s theory was that Kennedy narrowly escaped with his life from Dealey Plaza and inserted in his place (in the Presidential limousine) was J.D. Tippit, the Dallas Police officer who had been allegedly shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald in the aftermath of the assassination (in front of Oswald’s apartment in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas). Some suggest that Tippit strongly resembled JFK; photos of the two men do reveal some similarities, although Tippit wasn’t a “dead ringer” by any stretch of the imagination.

J.D. Tippit
As noted, part of Thomson’s theory included this body swap switcheroo of Tippit for JFK—and get this: the assassin, according to Thomson, was none other than soon to be President Lyndon Baines Johnson who used “a drum-fed, fully automatic weapon, two of them…” Approximately 22 bullets were fired (although 23 would have been ideal) and in the crossfire five (Hail Eris!) people were killed, all of which is documented in Thomson’s “Dallas Murder Map,” a fold-out included as part of his magnum opus, The Quest for Truth.

George C. Thomson’s 'Dallas Murder Map'

Thomson never really explained why JFK’s assassination was faked, and specifically what became of our supposedly dead President. However, Thomson alleged that JFK had been seen (wearing a mask) at the famous Truman Capote “black and white ball” that occurred in November of 1966.

The Bane In Kennedy’s Existence

Bernard M. Bane

Even farther out on a conspiratorial limb was a fellow named Bernard Bane, who authored such obscure JFK assassination classics as The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence (1967) and Is President John F, Kennedy Alive… And Well? (1973).

Adam Gorightly’s precious copy of The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence.

By and large, The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence is a ponderously inscrutable read, but the basic gist is that in October 1963, Bane was taken into custody and committed to a mental health facility where MK-Ultra like “spychiatrists”—or those he refers to as the “Social Engineers”—injected him with massive doses of LSD, all part of an insidious plot to drive Bane bananas.

Why Mr. Bane was treated in such an unseemly manner is never made entirely clear, although part of the reason, apparently, was due to a book he authored in 1962 entitled The Grand Model of the Mind that presented a psychological theory that appears to have made even less sense than his JFK assassination theory, which is saying quite a lot. I’ll let Bane tell the story in his own words:

“So, I got out [of the psych ward] October 15. And according to expectations, something was going to happen on my birthday. My birthday’s on November 21st. President Kennedy was supposed to be assassinated as a birthday present to me. So, on November 22, he was assassinated. So that’s how I got involved. I figured, there’s something going on here. There was a definite connection. So then, when I read an article in the Boston Globe that said, ‘HOAX IN DALLAS’ — somebody did something that had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination—but to me, it meant something: “HOAX IN DALLAS” —it means the assassination’s a hoax. And I always felt there was something bizarre about the whole thing. So I concluded, OK. He never got killed. And I realize after concluding that, a lot of people around me knew that all along… but they didn’t admit it. So slowly I leaked out my belief that he wasn’t even killed…”
(Donny Kossy’s 1991 interview with Bernard Bane, Kooks Magazine)

This was today in Discordian history.

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March Eris of the Month 2020 – The Green Egg Eris by F Mch Adams

March Eris of the Month 2020 - The Green Egg Eris by F Mch Adams

Our March Eris of the Month was literally ripped from the pages of The Green Egg, Vol IX, No. 70 to be exact, an illustration accompanying a Robert Anton Wilson article entitled “Racism, Sexism and Evolution,” which you can view and download a PDF copy of the article here.

PDF: Racism, Sexism and Evolution by Robert Anton Wilson


Send us your Eris of the Month Club submissions (more info here) by using the form at the bottom of The MGT. page.